They’re 46-19 since Harbaugh’s been our coach. We’re 47-17. What a Grand Canyon sized difference!
1 Like
Iowa has one 10 win season in the last 5 years. Michigan has 3 and potentially 4 in the same time frame.
Iowa’s only 10 win season avoided games against Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State plus a loss to Michigan State.
3 (or 4) of Michigan’s 10 win seasons in the last 5 years all included games against Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan State, and Wisconsin every single year.
Let’s not act like Michigan is somehow on the same level as Iowa. They have a slightly worse record in what was arguably the worst division in football.
9 Likes
Ok. We’re barely better than Iowa. Hooray!
2 Likes
We can all complain, would all like to win more. But until you can make the case that some other coach would do better, and how that can be made to happen. . . I mean, Jimmy has his quirks, but he just isn’t going anywhere. It’s a message board, and people like to argue, but it’s just not terribly fertile territory, especially when the bigger football factory down the road is on an epic roll, as OSU absolutely is. They could beat us 100 times in a row and as an M grad I’d still never want to be them. And probably most of the 12 other B1G schools with even worse records against them and longer streaks without beating them wouldn’t either.
3 Likes
It sucks to lose repeatedly, but the biggest frustration is the technical mistakes at key defensive times and the lack of success on our own key plays. Since it seems consistent across games, for several seasons now, I can’t help but hold coaches responsible. I like Harbaugh and am not a believer him or Don Brown needs to be replaced at all. But, I personally cannot stand that Harbaugh kept Patterson in to the last series-again. The game was out of reach with 8 mins left and neither McCaffrey nor Milton got to step foot on the field. The same was mostly true in our big wins against tougher competition.
2 Likes
This guy gets it
1 Like
It’s always darkest before the dawn. Urban Meyer is one of the most successful coaches of all time and it’s damn unlikely that Ryan Day will be as good. Sure Ryan Day made the team better this season. But these are Urban Meyer players, recruited by him and developed by him. Wait a few years, when there are new players and new staff, I think we’ll see a dropoff. OSU will still be good, just not as good as we saw on Saturday. So three years from now, there’s an opening. Of course, who knows if Jim Harbaugh will still be around.
There are certainly some parallels to UM basketball. Michigan looked really good in the Bahamas. But Juwan did it with JB’s players. It’s something completely different to recruit and develop the players himself.
1 Like
Sounds like a good take. In the several quarters of Michigan football I watched this year, it looked like our offense had some degree of cleverness and surprise and—this was a relief—actually wanted to play to offense. That has got to be due to Gattis.
If we play innovative offense like so many other teams at our level like Auburn, we can win the occasional game against OSU and start coming up to their level. I think this year’s team would have/could have beaten OSU in 2015/16/17. But his year we had no chance because the talent gap was simply too great.
The questions for me are these: Is Gattis really good? Is Harbaugh getting in his way? Will Harbaugh go back to his boring, unproductive, do-nothing offense? What do experts think? @stephenrjking
I think Gattis showed really good promise with the offense’s second half of the season performance (even against OSU). This season’s offense is the highest rated of any other offense during his Michigan tenure on SP+ and this includes the terrible offensive start in the beginning of the season. The narrative that Harbaugh was or is getting in the way of Gattis’ offense was never true and there is no way Harbaugh would revert to his old offense next year.
The questions are all on the other side of the ball for me. There’s zero reason the talent on our defense should be giving up 118 points in two games. There’s a talent gap for sure, but it’s not THAT big of a gap. The shitty thing is that Brown did actually retool the entire defense this year in response to last year’s beat down and it produced the same exact result.
4 Likes
Agreed. The only issues I had with Gattis post-Iowa were the horribly telegraphed trick plays that I don’t think worked a single time (only got pulled out like three times, but…). I have no problem with the wildcat on that 4th down, Haskins missed an absurdly large hole that could’ve been a touchdown.
2 Likes
Defense lacks the big uglies to control the line of scrimmage against teams like Ohio State. The linebackers and safeties aren’t fast enough with the exception of the freshman Hill and McGrone.
OSU’s scheme continues to take advantage. Rub plays were killer again
3 Likes
Agree on the big uglies. Think that was the difference in the last two games. OSU could run at will and pass protect long enough for their speedy receivers to eventually get open against Michigan’s speedy back seven.
Unfortunately any advantage gets magnified in a Super Bowl-type game like this and things just spiral.
1 Like
It’s not just the talent differential. OSU has had VASTLY superior coaching as well over the last 15 years. Combine the two and you get the results we have seen and will continue to see until a better coaching and recruiting staff comes to Ann Arbor.
Agreed. And if you look at the two most successful defensive performances against them in 2016 and 2017 we had monster DTs that controlled the line of scrimmage.
But still, not having elite DTs doesn’t explain our veteran leaders blowing assignments left and right. The amount of times Metellus let WRs get behind his zone and Hudson blowing backside contain on running plays was insane for two relatively elite senior leaders. That’s where I don’t know whether to assign responsibility to coaching or our seniors not executing.
2 Likes
Yes, and those stupid personal fouls. That was “little brother” shit.
1 Like
I hope Harbaugh retains Gattis and Warinner and continues to leave him the reins. The gameplans in the last half of the season were, for the most part, excellent. And Shea improved as he got a better feel for them, though even then per UFR numbers his performances were good rather than great.
Harbaugh is paid big money to evaluate the program, and my guess is that he’ll see that the potential is there for the offense to continue to blossom, assuming Michigan holds on to a junior receiver or two.
The one area where I continue to wonder whether Harbaugh is an asset or an obstacle is in QB coaching. He’s a QB and the line on him has always been “QB guru,” but in his five years here the results have been disappointing, and disappointing in specific ways. QBs keep biffing reads against zone defenses and they get nervous about making mistakes. Notably, Shea and Jake Rudock both made significant strides in the second halves of their senior seasons… but Michigan needs QBs to produce for more than just “part of the senior season.”
The larger issue, honestly, is Ohio State. They are on their best run of play in their history, one of the top four programs in the country, and Michigan can’t get over the hump against them. The few years Michigan gets up to talent/team parity against them, we invariably play on the road, where even in the best circumstances our results would be poor.
Michigan needs an LSU-over-Bama-like emergence to take the next step. I don’t know when or if that happens.
*regarding defense, a lot of hotheads right now are calling for Brown’s head. Harbaugh is paid to make big decisions like that, but yesterday in particular seemed to be less a schematic issue than a serious personnel issue–our DTs were overmatched. Harbaugh, ultimately, is responsible for the recruiting errors that led to that.
2 Likes
As I wrote above, the breakdowns are regrettable. But I did kind of enjoy the shoe-untying incident. Classic old-school shenanigans.
2 Likes
In 2015, Iowa started out 12-0 but did not play Michigan, OSU, PSU or MSU in that stretch.
There is a huge difference between the two divisions.
3 Likes
Sources at BC say that Ohio State LB coach Al Washington is the leading candidate -with Michigan DC Don Brown part of package as asst hc and DC
— Mark Blaudschun (@blauds) December 1, 2019