Steve Deace takes the kid gloves off and basically eviscerates where the program is right now.
A lot more credible voices out there than Steve Deace. Iâm sure I agree with a lot of what he is saying on Michigan football, but woof.
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OOOPâs top three in the B1GâŚsorry!
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Didnât realize he was so frowned upon. That was my first listen to his podcast.
âAnd, despite one national championship in seventy years, youâll be one of those fans calling for the coachâs head every time we donât have an undefeated season or beat Ohio State.â
You are the worst at posting completely unsubstantiated canards and this is why I even hesitated responding to you, but I have to call this out. This is flat out wrong and you have no idea what you are talking about.
I have been going to Michigan football games since I was 5. I have had season tickets for decades. I have never expected us to go undefeated or beat OSU every season. But, I certainly expect a hell of a lot better than what Harbaugh has delivered, however, which is: 0-4 against OSU, 1-3 in bowls, 0-7 in road games against ranked opponents, 2-2 against Sparty, etc. etc.
Even worse is the sloppy, inconsistent, disorganized and uninspired football that has been shown on the field for far too long. And in year 5 it is all getting worse, not better. The trend is unmistakable.
Harbaugh is clearly not the guy we thought we were hiring and he just isnât up to snuff. Time to move on. And before you ask, I have no idea who they should hire. That is the ADâs job, not mine. I just know that Harbaugh isnât the guy.
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Nobody likes to be called hysterical, least of all a long-term fan with skin in the game. I sometimes feel this way, too, coming from three generations of M grads. (Tom Harmonâs mom used to clean my grandmotherâs house, and we grew up drowning in the lore.)
But Iâm interested in your response, because I always tend to see alumni as more cautious. And LA Wolverine was right in pointing out how much better we are faringâobjectivelyâthan the last two coaches.
It just seems to me that people calling for Harbaughâs head are using a predictive rather than actual model. Yes, of course if every game is Wisonsin Harbaughâs gone eventually, but in what sane world does this guy get fired if he continues on the current winning path? Given that you have to cheat to enter the next stratum of victory-purchasing, which most ALUMNI and the upper admin clearly wonât accept?
The team has had ten fumbles so far this season. Without them the first two games are more or less cakewalks and no one is on tenterhooks going into Wisconsin. I thought the team was wildly overhyped to start the season, and a lot of people thought we might not beat Wisconsin. But score on that drive with Mason to start and that game too has a markedly different complexion.
I just feel that the hysteria is driven by a media that doesnât like Harbaugh, and by our stupidity in giving them eyeballs and clicks. Time to starve them of their oxygen and see what the actual season holds. Harbaugh isnât going anywhere, probably not for TWO seasonsâwhy keep the blood pressure up so crazily high? Not just asking you, of course, 93 grad, but all the still-angry fans. . .
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Well, if youâve been going to Michigan football games since youâre five, then I imagine you didnât skip the past 15 years, right?
Under Lloyd, we finished 1-6 against OSU from 2001 until he retired in 2007. Those games were against Jim Tressel, a very good coach, but not as good as Urban Meyer.
Under Hoke and Rod, we also went 1-6, with our only win coming against Luke Fickell.
In 2014, when Hoke finished 5-7 and finally got fired, Urban Meyer was busy winning a national championship at OSU.
So, this problem didnât start under Harbaugh.
Our record against Michigan State is âonlyâ 2-2 under Harbaugh?
Letâs talk about Dantonio for a minute. His first game against Michigan was the infamous âlittle brotherâ game, where we staged a furious rally to beat them. That was the only time Lloyd Carr faced him. Then he went 6-1 against Rod and Hoke. Hoke beat them 12-10; every other game was a pretty solid butt kicking. Harbaugh solved that problem immediately, and would be 3-1 against MSU without the complete and utter fluke play in 2015.
And during the Rod and Hoke years, we also lost to teams like Toledo and Rutgers, while needing a goal line stand to beat Akron.
In year one of Harbaugh, he took over a 5-7 team and went 10-3, with a fifth-year grad transfer from Iowa at QB (who wasnât good enough to start at Iowa). Please donât tell me thatâs âsloppy, inconsistent, disorganized and uninspired football.â
Year 2, with three star Wilton Speight at QB (an afterthought to most), we started the year 8-0, and without a bad spot in Columbus, we probably make the college football playoffs in year 2 of Harbaugh. We went 10-3, with our three losses coming by a total of 8 points. Again, in any rational world, thatâs a good season.
Year 3 was disappointing, to be sure. We replaced a lot of seniors at the skill positions (Smith, Chesson, Darboh, Butt) with some really young players, and we lost our QB. We also replaced a ton of senior starters off the defense. And with that said, the only bad loss we had that year was PSU. We were right in every other loss - MSU, Wisconsin, OSU, and South Carolina.
Last year, we lost the opener to ND (and again, had possession of the ball with a chance to take the lead with 2:00 left), reeled off ten wins in a row (blowouts of Wisconsin and PSU among them, road win over Sparty), and then obviously lost to OSU. I donât put much stock in the bowl game, since we had many key guys sitting out.
The funny thing is to me, what do you think you saw 15-20 years ago that you donât see now? âBig Ten championships?â First off, we were âco-champsâ in many of those seasons, and there was no conference title game. Second, you think Lloyd would be winning championships facing Urban, Dantonio, and PSU with Franklin? I donât. He couldnât beat Tressel, and Urban is better. Dantonio is easily the best coach MSU has had, and Franklin is much better than the dinosaur Joe Pa that Lloyd got to face.
Blowouts? Did you see ND and Syracuse in 1998? (Coming off a national title, no less, with Tom Brady at QB). Did you see Tennessee in 2001? Oregon in 2007? Was there a more humiliating loss than App State? I canât think of one. How about our defensive performance against Northwestern in 2000? Or blowing a 28-10 halftime lead against Purdue that same year? How about the 7-5 season in 2005, with a roster loaded with talent? Canât stop running QBs? How about Vince Young against us in the Rose Bowl? How did we look against USC in Lloydâs two games against Pete Carroll? (Answer: they destroyed us). Back-to-back losses to Northwestern in 1995 and 1996, when they went to the Rose Bowl, not us. And sure, we won the Big Ten in 2004, right? But what happened when we traveled to OSU that year? Troy Smith and OSU crushed us. Thatâs one of those glorious seasons Harbaugh canât measure up to?
Those are the glory days youâre recalling, right? Thatâs what Harbaugh isnât measuring up to?
And keep in mind, Lloyd took over at a time when the program had tons of momentum and was *loaded *with talent. And at a time when OSU wasnât real special - at least certainly not nearly as good as they were under Urban.
This is not to bash Lloyd. Itâs to point out that all of our current struggles under Harbaugh are things which also existed during a time when apparently you (and others) were really happy with Michigan football.
Oh, and all of this existed under Moeller too. How badly did FSU and Washington whip us in 1991, when we were still âconference champs?â Answer: very badly. We didnât look like we belonged on the same field. And how about the back-to-back four loss years in 1993 and 1994? We looked great then? Home opener against ND in 1993, ranked what, #3, and we came out and got stomped by Kevin McDougal at QB.
Itâs amazing to me that the history under Lloyd and Moeller gets transformed into something it wasnât, and people gloss over how awful Rich Rod and Hoke were.
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1993 ND team ended up #2 in country. I wouldnât lump that in.
People throw it out because itâs a fact. I mean anyone can play the âwinningest program in college football historyâ card all the time but in this era tradition means a lot less. Nobody downplays the conference titles, it was great when we were winning them consistently, but this will be 15 years since Carr got our last one. Michigan State has 3 in that span. 4 of those years are on Harbaugh, but if this season doesnât end in total disaster Iâm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for another one before blowing the whole thing up again.
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Harbaugh can stick around until heâs ready to leave as far as Iâm concerned. Iâm confident heâs a very good coach. I believe he knows what needs to be done to turn this season in a positive direction. Knowing and doing are two different things. Coach Beilein went from a guy who the game had passed by, back to a genius, the moment Derrick Walton became the alpha dog Beilein had been pleading for all season. Maybe the same is possible for Shea Patterson and Jim Harbaugh???
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Not even disagreeing Iâm just giggling at penning 1,000 words to say âHarbaugh is doing better than Rodriguez and Hokeâ.
And as good as Lloyd, minus 1997 (and who knows if that happens in todayâs environment).
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Well Carr was 44-27 against too 25 teams. Harbaugh is 11-14.
Iâm also sure you realize saying âheâs as good as Carr if you donât count the season Carr went 7-0 against top 25 clubs, undefeated, and won the rose bowlâ is the same as saying âheâs not as good as Carrâ.
Itâs perfectly fair to say that by not making a conference title game, Harbaugh has disappointed.
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Thatâs one comprehensiveâIâd say darned persuasiveâscreed right there, me boyos. Iâm saving this and just shoving it at people from now on.
âŚand by this, youâre saying by not beating OSU. Theyâre damn good and they never lay an egg against Michigan. If we got to play the trap game version of Ohio State, things would be different, but OSU seems to save that version for games against Maryland, Purdue, and Iowa. Credit to them for always getting up for The Game.
Not an expert on any sport. Your take is a good one but too optimistic IMHO. Beilein showed he could really coach very early. His teams almost always over-performed and were a pleasure to watch. He beat UCLA and Duke in his 2nd year with much less talent. Havenât seen anything from Harbaugh at that level. Tom Herman at Texas looks like a Beilein-level coaching talent in football.
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Texas has a TON of talent. Their defense isnât the best, but they have no lack of players on offense. Not sure who the JB equivalent in NCAA Fb. Potential one could be Matt Campbell at Iowa St? Hard to recruit there, and theyâve beaten alot of solid teams in his 3+ years. Heâs 5-5 against ranked teams at Iowa St and beat a few when he was at Toledo. But he is 0-4 against Iowa.
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Itâs obviously a challenge but I think we can agree that the expectation when you conduct a coaching âsearchâ of 1 candidate (not saying this was wrong at the time) and then pay him commensurate to Urban Meyer, the 3rd highest paid coach in the nation, is that youâre gonna win that game some time, right?
Iâm not saying to fire him - I agree that their arenât sure-fire better options.
But I think any reasonable person should agree that hiring the third most expensive college coach in the nation and making 0 conference title game appearances, running a sub-.500 record against ranked opponents, and going 0-for on the road against ranked teams and as an underdog is below expectations. That canât be controversial.
Then you didnât watch how he turned Stanford into a national power in a season. Or coached the 49ers to a Super Bowl. Or took Michigan to ten wins in a first season.
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The thing about this kind of cherry-picking is that itâs all sound and furyâHarbaugh isnât getting fired, at least not for two years. Sanity is going to prevail and then someâbecause a very large, very slow-moving institution is not readily going to remove a guy who is insistent on the little stuff like the kids doing school. Those who think the university would even entertain the idea of Meyer are out of their skulls. I was at UF doing a doctorate while he was condoning criminality there, and would be among the first to reach Ann Arbor with my vociferous feedback.
Smart people here are all noting that we have to be careful what we wish for. A new coach needs another five to six years and there are zero guarantees. Many, many good coaches fail. There are a whool heap oâ variables, many of which no admin can control for.
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