Michigan 38, Wisconsin 13.

[Jeff Buchanan]

PSU comes to AA.

I'm still not convinced M is going to "lay a beat down" on Sparty. Will they win? Probably. We've seen what both teams have on both sides of the ball and, right now, before Saturday, it appears M has more. Things change though. As they say, that's why they play the game.

I'm just not on that particular hype-train

[froot loops]

Got you on PSU. In Michigan Stadium that will be an easy win.

[hack]

Settle down, yes. Beat a rival and then let's talk.

[froot loops]

PSU is a paper Lion hack. The Spartans had a good win, but it wasn't a great performance, it was a great result. On the road I think they will get spanked in Michigan Stadium.

[hack]

I'm more worried about this Saturday.

[Hannibal]

All of this talk about how elite we are reminds me of 2015, when Harbaugh was on the receiving end of one of the most profound assfuckings in the history of The Game. He also got completely outcoached by Dantonio and only special teams play kept the MSU game from being a 21 point win for Sparty. They got lucky at the very end but we were lucky to even be in it. Harbaugh is Dantonio's prison bitch.

[froot loops]

You are right about the special teams disaster in that game, that last play erased how well that punter helped Michigan. He was killing the Spartans. Coincidentally State is in worse shape with punting this year.

But the 2015 team was in better shape and had more talent.

[Rocky Bleier]

All of this talk about how elite we are reminds me of 2015, when Harbaugh was on the receiving end of one of the most profound assfuckings in the history of The Game. He also got completely outcoached by Dantonio and only special teams play kept the MSU game from being a 21 point win for Sparty. They got lucky at the very end but we were lucky to even be in it. Harbaugh is Dantonio's prison bitch.

Completely out-coached? Michigan did not trail in that game for 59 minutes and 59 seconds. And yet you say they were profoundly ass fucked? The game was comfortably in the bag until the defense lost sight of the MSU fullback, who turned a 10 yd. pass in the flat into a 76 yd. gain. I suppose Dantonio temporarily blinded Delano Hill.

[AlabamAlum]

This is Harbaugh's year. Book it.

[hack]

It feels like things are falling into place, but we'll see. On paper, the big thing needed was the OL improvement to be a playoffs team. That improvement is materializing. We still need one of two things: better in-game risk management, or enough playmaking to overcome Harbaugh's weakness there. I think his in-game judgement is shaky. In '16 there weren't many turnovers or offensive plays made, so to speak, to overcome that.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I'll need to be reminded about instances of bad in-game risk management and in-game shaky judgement. I know we've talked about these things in the past so this isn't snark.

[hack]

I know, I know -- I'm reticent. Quiet, most people say, and reluctant to offer an opinion. I know it's really hard for the rest of you to know where I stand, and I am sorry about that.

2016 OSU game is the best example of it. You watched Urban sit on the ball for all of the first half, running unsuccessfully on 3rd and long and electing to punt of out his own end zone rather than pass out of it. Harbaugh passed out of his own endzone, and in the process kept Meyer in the game with that pick-six. Meyer also failed on a fake punt, but what that day made clear is that Meyer minimizes decisionmaking in the crunch -- he did the best he could to make decisions in advance and then following that script: ``We said before that they they do this we'll react that way, and if they do that we'll react this way. We aren't changing our minds here in the heat of the moment". He took a risk with that fake punt, but at least it was a precalculated one. Harbaugh's risk management was far more inconsistent and ad hoc. It very much looks to me like he doesn't seek to make big decisions like Meyer, by taking away human error in real time. In that game he reacted differently to the same key situations in the first half than in the second.

One shouldn't trust one's heat-of-the-moment self. Is why mountainclimbers make a turn-around time, and when the clock hits that time if they haven't summited yet they are turning back no matter how close they are. If they have proper safety-first discipline.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Hmmmm..... interesting take and yes, I remember the decision making questions following the 2017 osu game.

But, here's the thing. Most decisions in the heat of battle are more situational than they are pre-determined and if I'm reading you correctly, you thought meyer had a sort of pre-planned script that might have informed his real-time decisions ..... at the least maybe he's just wired that way.

I know in the NFL, almost every decision in game is informed by stats. If the opponent does X at down and distance Y with the clock at Y' then I'm doing the square root of X. Not every in-game decision is made like that for sure but it's the process of making the call that is informed by massive amounts of data, some of it baked into the play sheet.

Harbaugh has coached in that environment. At the same time, great coaches know when to doubt the data and trust their gut, go off the play sheet or off the recommendation he's getting from the press-box. It might be a QB or RB with a hot hand or a weak LB or CB that can be exploited on a particular play at a critical point in the game. Whatever it is, a decision might get made instinctively. If it's the right call, he's a genius, a hero. If not he's a goat.

I think Harbaugh actually addressed this kind of thing in recent pressers. I can't remember the circumstances but one involved a specific play call and he was asked about it. He said he'd like to have that play back. On another, he spoke directly to the point I just made about hero or goat. IOW, the play was what it was. It failed or it succeeded. There's no magic. No mystery and nothing he could put his finger on or that he was willing to tell the press what was behind it.

My perception is that Harbaugh is one of the more measured coaches on the sidelines. He gets upset by bad officiating but not at all about bad play execution or shit sandwiches he finds his offense in at any particular moment in the game. Contrast that to the classic outbursts by Brian Kelley where, red in the face, spittle spraying out, he starts fuck hollering at his QB as he comes out of the game after a poor play. We can go down a list of HCs who make astonishingly bad calls that even casual observers of the game can see are bad. Like Chryst calling for a punt inside the M 50 down 30, or any number of bad calls Franklin made in last week's home loss to visiting Sparty. I just don't think Harbaugh, even in the specific area of risk management decision making you speak of, makes enough bad risk management decisions to warrant that being on any list of things that need to change.

In contrast, offensive line play needed to change and it has. QB play needed to change and it has. Harbaugh is responsible for facilitating or directly impacting in the case of QB play both of those changes. I don't think anyone can second guess the play calling or any of the in-game decisions that emerged during the Wisconsin game - my view is this is how Harbaughffense looks when OL and QB play were as good as they were on that Saturday. I'm more inclined to emphasize those things than I am the nits about subtle in-game decision making or risk management as they might impact the outcome of a game. But, I get your point. There are bad coaching calls in the category of those you speak of that, in retrospect, are game changers. I don't think that one was one of them nor is an established Pattern for whihc JH should be faulted..

[hack]

Meyer specifically said that the decision on the fakepunt was predetermined. If they saw a formation they were gonna fake it. Just like the go-for-two card or the down/distance/field position charts -- you make as many of these decisions as possible in advance and not in the heat of the moment.

I'm not saying that this reaches the level of Borges calling for a halfback pass on second and goal from the 3 in the first quarter -- nowhere near it. Or even Chryst's very curious fourth-down approach Saturday. But it's abundantly clear to me that Meyer's approach to risk management is far more regular and superior to Harbaugh's. We also know its far more premeditated, and we know that coaches increasingly value those premeditated decision-tree methods.

As you say, Harbaugh's answer to media is ``we'd like to have that play back'', whereas Meyer's is ``well we were going to do that no matter what if we saw the formation we saw". No regrets, becuase he knows that premeditation protects you from your lizard brain more often than not.

I don't know if we ever get back to the point where we think Harbaugh is on par with Meyer and Saban, but, if we do -- meaning Harbaugh starts piling up hardware -- I bet it will be because he does a better job organizing this specific element of his job. We could have beat OSU AND the refs in '16 if he'd done better at it.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Point taken.