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Michigan Football, Team 140, 2019 Season
Welp, 2018 is almost over and M's 2018 season is definitely over ending in a big pile of stink so, here you have the 2019 Michigan football thread.
But I'm still interested - for now and until there are some signs that Harbaugh has recognized he is not going to win championships with his brand of football and makes some changes based on that reality. But I'm looking at M football differently than I did say 5-10 years ago. It's a journey to be appreciated for what it is not some unrealistic expectation of what it should be.
A look ahead at 2019 suggest M has the talent on both sides of the ball to win football games. I think both JH and DB have to take a good look in the mirror and decide that they need to change ..... adapt to the current CFB landscape. They can not force their current schemes on offense and defense upon players ill-equipped to make them work well. The offensive line, despite Warriner's coaching that has improved it, isn't an NFL level OL that can pass protect and run block like Jim's offense requires. Don Brown's defense has a glaring "talent threshold" (talent's term, not mine). There has to be a dominant first round NFL level Mike on the roster as well as the same level of talent on the back end - both Ss and CBs. He didn't have the completeness or the depth needed to make his defense work yet he continued to deploy it giving up over 100 points in his last two games stubbornly trying to make it work instead of adapting to what his players could make work. No telling if the 2019 defensive roster is complete enough for Brown to continue doing what he does. I don't think it is and I think he needs to adapt to that reality until it is shown his players can do his thing. And it's not just that. My view, after watching most of the top teams play in 2018, is that even if they could make those schemes work, they are not the best schemes available to them in CFB today and it's not even close.
Adapt is the bye word then. I had a discussion following the M loss to UF involving this concept. I made the poorly informed comment that Harbaugh cannot expect to win games running Bo-Ball. It was quickly pointed out to me that Bo was a great adapter to the trends in CFB of his day. He was certainly not running the same offensive schemes he ran in his first several years at M. He ran the wishbone and innovative variants to it during a 7 year time frame where he had Dennis Franklin and Rick Leach at QB. Later in his career, he moved on to what we call a pro-style offense with John Wangler and both he, Gary Moeller and Lloyd Carr were successful with that (Harbaugh, Taylor, Grbac, Brady, etc).
But those days of a pro-style offense are gone. Harbaugh, IMO, has clearly been by-passed as an innovative offensive mind at the CFB level. He's probably 2-3 years behind even though he has shown some hybridization in his offense but, IMO, not nearly enough of it. He's still too run-centric with an OL that can't produce. From a character standpoint, he's a terrific human being but, having failed to adapt as he woefully demonstrated in 2018, despite the prodigious talent he has assembled, he's not going to leave much of a legacy at Michigan unless he does adapt.
But I'm still interested - for now and until there are some signs that Harbaugh has recognized he is not going to win championships with his brand of football and makes some changes based on that reality. But I'm looking at M football differently than I did say 5-10 years ago. It's a journey to be appreciated for what it is not some unrealistic expectation of what it should be.
A look ahead at 2019 suggest M has the talent on both sides of the ball to win football games. I think both JH and DB have to take a good look in the mirror and decide that they need to change ..... adapt to the current CFB landscape. They can not force their current schemes on offense and defense upon players ill-equipped to make them work well. The offensive line, despite Warriner's coaching that has improved it, isn't an NFL level OL that can pass protect and run block like Jim's offense requires. Don Brown's defense has a glaring "talent threshold" (talent's term, not mine). There has to be a dominant first round NFL level Mike on the roster as well as the same level of talent on the back end - both Ss and CBs. He didn't have the completeness or the depth needed to make his defense work yet he continued to deploy it giving up over 100 points in his last two games stubbornly trying to make it work instead of adapting to what his players could make work. No telling if the 2019 defensive roster is complete enough for Brown to continue doing what he does. I don't think it is and I think he needs to adapt to that reality until it is shown his players can do his thing. And it's not just that. My view, after watching most of the top teams play in 2018, is that even if they could make those schemes work, they are not the best schemes available to them in CFB today and it's not even close.
Adapt is the bye word then. I had a discussion following the M loss to UF involving this concept. I made the poorly informed comment that Harbaugh cannot expect to win games running Bo-Ball. It was quickly pointed out to me that Bo was a great adapter to the trends in CFB of his day. He was certainly not running the same offensive schemes he ran in his first several years at M. He ran the wishbone and innovative variants to it during a 7 year time frame where he had Dennis Franklin and Rick Leach at QB. Later in his career, he moved on to what we call a pro-style offense with John Wangler and both he, Gary Moeller and Lloyd Carr were successful with that (Harbaugh, Taylor, Grbac, Brady, etc).
But those days of a pro-style offense are gone. Harbaugh, IMO, has clearly been by-passed as an innovative offensive mind at the CFB level. He's probably 2-3 years behind even though he has shown some hybridization in his offense but, IMO, not nearly enough of it. He's still too run-centric with an OL that can't produce. From a character standpoint, he's a terrific human being but, having failed to adapt as he woefully demonstrated in 2018, despite the prodigious talent he has assembled, he's not going to leave much of a legacy at Michigan unless he does adapt.
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