Michigan Football, Team 140, 2019 Season

[hack]

Patterson seems at his best with his feet moving. A stationary version of him isn't as accurate or quick to decide.

[Jeff Buchanan]

It's Friday ..... the Army game has been over-analysed but some things are clear to me:

The first two games, and esp. the Army game have revealed unexpected problems. Hard to know what these are with any degree of certainty. But there are ominous trends and I've talked about these in the Army game thread. They threaten the competitiveness of Michigan football certainly in 2019 and likely beyond.

If those trends aren't mitigated or reversed in the Wisconsin game, there is no sense, for me at least, in continuing to follow the program. It has become a waste of time, energy and money.

Since 2006, the year Lloyd Carr should have retired and replaced by Les Miles, the football program has been in decline and has not been able to meet reasonable expectations to compete for Big Ten Championships and berths in the CFP. Given what we know after two games it doesn't appear likely M will meet those reasonable expectations in 2019.

Unless what we think we know today - after some pretty good post game analysis - is wrong and proven wrong by a convincing win against a solid opponent in Wisconsin, I'd offer that a reasonable conclusion can be reached that the door has been closed on the football program's attempts over the last 13 years to re-establish itself as champions.

[froot loops]

Lion fans laugh at that.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I was a Lions fan ..... gave that up a long time ago. Next responsible thing to do when it comes to sports may be to forget Michigan football

[hack]

I think JH isn't going to have the team competing on the highest level year in/year out, but once or twice he's going to hit it right, and I hope to be there for that. Give me one more championship and I'm fine to move on after that.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I think JH isn't going to have the team competing on the highest level year in/year out, but once or twice he's going to hit it right, and I hope to be there for that. Give me one more championship and I'm fine to move on after that.

I believe the fans that are paying the seat licenses and buying season tickets don't share your view. Some, maybe but the first time a TV broadcast pans the stadium and all you see are empty luxury boxes, a half filled student section and large swaths of empty seats it's soul searching time..... and that may be too late these days.

Ward Manuel will have to think like Don Canham did when the program was in decline under Bump Elliot. Harbaugh, like Elliot, has failed to resurrect Michigan's stature as a championship football team after trying to do so following two periods of great coaches: Elliot : Kipke, Crisler, Oosterbaan. Harbaugh : Schembechler, Moeller, Carr.

Within the context of the modern era of CFB, you and I share similar views of the damage that the Michigan culture can do in the pursuit of championship level football teams. Don Canham probably had an easier time resurrecting a declining football program than Bill Martin, Jim Hackett and Ward Manuel have had. But the repeated swings for the left filed stands since Lloyd Carr should have retired (2006) have produced strike-outs over a trying 13 year period.

[lineygoblue]

Within the context of the modern era of CFB, you and I share similar views of the damage that the Michigan culture can do in the pursuit of championship level football teams. Don Canham probably had an easier time resurrecting a declining football program than Bill Martin, Jim Hackett and Ward Manuel have had. But the repeated swings for the left filed stands since Lloyd Carr should have retired (2006) have produced strike-outs over a trying 13 year period.

To be fair to Hackett, the selection of Harbaugh after the Hoke era was a no-brainer. Harbaugh was available and wanted to come to Michigan, and Hackett would have been burned at the stake had he failed to get Harbaugh to sign on the dotted line. At the time, it appeared to be the coaching coup of the entire history of Michigan football. You had a Super Bowl coach, with a winning pedigree, a beloved former player, who WANTED to come to Michigan. Sign the man.

Unfortunately, Harbaugh doesn't seem to have a plan to fix the problems left behind by his predecessors. He changes coordinators as often as some people change their socks. His pressers sound like they're being run by a guy who is coming off a 3 day bender. He seems to have no concern for problems on the field like ball security, offensive line play, and the DL getting treated like rag dolls by the likes of Army.

Under Schembechler, if his team would have turned over the ball five times to the likes of MTSU and Army, he'd have them practicing in pads 4 hours a day 7 days a week, even after games. Yes, the rules about practices have changed since then, but the point is, Bo would attack the problem with urgency and get it fixed. Harbaugh seems to be like a leaf in a creek, .. just following the flow of the water. Not a care in the world.

Bottom line, he's got to deliver this year, or he's got to go. And I never thought I'd believe that, but I do now.

[paul daugherity]

[hack]

I think it's more than Xs and Os, although that's a certainly a big part of it. Fumbling, flags, crumbling under the pressure in rivalry games, etc etc. Different issues suddenly becoming critical on a week-to-week basis. All markers of an overall badly-coached team.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Something I caught from post game pressers ..... Harbaugh's right after the game and Gattis on Monday...... the use of the term analytics. We know that Harbaugh has a very large support staff and one of the things this staff does is review film, identify trends and develop play sheets that apply analytics. For example, his defense of the two forth and short calls in the 4th quarter one of which eschewed a FG ...... analytics. I get this but the plays called up, whoever called them, were bad choices in both cases. Was that do to analytics being applied?

Harbaugh's response, in part was, no (fan) is ever satisfied with a play call - run or pass - if one doesn't work the other should have been called. The real issue on both those calls was the lack of imagination in the call and what appeared to be a bit of confusion among the players. Every good coach knows there is one short yardage play that you practice over and over that will get you 2-3 yards. You don't need analytics to dictate the play call. Army's coach knows this and did it (the FB dive). Michigan's coach didn't or if he did, didn't have the best play call in. Did Anlytics drive that?

We know that when he was questioned on why Patterson didn't keep he said the reads weren't there. During the game, that kind of information is coming from the booth and from guys who do this in support roles. So, he had to have that evaluation coming into his head set as the game unfolded. It was wrong. The reads WERE there if we are to trust the UFRs; my eye told me they were after it became clear that Army was delaying the scrape exchange just slightly to make it harder for Patterson to decide to keep or give. Challenge the delay, the shuffling DE or run the split zone. That didn't happen. The coaches had to see this from the booth' could have shaped Patterson's play by telling him about it, right? Maybe they got caught up in the analytics on the play-sheets? The players are only going to be as good as the coaching staff gives them the plays to execute. In that regard I read that as a coaching FAIL.

As M's offense transitioned to power and away from ZR/RPO in a risk reduction/ball/clock control attempt, the failure of the play-callers to give Patterson plays that would back the Ss out and stop them from focusing on Charbonett and getting a player advantage v. the run game, they just kept calling on Charbonett to gut it out. I'd call that an in-game coaching error and a deflating impact on Patterson who has always been good at safe throws to the flats in front of CBs playing 10 yards off the LOS and a FS who's playing almost on it. I can't over-state the impact that coaching error had on the run game whoever demanded that had on the offenses efficiency.

[Jeff Buchanan]

These are always interesting for fancy stat devotees. The link below is to the guy at mgo who writes a diary that summates S&P+, FPI and then does his own thing with SOS and win probabilities to come up with final BT E&W standings. You may recall that pre-season, this guys work projected M to win all it's E conference games, win the E outright and end the regular season at 11-1. The single possible loss was to either Wisconsin or ND.

Welp, that projection took a major hit. M is now projected to finish 6-3 in the BT (6-2 in the E), losing to Wisconsin, PSU and osu. They are also projected to lose to ND to finish the season at 8-4. The bye week did a lot of damage too. M dropped from #1 in the ESPN's BT power rankings to #4 and from #7 nationally to #15.

Within the BT Power Rankings: osu = 27.4, Wisconsin = 24.9, PSU = 19.1, Michigan = 18.4. The difference from top to bottom is startling. By these measures within the BT, Michigan = Iowa in the W and nationally = Texas A&M in the SEC. M has a 0.1% chance of going undefeated (down from 12%). Alabama (31.1), Clemson (29.1), UGA (24.9), LSU (23.8), osu (23.7) fill out the top 5 nationally per FPI.

Three weeks into the season, the bye not-with-standing, Michigan football looks to be the program that will most fail to meet expectations and be the most disappointing in the 2019 season. Shea Patterson, who has virtually dropped out of the Heisman projections, could also be the most disappointing P5 conference QB.

BPONE.

https://mgoblog.com/diaries/b1g-expe...-week-3-update

http://www.espn.com/college-football...cs/teamratings

[hack]

Which sounds pretty insane given the variation in opponent quality, sample size, etc.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Agreed ....... drawing conclusions from the data and the rankings about how M football will fair in 2019 is useless at this point. But that it feeds BPONE is an unmistakable one.

It also feeds the perception nationally and among devoted fans that Michigan football seems to find itself as a perennial bridesmaid never quite getting to the alter. That's an ongoing theme in the context of modern CFB since 1997 - it's feelings ball for sure but it has an impact.

[hack]

Yeah. Whatever the results will be, I'll definitely be happy when this season is over. It was definitely nice to wake up Saturday not feeling a sense of impending doom.

[Tom W]

Bridesmaids, as near as I can tell, stand a pretty good chance of hooking up by the end of the evening. Michigan football is looking a lot more like the girl who keeps getting dumped by potential grooms.