He needs to transfer for his own good. I want him to stay, but ultimately it'll be to his detriment. He needs a real offensive system to prepare him for the NFL, and he won't find it in this God forsaken conference.
He doesn't get reps in this offense. He could be a machine in a Big 12-style offense, but this is what happens when you spend your entire career throwing the ball 18.5 times a game instead of 35. Handing the ball off doesn't help your experience in reading defenses or timing throws or getting in sync with your receivers.
No, no, you just don't understand. Moore is an enlightened being who understands the ebbs and flow of football games and how praying your defense doesn't eff up works in college football
These "Sherrone Moore is HC material" people are huffing paint. These "Michigan is the most complete team in the country" people are huffing paint.
Our running game is good against bad defensive fronts. I wouldn't even go so far as to call our running game explosive. We march to the end zone against teams like Indiana, no big deal. It's not going to work against Ohio State, much less UGA or Bama in the playoff. We need JJ to step up--But wait, he is not living up to his potential in this offense because of the lack of reps that he takes in the passing game.
Our defense is also untested and the minute they step onto the field with OSU, our DBs will have no idea what is coming. The media hypes us up, and nobody seems to want to acknowledge that the B1G is complete trash. Our two best wins all year are Rutgers and Penn State.
Don't get me wrong, if we played in the Big 12 or the Pac-12 I think we would be in that 10-2 range, but we would need everything to break right to compete for a natty. This team has more holes than people are willing to admit.
Maryland isn't even that good, and people think this team can compete with Georgia, Bama, Oregon, Washington, Texas? Please.
I don't see a lot of Michigan guys leaving early for the NFL outside of Corum. Right now they are "college good", not prime NFL draft selection material (yet). If we can focus a way to upgrade our passing scheme overall and sell it to our wideouts, hopefully we won't lose them to the portal. I like our WRs but their potential hasn't been unlocked. I am extremely worried about the RB position because when Corum went down and Edwards wasn't in the game, our guys were completely lost. They need to learn to hold onto the football. Wouldn't mind us grabbing a backup RB out of the portal who could help.
I hope the plan is to combine the returning now-upperclassmen talent with the incoming transfer class and mold it back into a playoff team. As someone who is extremely pessimistic about Michigan football overall, I like their chances next year. Road schedule is worrisome (B1G is about to get a lot better quickly with Minnesota and MSU on the mend + Rhule / Fickell in the West) but as per usual it's going to come down to the Ohio State game, thankfully in Ann Arbor. I see us entering The Game at 10-1.
A lot of musing on how and why Michigan lost this game but the main reason goes back to the HC, Harbaugh. The entire coaching staff managed this game like they were playing for lulz or that they could afford to waste downs and drives on frivolous, reckless play calls. Total madness, total meltdown, totally batspit. I can't think of a better word than "batspit."
Of course they did this because they thought they had a much better team. Guess what, an elementary understanding of odds and luck should tell you that the better team doesn't always win. If luck is, maybe, 20% of the outcome and one team starts catching breaks, guess what....Your "edge" has been neutralized to some extent. Better button-up the playcalling and maximize what you're good at. But, nah, eff it. Let's run Philly Special, let's hand it off to the LB now that the Bush Push is legal, let's blitz it with DBs constantly and get away from what we're good at on defense, etc.
Total arrogance from this team that apparently has no idea how thoroughly mediocre the B1G is in relation to the rest of CFB. Cool bro, you beat (after struggling a bit) Indiana, Purdue, and Rutgers by decent margins. Guess what, Iowa State, last-place finisher in the Big 12, is better than all of those teams. TCU plays in a much tougher conference and you had to be ready for them and give them the respect they deserve. They are closer to you than you think at first blush despite not having a classic uniform or having a team name like "Horned Frogs" or that they were in C-USA 20 years ago. But the coaching staff wanted to let it all hang out and have fun, and that bled over to the mentality of the team, until--WHOOPS, we're down 14-0. The team staged a furious comeback and I give them credit for that, but the team made high school mistake after high school mistake because they were frazzled. That's what happens to teams that start whining when they were "supposed" to win and reality isn't syncing with their expectation.
This is the complaint that other fan bases have about our program. We seem to think that referencing Tom Harmon and Charles Woodson is relevant in 2022--Turns out, nobody cares. The game is changing and while our program has money and cache and a huge fan base and cool uniforms, we haven't done anything as a program to earn this auto-respect that we want to give programs like Ohio State, Alabama, Clemson, LSU, etc. We have to go out and execute and DO it for once to justify the hype. Yet, we never do. We can't afford to look down on programs like TCU and fantasize about which team we'd rather play in the natty--Do it first. But this mentality is prevalent within the program.
Offensive and defensive sh1tshow. No reason this game should be playing out this way. Absolute coaching disgrace by a bunch of amateurs. See also: Sonny Dykes showing Harbaugh how it's done on the goal line LOL
Not running QB sneak on 1st & goal from the one and handing it off to a converted LB is bat$sh1t. I can't think of a different word. Coaching malpractice.
I was worried he was going to fumble against Ohio State and I was screaming at the TV a month ago worried he was going to eff up. But here we are. I'm having PTSD flashbacks of the TE handoff on their own 20 against South Carolina in the Outback Bowl. Jim is more worried about having fun and having a "moment" kind of play instead of just winning the game. It's a sign of disrespect to TCU. They think they could fail and be okay because TCU is some kind of scrub. Guess what, it's 21-3.
I thought the talking heads picked Michigan by a count of 150-0. So far not looking great. Maybe they should have treated TCU with a bit more respect and not have overrated Michigan so bad.
This was going to be a dogfight, no two ways about it. Buckle in!
I'm ecstatic that we at least scored. Don't want to be a downer here but Ohio State is still killing us on a per play basis. We need the defense to keep surviving.
McNamara's and McCarthy's stats in this offense are similar from an efficiency standpoint. McNamara didn't do anything against Ohio State or Georgia. It's the same basic offense even without Gattis. We can't hit a WR deep down the sidelines to save our lives. It's been the same thing since Rudock / Drevno.
Just look around the country and you'll see OCs doing work in the AAC, Big 12, etc. A guy like Phil Longo at UNC, etc. These guys can get the most out of the passing game. If you're not running an offense like that you're not firing on all cylinders and are going to miss opportunities like today (maybe Michigan wins or loses with that offense, but they're definitely losing with this offense).
Holy mother of God. I feel like I'm watching a bad MAC team's passing offense. Our passing game is completely hapless.
I don't know when Harbaugh is going to learn this, but when a team like Ohio State is "on" there is nothing you can do defensively to stop them. They have to beat themselves. The only answer is to be explosive yourself on offense. Can't do that with our dink-and-dunk and run the ball between the tackles 40 times style of offense. We need everything to go perfect and convert 5 3rd downs per drive just to get to the end zone. Ohio State just needs a few chunk plays to score. Massive advantage. It's not just that OSU is more talented (although they are), their scheme plays into their strengths. We need an actual OC that is helming some of these explosive passing games. McCarthy can be that guy but not in this offense.
I don't know who needs to hear this, but this Michigan team isn't really that amazing. This 8-0 run has been a lot more rocky than it looks on paper. We have no downfield passing threat (AGAIN, for the Nth time under Harbaugh's reign). Pass protection is suspect. Secondary is exploitable.
Add in a special teams disaster and a couple of gutsy 4th down conversions that work against you and yeah, losing 14-17 on the road at Rutgers is in the realm of possibility. You guys make it sound like Rutgers is Indiana State or something. They are an average team. Bottom line is Michigan's odds of winning a natty and going through Bama, Tennessee, or Georgia are around 1%. Our offense is too one-dimensional to score against UGA, it will be a repeat of last year.
But, just so this isn't reduced to whining, what we need is a real OC. There are DOZENS of them lying around college football that can install effective passing schemes. We have to let J.J. loose and get him comfortable in reading defenses downfield. Right now he is gunshy and is being turned into Shea Patterson 2.0. If we can marry our spread running game with a Mike Leach-ish passing attack, that could vault this team into national title contention. We are close, but we can't do it with this rinky-dink excuse for a passing attack. Slants up the middle to Schoonmaker and dump offs behind the LOS to Edwards is not a passing offense.
There is no way the guys currently getting minutes on this team, maybe outside of the offensive line, will resemble anything like the 2016 roster. They look like any other random B1G squad.
You're obviously not listening to anybody that is credibly criticizing this regime. The things people are complaining about and have been complaining about all year are STRUCTURAL issues with Harbaugh's style.
1. He's not recruiting to a type; he is casting a wide net and picking low-hanging fruit from the Northeast. The team has no identity or style. They are not infiltrating Ohio. Whatever Ohio State doesn't want, ends up at ND, Cincinnati, Kentucky, MSU, Wisconsin, or Penn State. This was Bo's, Moeller's, and Carr's bread and butter. If you want Michigan to play with an edge against Ohio State, let it become the 3-4 star Ohio athletes vs the 4-5 star Ohio athletes and see how much more attitude, real attitude not fake swagger, they bring with them vs Ohio State.
2. The team is not playing with a passion, mirroring their HC post-2016.
3. The offense plays in a 15-yard box sideline to sideline. This is because Harbaugh is hiring coaches haphazardly. There were literally 30-40 talented OCs with a track record that would coach the offense at Michigan for a million dollars per year and we decided to try out Alabama's WRs coach. FAIL. And UM is paying Harbaugh's son to coach RBs for some reason. Rhett Lashlee, Sonny Dykes, Sean Lewis, Jake Spavital, Larry Fedora, Sean Gleeson, Graham Harrell, Chad Morris, Phil Longo, Joe Moorhead, Todd Monken, Dirk Koetter, Sonny Cumbie, Beau Baldwin. That's just off the top of my head. But let's hire Josh Gattis so we can do RPOs and slants with a rinky-dink offense that can't stretch the field.
4. Harbaugh has done insane things in recent memory, like handing the ball off to TEs in his own territory, kicking field goals down by 3 scores and change late in the 3rd quarter, timeouts, etc. It is an abysmal lack of attention to detail. Which hearkens back to points #1 and #3, Harbaugh is arrogantly assuming that the details will take care of themselves.
5. Utter failure to develop a noteworthy QB over 6 SEASONS, unless you count a redshirt senior transfer Jake Rudock whom he transformed....Into a 6th round practice squad player.
6. Failure to adjust defensively to their opponent.
7. Utter failure to compete at the national level, in bowl games, vs Ohio State, stooping down to MSU's level. Plus, the general downward trend since 2016.
8. A seemingly abnormal level of retention failure re: coaches, recruiters, and athletes. That would make sense at a place like Alabama, but at a program that is 49-22 over the last 6 years, it means something is going awry that we aren't privy to.
None of this, "oh we have young players starting, give it time," mantra addresses these main 8 points.
Well, considering this season is over, let's fantasize about the future. My "who can you find that is better than Harbaugh?" list (not guaranteed to do better, but I would take my chances at this point):
1. Urban Meyer: Pipe dream. Depends on whether or not he would be the kind of guy to get off on being a turncoat troll and whether or not he likes a challenge. Considering his demigod status in Columbus, he has better options and can pick his spot over the next 5-6 years (USC, Notre Dame, Texas, or Tennessee. Maybe even one of the perennial playoff powers Bama, Clemson, OU, or Ohio State depending on retirements / coaching moves).
2. Kyle Whittingham: Toughness factor. Whittingham does a rocksteady job with borderline P5 talent at Utah. They always look smaller than their average Pac-12 foes (outside of d-line), but they play with a much tougher edge. Whittingham would fix Michigan's defense overnight and root out the program-wide malaise.
3. Joe Brady: Downfield passing game. Just get the guy who invented Joe Burrow and ask questions later. Michigan's biggest weakness during the 6-year Harbaugh tenure is a lack of downfield passing game. They play in a 15 yard box and cannot stretch the field whether Harbaugh, Fisch, or Gattis is calling plays. Rudock's best deep balls would sail out of bounds. Every WR is always covered and they require a Herculean effort just to complete passes.
4. PJ Fleck: Recruiting + enthusiasm. Fleck is a player's coach in a good way and would upgrade our lackluster recruiting. Harbaugh is recruiting without paying attention to scheme/fit/type. He is casting a wide net and bringing in the highest-rated players according to Scout.com and worrying about pesky details later. Fleck knows what to look for and can find diamonds in the rough to fill in the gaps.
5. Bob Stoops: Wants back in. Was just coaching in the XFL, so the want-to might be there.
6. Chris Petersen: Family life notwithstanding, if he wants back in the game, the job would be his.
7. Matt Campbell: Not flashy, but adequate. Everybody thinks he's great, so give him a shot.
8. Luke Fickell: Not flashy, but adequate. Ohio State turncoat would be interesting and he can get the defense playing better. Hopefully he can make a more intelligent OC hire than Harbaugh did with Gattis.
Washington is not an elite program (with respect to facilities, financing, branding, and hype). He would probably do better at Michigan than Harbaugh IMO.
Because they're dumb? (and/or are defending Harbaugh the point of parody in order to save face from their awful predictions and/or they're protecting the brand on FOX networks)
Obviously this loss falls on Brown, but it also falls on Harbaugh because he empowers Don Brown. Only way I could support another year of Harbaugh is if he fires the entire defensive coaching staff.
I feel like I've seen this exact game before. It was pretty close to a note-for-note repeat of 2018. But also in 2015 Michigan had the best run defense in the nation and Zeke and Barrett ran for something like 350 yards combined. Yet again, throw the defensive numbers out for Michigan in this game. I don't see the national media talk about it much, but when they hype up this game they will treat Michigan's defense like they're respectable. They're good and they have talent, but in this game it doesn't matter. Ohio State will get their 500 yards no matter what Michigan's season average is. That's the coordinator's fault.
Harbaugh apologists need to come up with a number of years where this lack of production remains acceptable. When are we allowed to get upset about not beating Ohio State or winning a division, much less conference, championship? Is it 7 years? 8? An entire decade? Tell me when it becomes okay to be upset.
If I had Ohio State 4th and 4, I am telling my special teams unit to not even line up on the LoS, maybe an extra yard of space? I'm sending no pressure. It's a f'ing miracle that you convinced Ohio State to punt the football, and you screw it up. You screw up the coverage unit not downing it at the 1. Don Brown screws up the defensive scheme all day. You run the ball on 2nd & 11 so you can get it to what, 3rd & 10? Tell me how that makes conversion more likely. AND, you kick the field goal in the red zone AND you kick a FG to make it 42-19. That one is an all-timer. I dare you guys to defend that call. I get the numbers behind it, but the only way that makes sense is if you manage to shut out Ohio State for the remainder of the game, which we knew had a 0% chance of happening. Making the FG asinine. This guy cannot manage a game, which people in the national media like Klatt should know by now. But I'm sure they'll come up with excuses because Ohio State was so unfathomably dominant that Michigan had no chance before kickoff.
Josh Gattis needs to be fired tomorrow. I'm sorry. I know there will be pushback from people who fear making a change, but honestly it doesn't get worse than what you saw against Wisconsin and Iowa. What would be the difference if Harbaugh called plays? Would we score 6, 3, or 0 points against Iowa? 10 points is ridiculously bad on its own. This offense is complete garbage.
What's sad is that there are SO MANY people with successful track records as OCs who are doing well right now, guys like Phil Longo and Graham Harrell. There was a spate of offensive-minded guys who were hired as HCs at small schools who would probably rather be the OC at Michigan, guys like Jake Spavital and Chip Lindsey. These guys actually know what they are doing. Now we are wasting another year with the offensive talent that we have because Harbaugh gave the job to Some Guy Who Was In The Same Room As Nick Saban.
F off, Harbaugh. Maybe it sounds ridiculous or presumptuous, but yes, we would have made superior coaching hires if we took a poll of MGoBlog readers. Instead we have this clown blindly throwing darts on a map and picking people haphazardly. The guy's head isn't in the game. He gets $7 million a year or whatever it is to do stupid crap like this and never faces any consequences for it and it holds our program hostage.
There was nothing wrong with looking for a fresh, flashy offensive guy to make the change at coordinator. He just picked the wrong guy, with no track record. There are literally dozens of high quality offensive coaches with track records. Phil Longo. Graham Harrell. Kevin Johns. Even Rhett Lashlee. Jake Spavital (would he rather be the HC at Texas State or OC at Michigan?). Ohio State poached Yurcich and still has Kevin Wilson as co-OCs. Or do what LSU did and go the NFL route, but find somebody who is actually creative.
Instead, he recklessly and stupidly handed the reins of the offense at a major college football program to Some Guy Who Was in the Same Room as Nick Saban.
I just want to alert any and all Michigan fans assuming that the Wolverines will pummel Maryland, Indiana, and Michigan State on their way to an automatic 8 wins, I just want to let you know that their inability to do anything well today is a function of them being a sloppy team that is average-to-poor in every facet of the game.
This team is closer to 6-6 than 8-4. I'm not worried about them missing a bowl game, but 6 wins is the floor. They can't even lean on the running game and pushing around weaker defensive front 7's like they did 15-18, which masked their passing game deficiencies. If they had a great pro style running game, they would be able to score 30-35 against Maryland and Indiana, now they can't and they need their defense to play great just to notch what should be an easy W.
This season is f'ing doomed. There is no turnaround possible from this. We are what we are.
That's what kills me the most about this program. They validate your pessimism, they will never surprise you. You assume the worst, it happens before your eyes, and there's nothing you can do about it. You have the ability to predict the future if you assume the worst with respect to Michigan football.
There are so many problems on this team, you don't really know where to begin. Offensive line was mediocre today, but it was manageable; not the worst performance of all time, but definitely sub-par. Shea and McCaffery just look uncomfortable running this offense, and before you blame Gattis and the OC change, this is just an extension of what was going on last year.
WRs are blanketed on 90% of passing downs. Collins, Black, et al are never open and have to make Herculean efforts just to complete passes. This should not be that difficult. You can watch teams like Texas Tech, SMU, Syracuse, etc. and there are wide open receivers all over the field. That aspect is a scheme failure. How many times did Michigan have 3rd and medium? Do you notice how often Michigan has found themselves in that scenario over the last 5 years, and extending into the Hoke era? This coaching staff is literally asking the offense to convert 4 or 5 3rd and mediums PER F'ING DRIVE in order to score a touchdown. Meanwhile, Ohio State is connecting with KJ Hill for 51 yard touchdown receptions. DO YOU HAVE TO BE A ROCKET SCIENTIST TO FIGURE OUT HOW INEFFICIENT THIS IS? Fuck's sake.
RBs have little explosiveness. Michigan is trying to run the ball, but they couldn't even impose their will against Army two weeks ago. Do we have a RB on this roster who can get to the sidelines and cut upfield for a 50 yard sprint? Answer: No. Recruiting failure.
Defense is young and was going to struggle, so the coordinator change probably came at a bad time. But, while Harbaugh was right to get a new coordinator, he probably got the wrong guy. I was lobbying for Sonny Dykes 3 years ago, I was lobbying for Graham Harrell this year, and instead we got some lazy dart throw on a guy who happened to be in the same room as Nick Saban with no track record. Harbaugh failure.
Harbaugh looks like a shell of a human being with no personality or passion. Probably getting lazy with his $8 million a year. Harbaugh and administration failure.
And, the last point of my wall-of-text here, the psychological makeup of the team has barely changed since the Hoke era. Team folds when they get down. Nobody believes in themselves. Nobody wants to fight for their teammate. Wisconsin player that drilled McCaffery should have gotten bullied by a Michigan offensive lineman. Instead we have a bunch of "nice guys" when we need bullies. Problem is they need a counter example to emerge eventually, they need evidence of justified belief in themselves before they get the monkey off their back. Until they get lucky and back into a major upset against a team like Ohio State, they won't be able to pull themselves out of it. They need Ohio State or another top 10 team to screw up and lose one of these games before they find it in themselves to actually take a W from them.
The Harbaugh we hired isn't the same guy that coached the 49ers and Stanford. He's a zombie. A passionless shell of a defeated human being. He gives off the vibe that he knows this team isn't going anywhere.
The question is why. Did he just get fat and lazy coasting on $8 million a year or whatever it is? Guy has no fight left. He did in 2015. Then he toned it down in 16 and has gotten less passionate every year.
And a few more notes: The team looks so soft and can't handle adversity whatsoever. It's absolutely brutal. This team folds at the first sign of discomfort SO MANY TIMES. Why do our QBs continually suck? Why can't our talented WRs ever get open? Why does Collins, Black, and DPJ need to make these Herculean catches in contested coverage? I just watched LSU today execute catch-and-run slants, and it dawned on me that I never see Michigan WRs that open. Why does Michigan make offense look so hard?
My question: Why do people talk about Harbaugh and Shea like they are untouchable? What are they doing that impresses you so much to the point where you feel like you absolutely have to come to their defense and that we would be so impoverished by their absence?
Would it be so bad without them that we, say, start off games down 35-0 against teams like Wisconsin?
You're not wrong that Harbaugh has been, in the grand scheme of things, objectively above-average. It's a matter of what your standards are.
Michigan clearly has a hard ceiling with Harbaugh coaching. He is not going to get them to a championship caliber level, if our competition is Wisconsin at their best, Penn State at their best, or Ohio State at their best. If you're fine with winning 8 games, then Harbaugh is perfect.
Michigan never gets upset, but they also are physically incapable of upsetting anyone. It sets a bored, tiresome tone around the entire program. How can Michigan fans justifiably get excited for big games when we know that elite competition will crush us?
BTW, assuming this team will win 8 games is a stretch. We're 0-3 against ND, PSU, and OSU. So 8-4 is the baseline. Now we have to survive against Indiana, Maryland, Michigan State, and Iowa. You think this sloppy-ass team is capable of that? 6-6 is looking more likely than 8-4 at this point. Offense labors miserably against defenses with a pulse. Oh but we'll hang 35 on Rutgers next week and all will be right with the world, until we take on Iowa and get lucky to find the endzone twice.
I'm not a Shea fan TBH, but for a true Texas Tech or Wazzu offense, most of their damage is done on the intermediate routes. Oklahoma is a bit different because of their insane athletes at WR and Mahomes for two years was able to buy so much time in the pocket which allowed his receivers to get loose.
That's how you would have to use Patterson; he's a poor man's McSorely, Mahomes, or Manziel. He has to buy time and let the play break down and wait for someone to get open. But that requires offensive anarchy, and the coaching staff can't bring themselves to allow it because of their bias against it.
I said it in January, Patterson made a horrible decision coming here.
I don't want to be that guy that questions players' effort, credit goes to the man in the arena, etc. But I watch other teams with better team chemistry, and they look like they want to fight for one another. I don't get that vibe from Michigan. They look like individuals out there and every time one of them gets pumped up, it looks like fake bravado.
Confidence ultimately has to be justified by results, and when you don't get results, its hard to act like you expect victory. They have to stumble into a marquee win, because they can't shake the gorilla off their back. To use another animal metaphor, every time adversity hits they retreat into a shell and expect the worst. Harbaugh doesn't help because he pretends everything is fine when adversity hits. Let's see some urgency, convince them to not go gentle into that goodnight.
I can think of a guy like Chris Petersen, better coach, not necessarily x's and o's wise or recruiting wise, but he inspires his team and they have a good mojo. Harbaugh apparently isn't enough of a people person to change the culture. That's a problem moving forward.
So Dan Mullen takes an SEC team with a losing record and notorious incompetency on offense and turns them around in one season, while pasting you (you hired the guy who got fired there for incompetence BTW).
Hope everybody is ready for USC to skyrocket to the top of the Pac-12 after one coaching change. Kliff Kingsbury and a little more experience offensively will be enough to change USC from a middling 5-7 Pac-12 team to one that wins their division and plays Oregon or Washington for the conference title.
Let's stick with Pep Hamilton though, and you just keep being you, Harbaugh.
I'd like to know from the Harbaugh apologists out there at what point these results become unacceptable. You don't offer anything other than blind faith that it will get better, or that these crushing defeats are the team's ceiling. "It's better than Hoke" is a pretty sucky standard to hold and, if that's the definition of success, then stop expecting anything from Michigan football and accept your fate as being Iowa while continuing to overpay a head coach instead of trying to go out there and find the next up and comer who might actually have elite potential.
Does he get another 2 years of flailing on the major stage? Will 0-7 versus Ohio State while still averaging 9 wins per season finally be the breaking point? If that's the case, wake me up in 2021 because the next two years are completely irrelevant.
I think opposing coaching staffs laugh behind our back. Everybody except for Harbaugh seems to grasp that the talent on this team is being under-utilized. How do you get thrashed against Ohio State and do the exact same thing against an Urban Meyer protege who basically runs a poor man's version of the same system, Dan Mullen?
How do you have Black, Collins, and Peoples-Jones and not boast a top 15 passing game. It's utterly unfathomable. Do you know how many coaching staffs would love having these guys in an air raid offense? Problem is these guys don't get any experience because, in addition to injuries, they don't even rack up any catches. The coaching staff isn't coaching them to master the receiver position, they are relying on physical ability but are not running good routes or making difficult catches. Wasted talent and it's hurting their development for the NFL.
If you're a WR and have next-level aspirations and/or want to have fun playing football, don't go to Michigan.
You know what it is. People like Dan Mullen and Urban Meyer have to sing the praises of Michigan to the media and to their locker room, but behind closed doors, they are laughing. They recognize the talent, but their reaction to coaching/scheme is undoubtedly: "That's it? I mean, I don't get it, but thanks for making it easier on us!"
Meyer had no respect for Michigan's program. He talked them up to the media and got his players pumped because his job and legacy depended on it, but at the end of the day, Michigan was a cakewalk for him.
Recent Comments
He needs to transfer for his own good. I want him to stay, but ultimately it'll be to his detriment. He needs a real offensive system to prepare him for the NFL, and he won't find it in this God forsaken conference.
Reminder that while we have 29 points on the board, we have 278 yards of total offense and we have a defensive TD and a safety
He doesn't get reps in this offense. He could be a machine in a Big 12-style offense, but this is what happens when you spend your entire career throwing the ball 18.5 times a game instead of 35. Handing the ball off doesn't help your experience in reading defenses or timing throws or getting in sync with your receivers.
No, no, you just don't understand. Moore is an enlightened being who understands the ebbs and flow of football games and how praying your defense doesn't eff up works in college football
He did this like 6 times against Penn State (running on 3rd and long) and I think he's done it 3 times today.
But Joel Klatt thought it was so cool how we went total Air Force! It was funny!
Sherrone Moore and Ben Johnson are the only two playcallers on the planet that prefer to run on 3rd and long and throw on 4th and short
Mike Hart as HC and let Moore worry about calling plays only next week?
inb4 all the Michigan coping when we lose this game: "Oh well, this game doesn't actually matter, onto Ohio State!!"
Barnhart is really bad. We really don't have another better option?
These "Sherrone Moore is HC material" people are huffing paint. These "Michigan is the most complete team in the country" people are huffing paint.
Our running game is good against bad defensive fronts. I wouldn't even go so far as to call our running game explosive. We march to the end zone against teams like Indiana, no big deal. It's not going to work against Ohio State, much less UGA or Bama in the playoff. We need JJ to step up--But wait, he is not living up to his potential in this offense because of the lack of reps that he takes in the passing game.
Our defense is also untested and the minute they step onto the field with OSU, our DBs will have no idea what is coming. The media hypes us up, and nobody seems to want to acknowledge that the B1G is complete trash. Our two best wins all year are Rutgers and Penn State.
Don't get me wrong, if we played in the Big 12 or the Pac-12 I think we would be in that 10-2 range, but we would need everything to break right to compete for a natty. This team has more holes than people are willing to admit.
Maryland isn't even that good, and people think this team can compete with Georgia, Bama, Oregon, Washington, Texas? Please.
I don't see a lot of Michigan guys leaving early for the NFL outside of Corum. Right now they are "college good", not prime NFL draft selection material (yet). If we can focus a way to upgrade our passing scheme overall and sell it to our wideouts, hopefully we won't lose them to the portal. I like our WRs but their potential hasn't been unlocked. I am extremely worried about the RB position because when Corum went down and Edwards wasn't in the game, our guys were completely lost. They need to learn to hold onto the football. Wouldn't mind us grabbing a backup RB out of the portal who could help.
I hope the plan is to combine the returning now-upperclassmen talent with the incoming transfer class and mold it back into a playoff team. As someone who is extremely pessimistic about Michigan football overall, I like their chances next year. Road schedule is worrisome (B1G is about to get a lot better quickly with Minnesota and MSU on the mend + Rhule / Fickell in the West) but as per usual it's going to come down to the Ohio State game, thankfully in Ann Arbor. I see us entering The Game at 10-1.
Dykes coached the game like an adult, ours coached it like someone who belongs in a straitjacket
Addendum: Apparently Harbaugh learned nothing after handing the ball off to TE Sean McKeon (in his own territory no less) in the 2018 Outback Bowl.
A lot of musing on how and why Michigan lost this game but the main reason goes back to the HC, Harbaugh. The entire coaching staff managed this game like they were playing for lulz or that they could afford to waste downs and drives on frivolous, reckless play calls. Total madness, total meltdown, totally batspit. I can't think of a better word than "batspit."
Of course they did this because they thought they had a much better team. Guess what, an elementary understanding of odds and luck should tell you that the better team doesn't always win. If luck is, maybe, 20% of the outcome and one team starts catching breaks, guess what....Your "edge" has been neutralized to some extent. Better button-up the playcalling and maximize what you're good at. But, nah, eff it. Let's run Philly Special, let's hand it off to the LB now that the Bush Push is legal, let's blitz it with DBs constantly and get away from what we're good at on defense, etc.
Total arrogance from this team that apparently has no idea how thoroughly mediocre the B1G is in relation to the rest of CFB. Cool bro, you beat (after struggling a bit) Indiana, Purdue, and Rutgers by decent margins. Guess what, Iowa State, last-place finisher in the Big 12, is better than all of those teams. TCU plays in a much tougher conference and you had to be ready for them and give them the respect they deserve. They are closer to you than you think at first blush despite not having a classic uniform or having a team name like "Horned Frogs" or that they were in C-USA 20 years ago. But the coaching staff wanted to let it all hang out and have fun, and that bled over to the mentality of the team, until--WHOOPS, we're down 14-0. The team staged a furious comeback and I give them credit for that, but the team made high school mistake after high school mistake because they were frazzled. That's what happens to teams that start whining when they were "supposed" to win and reality isn't syncing with their expectation.
This is the complaint that other fan bases have about our program. We seem to think that referencing Tom Harmon and Charles Woodson is relevant in 2022--Turns out, nobody cares. The game is changing and while our program has money and cache and a huge fan base and cool uniforms, we haven't done anything as a program to earn this auto-respect that we want to give programs like Ohio State, Alabama, Clemson, LSU, etc. We have to go out and execute and DO it for once to justify the hype. Yet, we never do. We can't afford to look down on programs like TCU and fantasize about which team we'd rather play in the natty--Do it first. But this mentality is prevalent within the program.
As long as they don't lose to teams like Central Michigan---Oh---oh....
TCU respecting us with a run on 3rd and 7. Love it when the other team overestimates us, whew. That was close.
There are no answers. Our coaches are amateurs and the team was frazzled from the first drive of the game. Choke artists.
Offensive and defensive sh1tshow. No reason this game should be playing out this way. Absolute coaching disgrace by a bunch of amateurs. See also: Sonny Dykes showing Harbaugh how it's done on the goal line LOL
Not running QB sneak on 1st & goal from the one and handing it off to a converted LB is bat$sh1t. I can't think of a different word. Coaching malpractice.
I was worried he was going to fumble against Ohio State and I was screaming at the TV a month ago worried he was going to eff up. But here we are. I'm having PTSD flashbacks of the TE handoff on their own 20 against South Carolina in the Outback Bowl. Jim is more worried about having fun and having a "moment" kind of play instead of just winning the game. It's a sign of disrespect to TCU. They think they could fail and be okay because TCU is some kind of scrub. Guess what, it's 21-3.
inb4 the "but we're a 2nd half team!!!" cope
I thought the talking heads picked Michigan by a count of 150-0. So far not looking great. Maybe they should have treated TCU with a bit more respect and not have overrated Michigan so bad.
This was going to be a dogfight, no two ways about it. Buckle in!
I'm ecstatic that we at least scored. Don't want to be a downer here but Ohio State is still killing us on a per play basis. We need the defense to keep surviving.
McNamara's and McCarthy's stats in this offense are similar from an efficiency standpoint. McNamara didn't do anything against Ohio State or Georgia. It's the same basic offense even without Gattis. We can't hit a WR deep down the sidelines to save our lives. It's been the same thing since Rudock / Drevno.
Just look around the country and you'll see OCs doing work in the AAC, Big 12, etc. A guy like Phil Longo at UNC, etc. These guys can get the most out of the passing game. If you're not running an offense like that you're not firing on all cylinders and are going to miss opportunities like today (maybe Michigan wins or loses with that offense, but they're definitely losing with this offense).
Holy mother of God. I feel like I'm watching a bad MAC team's passing offense. Our passing game is completely hapless.
I don't know when Harbaugh is going to learn this, but when a team like Ohio State is "on" there is nothing you can do defensively to stop them. They have to beat themselves. The only answer is to be explosive yourself on offense. Can't do that with our dink-and-dunk and run the ball between the tackles 40 times style of offense. We need everything to go perfect and convert 5 3rd downs per drive just to get to the end zone. Ohio State just needs a few chunk plays to score. Massive advantage. It's not just that OSU is more talented (although they are), their scheme plays into their strengths. We need an actual OC that is helming some of these explosive passing games. McCarthy can be that guy but not in this offense.
I don't know who needs to hear this, but this Michigan team isn't really that amazing. This 8-0 run has been a lot more rocky than it looks on paper. We have no downfield passing threat (AGAIN, for the Nth time under Harbaugh's reign). Pass protection is suspect. Secondary is exploitable.
Add in a special teams disaster and a couple of gutsy 4th down conversions that work against you and yeah, losing 14-17 on the road at Rutgers is in the realm of possibility. You guys make it sound like Rutgers is Indiana State or something. They are an average team. Bottom line is Michigan's odds of winning a natty and going through Bama, Tennessee, or Georgia are around 1%. Our offense is too one-dimensional to score against UGA, it will be a repeat of last year.
But, just so this isn't reduced to whining, what we need is a real OC. There are DOZENS of them lying around college football that can install effective passing schemes. We have to let J.J. loose and get him comfortable in reading defenses downfield. Right now he is gunshy and is being turned into Shea Patterson 2.0. If we can marry our spread running game with a Mike Leach-ish passing attack, that could vault this team into national title contention. We are close, but we can't do it with this rinky-dink excuse for a passing attack. Slants up the middle to Schoonmaker and dump offs behind the LOS to Edwards is not a passing offense.
There is no way the guys currently getting minutes on this team, maybe outside of the offensive line, will resemble anything like the 2016 roster. They look like any other random B1G squad.
You're obviously not listening to anybody that is credibly criticizing this regime. The things people are complaining about and have been complaining about all year are STRUCTURAL issues with Harbaugh's style.
1. He's not recruiting to a type; he is casting a wide net and picking low-hanging fruit from the Northeast. The team has no identity or style. They are not infiltrating Ohio. Whatever Ohio State doesn't want, ends up at ND, Cincinnati, Kentucky, MSU, Wisconsin, or Penn State. This was Bo's, Moeller's, and Carr's bread and butter. If you want Michigan to play with an edge against Ohio State, let it become the 3-4 star Ohio athletes vs the 4-5 star Ohio athletes and see how much more attitude, real attitude not fake swagger, they bring with them vs Ohio State.
2. The team is not playing with a passion, mirroring their HC post-2016.
3. The offense plays in a 15-yard box sideline to sideline. This is because Harbaugh is hiring coaches haphazardly. There were literally 30-40 talented OCs with a track record that would coach the offense at Michigan for a million dollars per year and we decided to try out Alabama's WRs coach. FAIL. And UM is paying Harbaugh's son to coach RBs for some reason. Rhett Lashlee, Sonny Dykes, Sean Lewis, Jake Spavital, Larry Fedora, Sean Gleeson, Graham Harrell, Chad Morris, Phil Longo, Joe Moorhead, Todd Monken, Dirk Koetter, Sonny Cumbie, Beau Baldwin. That's just off the top of my head. But let's hire Josh Gattis so we can do RPOs and slants with a rinky-dink offense that can't stretch the field.
4. Harbaugh has done insane things in recent memory, like handing the ball off to TEs in his own territory, kicking field goals down by 3 scores and change late in the 3rd quarter, timeouts, etc. It is an abysmal lack of attention to detail. Which hearkens back to points #1 and #3, Harbaugh is arrogantly assuming that the details will take care of themselves.
5. Utter failure to develop a noteworthy QB over 6 SEASONS, unless you count a redshirt senior transfer Jake Rudock whom he transformed....Into a 6th round practice squad player.
6. Failure to adjust defensively to their opponent.
7. Utter failure to compete at the national level, in bowl games, vs Ohio State, stooping down to MSU's level. Plus, the general downward trend since 2016.
8. A seemingly abnormal level of retention failure re: coaches, recruiters, and athletes. That would make sense at a place like Alabama, but at a program that is 49-22 over the last 6 years, it means something is going awry that we aren't privy to.
None of this, "oh we have young players starting, give it time," mantra addresses these main 8 points.
Well, considering this season is over, let's fantasize about the future. My "who can you find that is better than Harbaugh?" list (not guaranteed to do better, but I would take my chances at this point):
1. Urban Meyer: Pipe dream. Depends on whether or not he would be the kind of guy to get off on being a turncoat troll and whether or not he likes a challenge. Considering his demigod status in Columbus, he has better options and can pick his spot over the next 5-6 years (USC, Notre Dame, Texas, or Tennessee. Maybe even one of the perennial playoff powers Bama, Clemson, OU, or Ohio State depending on retirements / coaching moves).
2. Kyle Whittingham: Toughness factor. Whittingham does a rocksteady job with borderline P5 talent at Utah. They always look smaller than their average Pac-12 foes (outside of d-line), but they play with a much tougher edge. Whittingham would fix Michigan's defense overnight and root out the program-wide malaise.
3. Joe Brady: Downfield passing game. Just get the guy who invented Joe Burrow and ask questions later. Michigan's biggest weakness during the 6-year Harbaugh tenure is a lack of downfield passing game. They play in a 15 yard box and cannot stretch the field whether Harbaugh, Fisch, or Gattis is calling plays. Rudock's best deep balls would sail out of bounds. Every WR is always covered and they require a Herculean effort just to complete passes.
4. PJ Fleck: Recruiting + enthusiasm. Fleck is a player's coach in a good way and would upgrade our lackluster recruiting. Harbaugh is recruiting without paying attention to scheme/fit/type. He is casting a wide net and bringing in the highest-rated players according to Scout.com and worrying about pesky details later. Fleck knows what to look for and can find diamonds in the rough to fill in the gaps.
5. Bob Stoops: Wants back in. Was just coaching in the XFL, so the want-to might be there.
6. Chris Petersen: Family life notwithstanding, if he wants back in the game, the job would be his.
7. Matt Campbell: Not flashy, but adequate. Everybody thinks he's great, so give him a shot.
8. Luke Fickell: Not flashy, but adequate. Ohio State turncoat would be interesting and he can get the defense playing better. Hopefully he can make a more intelligent OC hire than Harbaugh did with Gattis.
9. Gary Patterson
10. Pat Fitzgerald
11. Jeff Hafley
12. Bryan Harsin
13. Billy Napier
14. Mark Stoops
15. Gus Malzahn
16. Tom Allen
17. Sean Lewis
18. Troy Calhoun
19. Craig Bohl
20. Clay Helton
Washington is not an elite program (with respect to facilities, financing, branding, and hype). He would probably do better at Michigan than Harbaugh IMO.
>Year 5
>off the bat
>Year 5
Because they're dumb? (and/or are defending Harbaugh the point of parody in order to save face from their awful predictions and/or they're protecting the brand on FOX networks)
Obviously this loss falls on Brown, but it also falls on Harbaugh because he empowers Don Brown. Only way I could support another year of Harbaugh is if he fires the entire defensive coaching staff.
I feel like I've seen this exact game before. It was pretty close to a note-for-note repeat of 2018. But also in 2015 Michigan had the best run defense in the nation and Zeke and Barrett ran for something like 350 yards combined. Yet again, throw the defensive numbers out for Michigan in this game. I don't see the national media talk about it much, but when they hype up this game they will treat Michigan's defense like they're respectable. They're good and they have talent, but in this game it doesn't matter. Ohio State will get their 500 yards no matter what Michigan's season average is. That's the coordinator's fault.
Harbaugh apologists need to come up with a number of years where this lack of production remains acceptable. When are we allowed to get upset about not beating Ohio State or winning a division, much less conference, championship? Is it 7 years? 8? An entire decade? Tell me when it becomes okay to be upset.
If I had Ohio State 4th and 4, I am telling my special teams unit to not even line up on the LoS, maybe an extra yard of space? I'm sending no pressure. It's a f'ing miracle that you convinced Ohio State to punt the football, and you screw it up. You screw up the coverage unit not downing it at the 1. Don Brown screws up the defensive scheme all day. You run the ball on 2nd & 11 so you can get it to what, 3rd & 10? Tell me how that makes conversion more likely. AND, you kick the field goal in the red zone AND you kick a FG to make it 42-19. That one is an all-timer. I dare you guys to defend that call. I get the numbers behind it, but the only way that makes sense is if you manage to shut out Ohio State for the remainder of the game, which we knew had a 0% chance of happening. Making the FG asinine. This guy cannot manage a game, which people in the national media like Klatt should know by now. But I'm sure they'll come up with excuses because Ohio State was so unfathomably dominant that Michigan had no chance before kickoff.
Josh Gattis needs to be fired tomorrow. I'm sorry. I know there will be pushback from people who fear making a change, but honestly it doesn't get worse than what you saw against Wisconsin and Iowa. What would be the difference if Harbaugh called plays? Would we score 6, 3, or 0 points against Iowa? 10 points is ridiculously bad on its own. This offense is complete garbage.
What's sad is that there are SO MANY people with successful track records as OCs who are doing well right now, guys like Phil Longo and Graham Harrell. There was a spate of offensive-minded guys who were hired as HCs at small schools who would probably rather be the OC at Michigan, guys like Jake Spavital and Chip Lindsey. These guys actually know what they are doing. Now we are wasting another year with the offensive talent that we have because Harbaugh gave the job to Some Guy Who Was In The Same Room As Nick Saban.
F off, Harbaugh. Maybe it sounds ridiculous or presumptuous, but yes, we would have made superior coaching hires if we took a poll of MGoBlog readers. Instead we have this clown blindly throwing darts on a map and picking people haphazardly. The guy's head isn't in the game. He gets $7 million a year or whatever it is to do stupid crap like this and never faces any consequences for it and it holds our program hostage.
There was nothing wrong with looking for a fresh, flashy offensive guy to make the change at coordinator. He just picked the wrong guy, with no track record. There are literally dozens of high quality offensive coaches with track records. Phil Longo. Graham Harrell. Kevin Johns. Even Rhett Lashlee. Jake Spavital (would he rather be the HC at Texas State or OC at Michigan?). Ohio State poached Yurcich and still has Kevin Wilson as co-OCs. Or do what LSU did and go the NFL route, but find somebody who is actually creative.
Instead, he recklessly and stupidly handed the reins of the offense at a major college football program to Some Guy Who Was in the Same Room as Nick Saban.
I just want to alert any and all Michigan fans assuming that the Wolverines will pummel Maryland, Indiana, and Michigan State on their way to an automatic 8 wins, I just want to let you know that their inability to do anything well today is a function of them being a sloppy team that is average-to-poor in every facet of the game.
This team is closer to 6-6 than 8-4. I'm not worried about them missing a bowl game, but 6 wins is the floor. They can't even lean on the running game and pushing around weaker defensive front 7's like they did 15-18, which masked their passing game deficiencies. If they had a great pro style running game, they would be able to score 30-35 against Maryland and Indiana, now they can't and they need their defense to play great just to notch what should be an easy W.
This season is f'ing doomed. There is no turnaround possible from this. We are what we are.
That's what kills me the most about this program. They validate your pessimism, they will never surprise you. You assume the worst, it happens before your eyes, and there's nothing you can do about it. You have the ability to predict the future if you assume the worst with respect to Michigan football.
There are so many problems on this team, you don't really know where to begin. Offensive line was mediocre today, but it was manageable; not the worst performance of all time, but definitely sub-par. Shea and McCaffery just look uncomfortable running this offense, and before you blame Gattis and the OC change, this is just an extension of what was going on last year.
WRs are blanketed on 90% of passing downs. Collins, Black, et al are never open and have to make Herculean efforts just to complete passes. This should not be that difficult. You can watch teams like Texas Tech, SMU, Syracuse, etc. and there are wide open receivers all over the field. That aspect is a scheme failure. How many times did Michigan have 3rd and medium? Do you notice how often Michigan has found themselves in that scenario over the last 5 years, and extending into the Hoke era? This coaching staff is literally asking the offense to convert 4 or 5 3rd and mediums PER F'ING DRIVE in order to score a touchdown. Meanwhile, Ohio State is connecting with KJ Hill for 51 yard touchdown receptions. DO YOU HAVE TO BE A ROCKET SCIENTIST TO FIGURE OUT HOW INEFFICIENT THIS IS? Fuck's sake.
RBs have little explosiveness. Michigan is trying to run the ball, but they couldn't even impose their will against Army two weeks ago. Do we have a RB on this roster who can get to the sidelines and cut upfield for a 50 yard sprint? Answer: No. Recruiting failure.
Defense is young and was going to struggle, so the coordinator change probably came at a bad time. But, while Harbaugh was right to get a new coordinator, he probably got the wrong guy. I was lobbying for Sonny Dykes 3 years ago, I was lobbying for Graham Harrell this year, and instead we got some lazy dart throw on a guy who happened to be in the same room as Nick Saban with no track record. Harbaugh failure.
Harbaugh looks like a shell of a human being with no personality or passion. Probably getting lazy with his $8 million a year. Harbaugh and administration failure.
And, the last point of my wall-of-text here, the psychological makeup of the team has barely changed since the Hoke era. Team folds when they get down. Nobody believes in themselves. Nobody wants to fight for their teammate. Wisconsin player that drilled McCaffery should have gotten bullied by a Michigan offensive lineman. Instead we have a bunch of "nice guys" when we need bullies. Problem is they need a counter example to emerge eventually, they need evidence of justified belief in themselves before they get the monkey off their back. Until they get lucky and back into a major upset against a team like Ohio State, they won't be able to pull themselves out of it. They need Ohio State or another top 10 team to screw up and lose one of these games before they find it in themselves to actually take a W from them.
The Harbaugh we hired isn't the same guy that coached the 49ers and Stanford. He's a zombie. A passionless shell of a defeated human being. He gives off the vibe that he knows this team isn't going anywhere.
The question is why. Did he just get fat and lazy coasting on $8 million a year or whatever it is? Guy has no fight left. He did in 2015. Then he toned it down in 16 and has gotten less passionate every year.
And a few more notes: The team looks so soft and can't handle adversity whatsoever. It's absolutely brutal. This team folds at the first sign of discomfort SO MANY TIMES. Why do our QBs continually suck? Why can't our talented WRs ever get open? Why does Collins, Black, and DPJ need to make these Herculean catches in contested coverage? I just watched LSU today execute catch-and-run slants, and it dawned on me that I never see Michigan WRs that open. Why does Michigan make offense look so hard?
My question: Why do people talk about Harbaugh and Shea like they are untouchable? What are they doing that impresses you so much to the point where you feel like you absolutely have to come to their defense and that we would be so impoverished by their absence?
Would it be so bad without them that we, say, start off games down 35-0 against teams like Wisconsin?
You're not wrong that Harbaugh has been, in the grand scheme of things, objectively above-average. It's a matter of what your standards are.
Michigan clearly has a hard ceiling with Harbaugh coaching. He is not going to get them to a championship caliber level, if our competition is Wisconsin at their best, Penn State at their best, or Ohio State at their best. If you're fine with winning 8 games, then Harbaugh is perfect.
Michigan never gets upset, but they also are physically incapable of upsetting anyone. It sets a bored, tiresome tone around the entire program. How can Michigan fans justifiably get excited for big games when we know that elite competition will crush us?
BTW, assuming this team will win 8 games is a stretch. We're 0-3 against ND, PSU, and OSU. So 8-4 is the baseline. Now we have to survive against Indiana, Maryland, Michigan State, and Iowa. You think this sloppy-ass team is capable of that? 6-6 is looking more likely than 8-4 at this point. Offense labors miserably against defenses with a pulse. Oh but we'll hang 35 on Rutgers next week and all will be right with the world, until we take on Iowa and get lucky to find the endzone twice.
Sludge in Space
In addition to Notre Dame players saying to the media that they broke Michigan's spirit after a quarter.
I'm not a Shea fan TBH, but for a true Texas Tech or Wazzu offense, most of their damage is done on the intermediate routes. Oklahoma is a bit different because of their insane athletes at WR and Mahomes for two years was able to buy so much time in the pocket which allowed his receivers to get loose.
That's how you would have to use Patterson; he's a poor man's McSorely, Mahomes, or Manziel. He has to buy time and let the play break down and wait for someone to get open. But that requires offensive anarchy, and the coaching staff can't bring themselves to allow it because of their bias against it.
I said it in January, Patterson made a horrible decision coming here.
I don't want to be that guy that questions players' effort, credit goes to the man in the arena, etc. But I watch other teams with better team chemistry, and they look like they want to fight for one another. I don't get that vibe from Michigan. They look like individuals out there and every time one of them gets pumped up, it looks like fake bravado.
Confidence ultimately has to be justified by results, and when you don't get results, its hard to act like you expect victory. They have to stumble into a marquee win, because they can't shake the gorilla off their back. To use another animal metaphor, every time adversity hits they retreat into a shell and expect the worst. Harbaugh doesn't help because he pretends everything is fine when adversity hits. Let's see some urgency, convince them to not go gentle into that goodnight.
I can think of a guy like Chris Petersen, better coach, not necessarily x's and o's wise or recruiting wise, but he inspires his team and they have a good mojo. Harbaugh apparently isn't enough of a people person to change the culture. That's a problem moving forward.
So Dan Mullen takes an SEC team with a losing record and notorious incompetency on offense and turns them around in one season, while pasting you (you hired the guy who got fired there for incompetence BTW).
Hope everybody is ready for USC to skyrocket to the top of the Pac-12 after one coaching change. Kliff Kingsbury and a little more experience offensively will be enough to change USC from a middling 5-7 Pac-12 team to one that wins their division and plays Oregon or Washington for the conference title.
Let's stick with Pep Hamilton though, and you just keep being you, Harbaugh.
I'd like to know from the Harbaugh apologists out there at what point these results become unacceptable. You don't offer anything other than blind faith that it will get better, or that these crushing defeats are the team's ceiling. "It's better than Hoke" is a pretty sucky standard to hold and, if that's the definition of success, then stop expecting anything from Michigan football and accept your fate as being Iowa while continuing to overpay a head coach instead of trying to go out there and find the next up and comer who might actually have elite potential.
Does he get another 2 years of flailing on the major stage? Will 0-7 versus Ohio State while still averaging 9 wins per season finally be the breaking point? If that's the case, wake me up in 2021 because the next two years are completely irrelevant.
I think opposing coaching staffs laugh behind our back. Everybody except for Harbaugh seems to grasp that the talent on this team is being under-utilized. How do you get thrashed against Ohio State and do the exact same thing against an Urban Meyer protege who basically runs a poor man's version of the same system, Dan Mullen?
How do you have Black, Collins, and Peoples-Jones and not boast a top 15 passing game. It's utterly unfathomable. Do you know how many coaching staffs would love having these guys in an air raid offense? Problem is these guys don't get any experience because, in addition to injuries, they don't even rack up any catches. The coaching staff isn't coaching them to master the receiver position, they are relying on physical ability but are not running good routes or making difficult catches. Wasted talent and it's hurting their development for the NFL.
If you're a WR and have next-level aspirations and/or want to have fun playing football, don't go to Michigan.
You know what it is. People like Dan Mullen and Urban Meyer have to sing the praises of Michigan to the media and to their locker room, but behind closed doors, they are laughing. They recognize the talent, but their reaction to coaching/scheme is undoubtedly: "That's it? I mean, I don't get it, but thanks for making it easier on us!"
Meyer had no respect for Michigan's program. He talked them up to the media and got his players pumped because his job and legacy depended on it, but at the end of the day, Michigan was a cakewalk for him.