Michigan Football, Team 140, 2019 Season

[hack]

Sorry, but if Army comes up to A2 and leaves with a W, Harbaugh should just leave with them "to pursue other opportunities".

The "chicken little" expectations around this team are frustrating as hell. They do have merit, however, and we can expect them to persist until they prove that they can play a full season without mentally folding in the face of adversity.

I can see them collapsing to ND or PSU or sparty. Even Iowa or Wisconsin. But Army? No.

Where I'm at too. They're not gonna lose 3-4 games. They might lose 1 or 2, and it's the way that it happens that will be telling.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Sorry, but if Army comes up to A2 and leaves with a W, Harbaugh should just leave with them "to pursue other opportunities".

The "chicken little" expectations around this team are frustrating as hell. They do have merit, however, and we can expect them to persist until they prove that they can play a full season without mentally folding in the face of adversity.

I can see them collapsing to ND or PSU or sparty. Even Iowa or Wisconsin. But Army? No.

Agree with your first point. Not with your second.

Michigan doesn't "collapse" under Harbaugh as if they mentally can't persevere. The two most debilitating losses in 2018 were to osu and UF. M was out prepared and out coached in both of them.

That both day/ufm and mullen pantsed arguably one of the best DCs in CFB by rep and objective history tells the complete story, IMO.

Both coaches are still working for Michigan........Don Brown's defense has been eclipsed by creative OCs and the Gatis effect, if there is one, is TBD.

I could go on but what's the point.

[lineygoblue]

I don't think they'll lose to Army, but I look for the score to be close, and maybe even alarmingly so. In fact, most pollsters will drop Michigan in the rankings because of the close win.

Army's offense runs a lot of fakes and misdirection's, and their strategy is to shorten the game with long, time consuming TD drives. The hope is that they can rope a dope the better team into flailing away with short unsuccessful ball possessions, and get the opposing offense back off the field. It can work, if Michigan goes in unprepared.

But I still think Michigan's overall offensive talent will be too much for the Cadets, and I expect to see a Michigan win somewhere in the 8-10 point range.

Which, will lead to meltdown city among a vast number of fans. #fireharbaughnow.com

[WM Wolverine]

Army's style creates a game with very few possessions. In those games, settling for field goals, a turnover or 2, and allowing a couple big plays turns a lopsided game into one decided in the fourth quarter...

I don't think M will have any issue with Army, Brown has defended this type of offense well in the past though he's weak on the interior DL. A critical position to defend them. There are five, six tougher games on the schedule and Harbaugh teams usually seem well prepared even when they are grossly out schemed by the opposing team like Jeff's examples.

[froot loops]

I don't think a loss to the Spartans would be a collapse, I forecast the Spartans to be pretty good this year.

[Tom W]

Michigan doesn't "collapse" under Harbaugh as if they mentally can't persevere. The two most debilitating losses in 2018 were to osu and UF. M was out prepared and out coached in both of them.

That's a fair and accurate assessment - for the 2018 debacles. They were eerily similar to what we used to see from Bo's bowl games. But, he was ALWAYS prepared for osu.

The mental errors are more of a chronic thing- poorly timed turnovers, missed plays, simple screw-ups or just "bad karma" at critical moments. Unless ND was on the other sideline, these had long tended to fall in Michigan's favor. Of course, part of that is luck, but it's mostly (to use an engineering term) "robustness". We saw lapses late in the Carr era and it reached epidemic levels in the RRod/Hoke era.

Harbaugh was supposed to fix all of that. The lack of any real "signature" win at this point still leaves that in question. In retrospect, there weren't really a lot of mental tests last year (outside of that opener in what turned out to be a decent ND), but was that a matter of that team being so much better than the opposition that they were never really tested?

Not that there's anything wrong with thrashing sparty, Wisconsin and psu, and yes, it is nice to have some light fare when Rutgers shows up. But heck, the beer and brats taste sooooo much better when those clowns, and especially those scarlett and grey demons, are reduced to bitter disappointing tears.

[hack]

I think those two things are connected. When a team is being outcoached and outprepared, players seem to sense it midway through the third quarter and that's when the rout is on. They're not giving up because they are "mentally weak". They fold in the face of adversity because they know it just ain't happening that day. For me personally it's easier to see in basketball, especially on offense when players break the play and start to freelance, but I think it happens in football too. At some point you just know that the Xs and Os are not in your favor that day, and it's very hard for all 11 players to play at full intensity every play when they as a group are starting to see that reality.

[Tom W]

Quite true, and the fault does go back to Harbaugh. He didn't exactly bring Sherithreet and company down to Columbus last year.

[Jeff Buchanan]

.........They fold in the face of adversity because they know it just ain't happening that day. ......... At some point you just know that the Xs and Os are not in your favor that day, and it's very hard for all 11 players to play at full intensity every play when they as a group are starting to see that reality.

I think that's accurate and there is no escaping the fact the Harbaugh's game plan for osu was terrible - nothing changed at all unless there were changes in the pin-and-pull run plays designed to confuse the LBs - and that failed. Any other tweeks he might have come up with in the run game failed too. I can't recall any passing game trickery because I don't want to. The tempo thing - that frustrating continuation of a faulty run game as if the team was supposed to play to the defense (ha, ha, forget that) - was an absolute killer in the third quarter and contributed to the loss to osu.

I thought the most confidence blasting aspect of the osu game though was Don Brown's defense looking foolish and unprepared and getting demolished by nothing more than what Brown should have expected. day's/ufm's offense with haskins at QB should have been no surprise. That offense was defended better by other BIG Ten teams teams that nearly beat osu. Brown's' game plan on defense was a shit-show.

Pretty sure that Harbaugh and Brown lost the team right then and there, knew it and there were plenty of people saying the players lost confidence in the coaching staff. The UF debacle was predictable and both a repeat of and eerily like RR's last bowl game monstrosity v. Mississippi State. Nobody, players or coaches, gave a shit after it became clear Mullen had his Gators prepared to play and wanted a win more than anyone on M's team did.

So, yeah, I think we're all saying pretty much the same thing here regarding a "collapse." The difference is in how we color that term. The troublesome thing for me is that both Harbaugh and Brown are still in charge. Really, the only thing that has changed is that rumor has it that Josh Gattis is going to be designing and calling plays. I don't know what that means yet but it got me interested enough to keep paying for season tickets. I doubt that I'll stay interested if the same old offensive and defensive shit gets rolled out in 2019.

[Ghengis Jon]

I just spoke with the Hodgemans. Dr and #1 son will be attending the Army game.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Thanks for that. I'll be there.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Lifted the link from mgo .........

Phil Steel, cranking up his 2019 CFB season predictions says M wins the BIG East, the BTCCG, enters the CFP and loses to Clemson in the first round. Alabama beats Clemson in the NC contest.

https://thespun.com/big-ten/michigan-wolverines/michigan-college-football-playoff-prediction-phil-steele

[iam416]

Hard to argue with that.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Hard to argue with that.

Well, yeah, but Harbaugh has yet to beat osu. The more I read about QB Justin Fields, the more I like what he is going to bring to days/osu's offense. Don Brown is getting a lot of accolades in early assessments of M's 2019 D. It's like analysts lost site of what day and Mullen did to his defense in 2018.

I've read some good analysis of why that happened to a heretofore solid performing defense. Some of it was personnel related specifically the match-ups by M's LBs underneath v. slot receivers or guys lined up in the back field that became underneath receivers in day's offensive scheme.

Brown is fundamentally a cover 1, press man, hi-pressure (aggressive) defense proponent. He reportedly has a lot of different looks with his viper and LBs that are intended to mask what coverage his D will flex into at the snap/mesh but it is, in the end a cover 1 scheme. Versus typical spread offenses, now predominating but in multiple flavors, it's a good defense ....... if the LBs, Ss and the Viper get the coverage right. Getting it right depends on making the right reads to determine who and how many drop into coverage and who and how many gap fill.

From film I've watched, M's defense did this exceedingly well until it met osu. The UF debacle had some to do with the same thing that got Brown's D v. osu but had more to do with players throwing the towel in when it became clear it just wasn't there day at the Peach.

I've not seen any great X's and O's commentary on either of those games mostly because the guys I read that do that, all M fans, were so bummed by what happened, good post game analysis just wasn't there. But here's my take: day did something to M's post snap and mesh reads that was just enough to get any number of guys who were going to take a potential receiver, a step behind or a step outside or inside that allowed enough separation for the receiver to allow for haskins to make a play. haskins could make those plays because out of the shot-gun, he got rid of the ball in 2 beats or less essentially neutralizing Brown's pressure metric .... that had a lot to do with good OL play by osu and poor interior pressure by M's NT or Ts in general depending on how they were deployed. Defense against the osu's run game - ufm's typical IZ/OZ stuff - was just as bad as pass D and probably for the same reasons. M misread keys for outside run plays or inside gap fill because they had been purposely altered .... designed to produce a certain response by Brown's D that was then disadvantaged by osu's play selection, route running or blocking scheme.

So is this something startling? No, of course not. It's what good OC's can do when they can break down what an opponent's defense does and scheme to fuck those reads up. IMO, Brown was, (a) not prepared for what osu was going to do on offense, got trick-fucked (RPS'ed) more than not and (b) didn't seem to make changes to adapt player reads to what osu was doing on offense.

So, he's going to do better this season, right? I'm not confident of that v. elite teams and even good teams, like Iowa for example, even Maryland and probably ND. It's still Don Brown and this time without some key defenders who moved on to the NFL.

[WM Wolverine]

Day was a step ahead at making adjustments to Brown's switch to zone looks in the second half. Defense looked a bit lost/confused when they did switch to zone and gave up a couple big plays. Injuries started to really pile up against the Buckeyes and far more so against the Gators. The injuries contributed a bit to the defense giving up against the Buckeyes.