The Dmac story?

What is the difference, if true, between this and the Morris fiasco with Hoke? Due to the volatility of COVID-19, it seems much worse to me. The only difference is it happened behind closed doors and they are covering it up for now. Once Dylan leaves campus, it may be a different story. 

Playing favorites only a blind person couldn’t tell that’s what he did.

One thing appears obvious:

Whatever happened at QB was NOT the best player winning the starting job. 

It looks like the worst player won the starting job.

I've read a couple of comments where people are saying Jim needs to change and correct this....seriously? Does he know more about football than me? Yes. Is he a great football mind? No. L

He comes from the Bo era of win because we are michigan. He was a mediocre QB who was basically just tough, a guy who played hard and was lucky to be on a loaded michigan team. 

He has never outcoached another coach. Coaches now are just flat out better coaches than back in the day and Jim is old school. You listen to other coaches talk strategy or there was that clip of Sean McVey remembering previous lays, Jim can't do that. They have to strategically be innovative as well as mentoring a different era of kids. Jim doesn't fit the bill on any of these levels. Honestly, Jim is fit to coach small town high school football in the middle of nowhere where he can still run the veer and would still run into teams that have moved to the spread and would crush his team.

The issues between Harbaugh and the McCaffrey family go back to at least last year when Dylan was hurt. It most likely started though when they brought Shea in. I'm not happy with how Harbaugh has been coaching this team but let's not make Dylan a martyr here. He did quit on the team and left us with two very inexperienced QBs.

Harbaugh likes players that are like him - he was not the most talented physically but he was tough as nails. Meritocracy and "Those that stay will be champions" used to be the mantra around here now we are pining for a QB1 that quit the team and dumping on the QB2 that remained. 

I'm a little bit incredulous at the number of comments that indicate that people bought into the hype about Milton. When the staff started talking him up, it sounded like clear and obvious spin to me from day one. I think the authors of this blog might be slightly to blame, as they just repeated the message coming from the program without applying a critical eye. Come on people, don't take press releases at face value. I'm tempted to inject politics into this discussion, as there is a clear and obvious corollary. 

I have told you guys about JH contract for weeks now, he’s not going anywhere.

With JH floundering this will be the third straight coach who will have failed at Michigan. Fans should ask themselves if it is bad luck or whether institutionally the program isn’t designed to compete in modern college football at the highest level.

While I don't doubt the sources of the insider and semi-insider information, I think we're all working backwards here and assigning causality to the source of our angst. Michigan is losing and most of us want Harbaugh gone so we're going to view every story though that lens. Did Harbaugh want Dylan back out there when he felt sick? I suspect so. Is that the same as ignoring an obviously concussed  Shane Morris staggering around the  field?  Of course not.  There's unhappy players in every locker room and not shockingly there's more when the team loses. Take any 3 "insiders"  in any situation and you will get 3 different narratives. I believe that's the point of the classic film Rashomon. But at this point there's only one narrative that anyone on this board wants to hear. 

If Warde doesn't want to eat the last year of Harbaugh's contract this would seem to offer the legal cover he'd need:

"DM pulled himself out of practice and told the coaches he felt sick, although he didn't look sick, and was having a great week of practice.  Apparently this ticked off coach and showed "a sign of weakness".  Seemingly coach then tried to motivate DM to get after it and continue to practice and workout with his team."

He should pull Harbaugh aside and ask him if he'd like that to be his legacy at UM. This clearly smacks of Hoke and Durkin to me.

The problem with all of this, if true, is it completely out of touch leadership. We aren’t living in some day when “tough it out,” never calling in sick, speaking louder than others in the huddle, and forcing kids to practice when injured or sick is valued. That was the generation Harbaugh grew up in, not this one. 
 

In this one, you have to be flexible with kids who expect better and different treatment from the 1970s to lead them. Because they are the ones actually being led and they won’t let you unless you treat them with the respect expected in this generation. 

If Harbaugh does not leave or gets fired, then the odds are he will be signed to a new 5 year contract before the start of next season. My guess is that Harbaugh will get a new contract at the end of the season, unless he jumps to the NFL, which is our only hope for a new coach. I'm sure Harbaugh will get the team back to 8 to 9 win seasons by 2022. But we will never beat OSU, MSU will beat us once every 3 years and we will lose games every other season to WI and PSU. Looks like we are destine to be stuck at 3rd or 4th place in the east. I don't think football is as important to the university leaders as it once was.

I do seem to recall stories about players being a little upset about Shea starting over DM last year, as DM was better in practices, but Shea got the starts... does anyone else remember that?

As for Michigan's performance standards - i think most of the level headed folks here saw Harbaugh as the next Ferentz... solid coach, good ambassador for the University.

This was based on being able to get you a consistent 8-10 wins per season though...

I think the calculus changes once you start getting embarrassed by programs you ought to be able to at least be competitive with.....

Its not ALL about running a clean program, having good kids and a good student/athlete balance, otherwise Hoke would still be coaching.

Harbaugh is something like 10-9 in his last 19 games. That's not a blip; that's a trend.

If he can’t recruit the state of Michigan then he needs to go. He will never turn this thing around without getting in state kids. 

But...but...but...the insider reported that, according to HIS source, the QB competition wasn't a competition at all.

This is what happens when you name a starter based on shorts & t-shirt practices against the worst secondary on college football.

Program needs a new head coach. It's too bad that it doesn't seem likely to happen. So, this is what we have for the foreseeable future - more of the same.

All of this seems right. I previously had heard similar things about Harbaugh losing support of portions of the locker room. But University is writ large happy with him, and Warde looks up to Harbaugh. Schlissel's only real priority is University's academic standing; football is well and good but think he prioritizes running a clean program that is generally successful (if not Championship caliber) over getting to OSU/Clemson/Bama levels but also incurring the attendant scandals/misbehavior. 

I think a lot of the board has gone to extreme interpretations about what is happening with Jim but ignoring the more obvious ones. College and Pro are extremely different. Players just execute much better in the NFL. Jim got used to that level in the NFL, and in his first few years at the U, had a bevy of senior players who could execute. Jedd Fisch's departure, and Speight's injury in Season 3, really messed it all up. JOK was incapable of executing, and Harbaugh's worst tendency--conservatism--seemed prudent. But with these younger classes, Harbaugh has expected them to consistently execute at a professional level that they frankly aren't capable of yet. And so he doesn't mind putting them in 3rd and 6 situations because in the big show you expect to convert a decent share of those. But it backfires here time and time again, and Jim really doesn't have anything else to fall back on. While Gattis has some interesting concepts, Mike Locklsey was the real brains behind the show at Alabama. So Gattis isn't there yet, Jim isn't prepared to coach youngsters, and Don Brown is too stubborn to learn something new. Add in OSU's ascension and you get to where we are -- ready to get destroyed by Rutgers!

So when exactly was this practice?  Because Harbaugh trying to force some kid who feels sick to practice during a pandemic is pretty much full-Hoke “let’s needlessly risk some health because I’m a fucking idiot” stuff.

Being too demanding in practice is something I have speculated about here for the last couple years. It partially explains the mass exodus, and it may explain the rash of injuries Michigan generally has through the season. Player X gets a minor ding, feels he has to play through it to be tough enough to see the field, and boom, gets injured for real.

Sad that "enthusiasm unknown to mankind" has devolved into "toughness manbawl rawr". Or maybe it's always meant the same thing.

I mean, we made fun of Scott Frost for this shit and we still do.

So the kid waited three years to start... and gets irked by the coach so much that he leaves team...  This was a monumental gaffe by Harbaugh...   getting kids to come from west coast and during the covid scare, he should have backed off here... bit him in ass... my gosh this is huge... surprised the media heads haven't speculated about it.