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In the Aftermath ........
This is only the second forum I've been to since about 3:45 on Saturday. The outcome had been determined and I was done. Done with that afternoon and done with M football and I posted that in the game thread.
This morning I read The Best and Worst article that BronxBlue posts every Sunday or Monday after each Michigan game. He is a skilled writer and this most recent work of his on the loss to osu is excellent. I disagreed with a part of it, the part that the loss was a shit happens outlier. I made a post reproduced below to make my case that it wasn't.
I'm actually in Cancun this week and will be out of town traveling most of December and some of January. Trips to the Southern Caribbean and Cuba are on the itinerary This is a good thing for me as it's my intention to unplug from M football for a while and occupy myself with other things. So, I'll leave the housekeeping here to others. I did unstick and correctly title the M/osu game thread. Haven't read a thing in it nor do I intend to. Same for mgoboard. I know what happened and my view of why it happened. Some of that is captured in my post at mgodiaries which I copied and pasted below. But 63 - 39 pretty much sums it up.
I'll be watching M's bowl match-up whatever that is and I'll create the thread for it when the bowl and who M will play in it are officially announced. But I won't speculate outcomes or any of that for a while - it's counterproductive for me right now. I'll practice emotional disengagement for M's bowl game, hah. We'll see how that works out. But, I'll be trying.
From mgodiaries response to Best and Worst diary
Great work providing some solace for those of us living vicariously through and emotionally over-invested in M football.
Regardless, there should be accountability for the performance in c-bus last Saturday. This is a coaching staff being paid millions of dollars to advance the ideals of the University of Michigan. After all, the football program is the University of Michigan's front porch as much as former president James Duderstadt abhorred what had become of college sports, stood in the way of efforts to expand the Big House and associated football facilities and asserted Michigan football does not represent the highest ideals of the university he presided over in his time. He was wrong. It does and fortunately his voice was muted by others who were right.
That Jim Harbaugh is taking himself each season he's racked up another loss to osu a step closer to becoming the John Cooper of Michigan football is an unavoidable distinction of his coaching tenure. I think it a bit of a cop-out to imply, shit happens, M ran into a buzz saw, football is cyclical as an excuse for that performance. While these things do occur and they probably are a factor in this loss the larger damage done to the U's front porch has to be recognized.
Fine, we recognize that. Now what? I believe there is a worthwhile and long standing debate about the value of the style of football Jim Harbaugh wants his teams to play. The question in this debate arises regarding the capacity of it to beat teams that eschew that style of play as a fundamental football strategy. I trust I do not need to explain what I mean here by Harbaughffense. PM me if you do.
I was told by a very football smart osu fan during The Game Week, that osu could win a shoot-out 42-38 but not a 24-17 affair characterized by Michigan driving the field on a dozen possessions while holding osu to under or close to that number. IMO, meyer optimized a game strategy featuring a shoot-out and challenged Harbaugh to match it. The result? Harbaugh unsuccessfully attempted to force his strategy upon meyer...... run the ball, pound it, extend drives, methodically move the chains and score then play to your defense and special teams. meyer refused to let that occur.
How did he do it? On defense, he applied maximum pressure on the weakest link in M's offense - the tackles - while at the same time optimizing the strengths of osu's defense - the DEs. Patterson was under constant pressure, backside pursuit from osu's DEs ended too many runs and wisely selected blitzes stuffed the rest of them. It wasn't a new approach, nothing fancy, just great game preparation, practice and, if execution is a measure of it, a highly successful tactic. It blunted any attempt M might have taken to compete in a shootout and I'm not sure Harbaugh even considered that sort of thing. It appeared to me he did not.
On offense, meyer optimized what his team does best - the passing game featuring the mesh - got the ball out of haskin's hand in routinely under 3 seconds thereby mitigating osu's weakness - thier tackles and took advantage of M's biggest weaknesses, S play. He also punished Don Brown's aggressive style of play by ignoring M's average DTs, leaving his interior OL (an osu strength) to deal with them and doubling M's very good DEs. Meanwhile Brown tried to mitigate osu's mesh passing game by playing press-man at the corners, one high S on the back end and severely (IMO) limiting LB blitzes in an effort to better cope with the mesh and short passing game in general. Brown's approach failed in large measure to scheme as well as mental and physical fatigue of the players precipitated by getting ass-railed becasue of it. Sure, shit happens, it was one of those outlier games. It NEVER should have happened, especially to two highly regarded football coaches who were, up until Saturday, COY and Broyles DCOY candidates.
For this, I hold Harbaugh and Brown accountable, not the players. They played the best that their coaches put them in positions to do that and I can find lots of examples of how they both failed in that regard.
Having said all that, Harbaugh is the best coach for Michigan, Brown didn't forget how to coach. He's very good at what he does. Both of them, however, made major strategic and tactical errors in Saturdays massacre that given their salaries and resumes are more than inexcusable. None of us here are in a position to affect change within the football program. We should all be advocating, to the extent we can for both of these coaches to address the issues M faced against an elite team talent wise that finally played up to their capabilities this season although skillfully optimized by urban meyer and his staff. They met expectations and earned their salaries. Something that I do not believe Harbaugh and his staff did.
Unless changes are made to M's football strategy, unless Harbuaghffense expands to become more offensively adaptable to strategies successfully employed v. elite opponents, M will remain an also ran football program like it has been, or worse, for the better part of 2 decades. As fans, as students or alumni of Michigan who understand what "Champions of the West ....." means and entails, we should not accept that as the standard for Michigan football.
Don Brown has to address the inherent weaknesses in his scheme by either devising ways to mitigate the vulnerabilities that scheme places on the Ss or recruit players for that position that are better suited to defend a mesh or short passing games like osu's and others. If that involves replacing coaches below them with ones that have new ideas, reorganizing how play calling is done in-game or defining new roles and approaches for the ones in place now to achieve that end is immaterial to me. But there is no question in my mind that it has to be done. Do it.
This morning I read The Best and Worst article that BronxBlue posts every Sunday or Monday after each Michigan game. He is a skilled writer and this most recent work of his on the loss to osu is excellent. I disagreed with a part of it, the part that the loss was a shit happens outlier. I made a post reproduced below to make my case that it wasn't.
I'm actually in Cancun this week and will be out of town traveling most of December and some of January. Trips to the Southern Caribbean and Cuba are on the itinerary This is a good thing for me as it's my intention to unplug from M football for a while and occupy myself with other things. So, I'll leave the housekeeping here to others. I did unstick and correctly title the M/osu game thread. Haven't read a thing in it nor do I intend to. Same for mgoboard. I know what happened and my view of why it happened. Some of that is captured in my post at mgodiaries which I copied and pasted below. But 63 - 39 pretty much sums it up.
I'll be watching M's bowl match-up whatever that is and I'll create the thread for it when the bowl and who M will play in it are officially announced. But I won't speculate outcomes or any of that for a while - it's counterproductive for me right now. I'll practice emotional disengagement for M's bowl game, hah. We'll see how that works out. But, I'll be trying.
From mgodiaries response to Best and Worst diary
Great work providing some solace for those of us living vicariously through and emotionally over-invested in M football.
Regardless, there should be accountability for the performance in c-bus last Saturday. This is a coaching staff being paid millions of dollars to advance the ideals of the University of Michigan. After all, the football program is the University of Michigan's front porch as much as former president James Duderstadt abhorred what had become of college sports, stood in the way of efforts to expand the Big House and associated football facilities and asserted Michigan football does not represent the highest ideals of the university he presided over in his time. He was wrong. It does and fortunately his voice was muted by others who were right.
That Jim Harbaugh is taking himself each season he's racked up another loss to osu a step closer to becoming the John Cooper of Michigan football is an unavoidable distinction of his coaching tenure. I think it a bit of a cop-out to imply, shit happens, M ran into a buzz saw, football is cyclical as an excuse for that performance. While these things do occur and they probably are a factor in this loss the larger damage done to the U's front porch has to be recognized.
Fine, we recognize that. Now what? I believe there is a worthwhile and long standing debate about the value of the style of football Jim Harbaugh wants his teams to play. The question in this debate arises regarding the capacity of it to beat teams that eschew that style of play as a fundamental football strategy. I trust I do not need to explain what I mean here by Harbaughffense. PM me if you do.
I was told by a very football smart osu fan during The Game Week, that osu could win a shoot-out 42-38 but not a 24-17 affair characterized by Michigan driving the field on a dozen possessions while holding osu to under or close to that number. IMO, meyer optimized a game strategy featuring a shoot-out and challenged Harbaugh to match it. The result? Harbaugh unsuccessfully attempted to force his strategy upon meyer...... run the ball, pound it, extend drives, methodically move the chains and score then play to your defense and special teams. meyer refused to let that occur.
How did he do it? On defense, he applied maximum pressure on the weakest link in M's offense - the tackles - while at the same time optimizing the strengths of osu's defense - the DEs. Patterson was under constant pressure, backside pursuit from osu's DEs ended too many runs and wisely selected blitzes stuffed the rest of them. It wasn't a new approach, nothing fancy, just great game preparation, practice and, if execution is a measure of it, a highly successful tactic. It blunted any attempt M might have taken to compete in a shootout and I'm not sure Harbaugh even considered that sort of thing. It appeared to me he did not.
On offense, meyer optimized what his team does best - the passing game featuring the mesh - got the ball out of haskin's hand in routinely under 3 seconds thereby mitigating osu's weakness - thier tackles and took advantage of M's biggest weaknesses, S play. He also punished Don Brown's aggressive style of play by ignoring M's average DTs, leaving his interior OL (an osu strength) to deal with them and doubling M's very good DEs. Meanwhile Brown tried to mitigate osu's mesh passing game by playing press-man at the corners, one high S on the back end and severely (IMO) limiting LB blitzes in an effort to better cope with the mesh and short passing game in general. Brown's approach failed in large measure to scheme as well as mental and physical fatigue of the players precipitated by getting ass-railed becasue of it. Sure, shit happens, it was one of those outlier games. It NEVER should have happened, especially to two highly regarded football coaches who were, up until Saturday, COY and Broyles DCOY candidates.
For this, I hold Harbaugh and Brown accountable, not the players. They played the best that their coaches put them in positions to do that and I can find lots of examples of how they both failed in that regard.
Having said all that, Harbaugh is the best coach for Michigan, Brown didn't forget how to coach. He's very good at what he does. Both of them, however, made major strategic and tactical errors in Saturdays massacre that given their salaries and resumes are more than inexcusable. None of us here are in a position to affect change within the football program. We should all be advocating, to the extent we can for both of these coaches to address the issues M faced against an elite team talent wise that finally played up to their capabilities this season although skillfully optimized by urban meyer and his staff. They met expectations and earned their salaries. Something that I do not believe Harbaugh and his staff did.
Unless changes are made to M's football strategy, unless Harbuaghffense expands to become more offensively adaptable to strategies successfully employed v. elite opponents, M will remain an also ran football program like it has been, or worse, for the better part of 2 decades. As fans, as students or alumni of Michigan who understand what "Champions of the West ....." means and entails, we should not accept that as the standard for Michigan football.
Don Brown has to address the inherent weaknesses in his scheme by either devising ways to mitigate the vulnerabilities that scheme places on the Ss or recruit players for that position that are better suited to defend a mesh or short passing games like osu's and others. If that involves replacing coaches below them with ones that have new ideas, reorganizing how play calling is done in-game or defining new roles and approaches for the ones in place now to achieve that end is immaterial to me. But there is no question in my mind that it has to be done. Do it.
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