Michigan Football, Team 140, 2019 Season

[froot loops]

How undermanned was he at BC?

[Jeff Buchanan]

There's a poster at mgo whose name is Space Cyote (SC). Well respected for his football knowledge. I've put a link to his post below. It's long and complicated.

The gist of the post is that (1) there are lot of misconceptions floating around post game about what went down in it - a lot of over-reaction to admittedly, on SC's part, a very bad game. (2) The offense, while it's a mess, should not be tossed out and a new one installed. You can't do that mid season. M will have to ride it out, maybe with some tweeks. At the end of the season, you make the hard choices. You have to work with what you've got now. Find stuff that works, stick with it and build from there. (4) Don Brown is having difficulty putting a scheme in place that covers for the interior DL - the DTs - weaknesses. He's tried and SC's view of the things he's done, such as putting Glasgow as a 3-Tech are good ideas. The problem has primarily been with the LBs not doing the job they have been assigned to do in Brown's new scheme this season. They are not disciplined and gap sound. A big part of their poor play is that they are trying to do the DT's jobs that aren't getting done. That leaves open gaps.

With respect to M's offense overall:

• This was an overhaul. Unnecessarily so. A fusion between what Harbaugh did and what Gattis could bring made sense, both from an offensive evolution standpoint and what fit this team. That is not what Michigan has.

The run game:

• Lacks diversity and at Wisconsin healthy RBs.
• I'm hoping, as I indicated in another post, that Harbaugh recovers the offense and brings back more of the IZ/OZ power that worked in 2018 and then incorporates what Gattis can bring - a better RPO game and add more laterallity in the passing game. Something that is sorely missing. The run game seems troubled and SC thinks this is do to the change of speeds the Gattis offense has brought to the back field. This, in turn, messes up the OL play - it's not yet in sycn.

In the passing game:

• While there's a consensus that Patterson has issues an argument can be made that the kinds of plays designed into the Gattis offense magnify those shortcomings. Good OC's optimize player strengths and minimize their weaknesses. Gattis isn't doigng Shea any favors

Read SC's critique of Don Brown's defense and his posts about the offense in detail here:

https://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/space-c...misconceptions

[froot loops]

I hope Glasgow as a 3 technique is still a thing when the Spartans visit AA.

[Hannibal]

He may be ceding his position as the fan blog of record.

This is a timely comment. Tony Gerdeman has written his Michigan Monday, and it's excellent, as always.

An OSU blogger is now the best blogger about Michigan football. Sad.

https://theozone.net/2019/09/michiga...aten-badgered/

[iam416]

On the recruiting point, using top 100 247 Composite as the arbitrary cut-off for "elite" type players (look, I have to use a cutoff somewhere):

2017-20 Ohio State: 36
2017-20 M: 10

It's possible M could add another for 2020 via either an actual commit or a rise in rankings. But, that's the 4-year snapshot for recruits heading into the 2021 season. Ryan Day, in his first year of recruiting, has 8 top 100 kids signed and that includes a devastating reversal of fortune with Bijan Robinson. EIGHT. First year. And that doesn't include Justin Fields, who was a total Ryan Day "recruit." And I think he's almost certain to do better in 2021 (gets a huge boost from a really strong year in Ohio).

So, that's what the aggregate starts to look like when you are consistently top 3-5 vs consistently top 10. And that's not even delving into positional recruiting that, e.g., leaves a team recklessly short at DT.

The cavalry isn't on the way, at least vis-a-vis Ohio State.

Also, to build on the James Franklin comparison in another thread, Penn State has 14 top 100 kids for 2017-20.

[froot loops]

That article is a devastating breakdown of the Michigan woes that gets beyond the emotional aspects of the Harbaugh era that tend to get the majority of the focus. Three games in and you have those issues on the D line is alarming.

At the end of the day it always going to be hard to compete with OSU for the top recruits, but 5 years in your program should be built to the point where you should have depth in your positional groups. You have to be able to develop grunts. That's the hard part of program building.

[Jeff Buchanan]

This is a timely comment. Tony Gerdeman has written his Michigan Monday, and it's excellent, as always.

An OSU blogger is now the best blogger about Michigan football. Sad.

https://theozone.net/2019/09/michiga...aten-badgered/

I liked the way Gerdman linked Harbaugh's terrible recruiting to his description of Michigan as a joyless football program..... with a need for change on both sides of the ball.

We'll see. I'm not ready to have Warde fire anyone right now but I'm close. I do think it possible for JH to turn it around but I'd give him something less than a 10% chance to do it. Gerdman makes a solid argument for hard choices come the end of a 7 or less win season. There's no telling if that's where Manuel's head is right now. He absolutely has to be thinking about it.

I'd add that I wouldn't disagree with Froot's assessment elsewhere that while hiring a new coach isn't a crap shoot at Wisconsin or osu, it is at Michigan. Warde Manuel has hired one high visibility HC, Juan Howard, and that search and subsequent hiring went pretty well. Time will tell if it was a good hire but all signs point to it was. I'm less worried about a coaching search with Manuel in charge than I was with Bill Martin or Dave Brandon, Michigan's culture thing and all the pressures on the AD not withstanding.

[iam416]

At the end of the day it always going to be hard to compete with OSU for the top recruits, but 5 years in your program should be built to the point where you should have depth in your positional groups. You have to be able to develop grunts. That's the hard part of program building.

The problem is that M expectations were > or = Ohio State. Recruiting well enough, developing grunts, building a program -- that's good. For Michigan State. But that's not going to beat Ohio State on anything more than occasional basis. Sure, they could be a slightly more talented version of Sparty. That's not what they signed up for.

So, look -- I agree with you about outrecruiting Ohio State and about developing a program and all that. But, the expectations for HARBAUGH!!!! is that he would, at least, recruit on par with Ohio State.

[hack]

That speaks directly to why it's so hard to hire a competent football coach -- there is magical thinking in having that level of expectations but placing the restrictions on what the coaching staff can do to achieve them. I think in the case of Harbaugh, for a while he really did appear to be a friggin genius, and I thought his combination of fire, profile, obsession and tactics would be enough to overcome Michigan's inherent disadvantages, in a way that few other coaches could. Certainly I was wrong about that. I don't have anything to apologize for on the tactics front. Everybody else loved him for that too, so I don't feel bad about missing out on any warning signs, were there any. If there were any early warning signs about all that program-building stuff, the only one I can think of is his abrasive personality, which has possibly played a role in his struggles to get right his mix of assistants and wider support staff. But he's far from the only asshole in coaching. He's just also an oddball asshole, and maybe that kind of eccentricity is an obstacle.

[iam416]

Anyone that contemporaneously said that HARBAUGH!!! was not a great hire, let alone an average hire, is out of their mind. They hired, by all accounts, what seemed like the best available coach.

The only thing I'd say would be fair, contemporaneously, is to take issue with the expectation that he'd match UFM. You could have definitely made that argument, but you could have just as easily pushed back on it (I even did on the basis of recruiting -- UFM is an all-time great recruiter).

But as to the hire itself, it was a grand slam. Which, obviously, makes the current state of affairs so hard to take. This isn't Hoke who we all sort of knew was in over his head.

[Hannibal]

You don't have to outrecruit OSU to beat them as often as Auburn beats Nick Saban. Recruiting is, by far, not Harbaugh's biggest problem, although he may have been recruiting guys who aren't good fits. The attrition from the 2017 class is shaping up to be a disaster. When you place that next to the horrible 2018 class, that's two years without many contributors. Even so, Mark Dantonio has beaten Urban Meyer twice. Bump Elliot beat Woody Hayes three times! Karl Dorrell even chalked up a win against USC! MSU beat us repeatedly throughout the Bo, Mo, and Carr eras with way less talent than us. It's a fucking rivalry game

[hack]

Which speaks to that idea of it being a ``joyless'' program, or, in that Spath piece the other day, an anonymous program alum talked about how Harbaugh isn't good at pregame speeches and that's why the team comes out flat on the road, because it doesn't have touching the banner and the big house to get it riled up. I don't know about all that stuff. Seems a stretch, but you can't ignore it now. You don't need to recruit like OSU in order to execute like Wisconsin. But it most certainly is clear that there's a way to prepare for rivalry games, it was one of the only things Hoke did well re OSU specifically, and Harbaugh doesn't do that. Overall the whole thing is part of the mystery here.

[froot loops]

The problem is that M expectations were > or = Ohio State. Recruiting well enough, developing grunts, building a program -- that's good. For Michigan State. But that's not going to beat Ohio State on anything more than occasional basis. Sure, they could be a slightly more talented version of Sparty. That's not what they signed up for.

So, look -- I agree with you about outrecruiting Ohio State and about developing a program and all that. But, the expectations for HARBAUGH!!!! is that he would, at least, recruit on par with Ohio State.

All true and those expectations are crazy. OSU over the years has produced much more NFL drafted players than Michigan. Michigan(369) is closer to MSU(313) in that regard than they are OSU(453)

[hack]

Basketball is a reasonable comparison. Michigan suffers some of the same inherent disadvantages in that sport to UK, Duke, etc. that it does to OSU in football. Competence closes a lot of that gap.

[iam416]

I tell ya, this entire discussion is going to look pretty fucking silly when HARBAUGH!!!! is sitting at 10-1 going into the Ohio State game.