Michigan Football, Team 140, 2019 Season

[Hannibal]

It just happened...

What did?

[iam416]

The shameful embarrassment.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Harbaugh looked dazed in his post game comments. I watched some of his post game pressers during his last season with SF when he was having team troubles Looked the same. he had no answers then and appears to have none now.

Comments from a High School coach (Touch the Banner):

I was absolutely livid when Ben Mason even ran on the field to play offense, for two reasons. For one thing, the guy put on a bunch of weight this off-season to play defensive tackle



Maybe the best post game comments I've read so far. Highly condemnatory of whoever has designed the scheme for the 2019 offense. I assume it is a brain trust involving Harbaugh/Gattis and whoever else get's their two cents in the scheme. Whatever, it is a massive failure when compared to other teams who are undergoing similar modernization of previously power offenses. It may be that the reason Patterson looks so lost, so bad, is that, as the comments above reveal, the plays are so poorly designed that it is setting everyone up to fail.

My take is that the players have lost confidence in whatever the coaches are trying to accomplish on both sides of the ball. Watching their faces by about the middle 2nd quarter with Wisconsin up by 21 and Michigan looking completely lost, they look frustrated, if not angry about the play-calling coming from the sidelines. They may have not been executing but when you execute and you get RPS'ed across the board, that's on the coaches and I'm thinking that's where the blame for the 2019 shit show lies.

[Hannibal]

The shameful embarrassment.

He probably needs one more.

[paul daugherity]

I think there is at least one more coming up this season. More likely, several more.

[hack]

We are definitely at the point where if they're going to lose they might as well do it in a way that makes it clear change is needed.

[paul daugherity]

[Whitley]

Here is the question though.....who replaces Harbaugh?

Don't worry there are at least two more spankings coming with Notre Dame and Ohio State. Hell, right now i think Penn State might give us one same with Sparty if they can find an offense.

[froot loops]

Maybe I don't have imagination needed to see a way where giving Ben Mason a handoff on 2nd and goal from the 7 is prudent. Best case scenario is 3 and goal from the 2. You would have to search far and wide to find a DC that wouldn't welcome that call.

[Jeff Buchanan]

[froot loops]

Brees had labrum surgery in his free agent walk year at San Diego. The Chargers let him walk because they had drafted Rivers, but that year Brees started to show signs he was starting to turn it on. He was slated to go to Miami, but there is a pretty decent dispute on who declined to sign him at Miami. Saban has consistently maintained it was the Dolphins who overruled him, they dispute that.

[iam416]

1. The QB situation is entirely on HARBAUGH!!!! This is year 5.
2. The Gattis hire is entirely on HARBAUGH!!!!! That felt to me like a reach and the more I read about it the more I'm almost certain it was poorly done. If I didn't know better it's almost as if HARBAUGH!!! said, "fine, you want me to run the the spread....uh....Gattis...you're hired..."
3. Don Brown has issues, but he more competent than not. The staggering thing, to me, is their lack of talent at DT.
4. HARBAUGH!!!! is not going to be an elite recruiter. There's just that much to it. That's the hard cap on his program. Whatever he does, coaching-wise, he's not going to field teams that match the big dogs in talent. And, right now, he's not closing that gap with coaching acumen.

[lineygoblue]

There's no telling what's in store for yet another hit the reset button for M football but 5 years and 3-13 is enough for me.

But the real question is, when is it enough for Warde Manuel?

The next question is, what coach in their right mind would come into the void left by Harbaugh and all the expectations? If Harbaugh couldn't get Michigan on track, who can? We saw in the last coaching search boondoggle that not every good available coach out there wants to consider the Michigan job.

If the job opens, it could turn into a real nightmare for Michigan. We could see a couple more Hoke/Rodriguez type hires which would waste another 10-15 years of football.

This program is on the brink of disaster right now. As distasteful as it may seem at the moment, the best hope may be to have Harbaugh snap out of his funk, and become Harbaugh again.

[hack]

Maybe I don't have imagination needed to see a way where giving Ben Mason a handoff on 2nd and goal from the 7 is prudent. Best case scenario is 3 and goal from the 2. You would have to search far and wide to find a DC that wouldn't welcome that call.

They are clearly banking on outschemeing their opponents, and ignoring execution and coherence. The result is a series of too-clever-by-half solutions to problems they create for themselves, including opportunities for opposing coordinators to exploit. And then the negative feedback loop is on. In this case it's led to injuries that have required more of their big-brain tactical adjustments, which led to more injuries. Last year, this led to the palace intrigue in which Pep Hamilton was de-emphasized and Warinner gained control over the running game, which looked increasingly coherent as the season progressed. It's reasonable to expect the same this year. I don't know how much stock to put in the ``Gattis is a fraud'' thing, but if that Athletic report is true that Jim hired him based on a 20-minute phone call, well, that's deeply troubling for the long term if he keeps his job as HC. JH just doesn't know what to do, and therefore wastes his offseason installing dumb shit, and then has to adjust on the fly during the season. For the short term, this year, it's easy to imagine a scenario in which Warinner once again is the guy JH turns to. Back to last year's package, which JH has the staff to run and a degree of familiarity. I'd support that, for now. Whether Gattis is a fraud or JH just can't leave him alone to do his thing, I'm in favor of the team going back to what worked last year. The offense wasn't terrible last year. It continued to waste the college careers of NFL WRs, but it was something the team could execute, and if Don Brown wasn't outsmarting himself that week, it was good enough. That's a pretty key starting point. Better that then sending them out there unprepared to chase their tails and embarass everyone.

Deal with Harbaugh after the season. It's next to impossible to envision a scenario in which he saves this, but, for now, get through the season without further debacle.

[hack]

1. The QB situation is entirely on HARBAUGH!!!! This is year 5.
2. The Gattis hire is entirely on HARBAUGH!!!!! That felt to me like a reach and the more I read about it the more I'm almost certain it was poorly done. If I didn't know better it's almost as if HARBAUGH!!! said, "fine, you want me to run the the spread....uh....Gattis...you're hired..."
3. Don Brown has issues, but he more competent than not. The staggering thing, to me, is their lack of talent at DT.
4. HARBAUGH!!!! is not going to be an elite recruiter. There's just that much to it. That's the hard cap on his program. Whatever he does, coaching-wise, he's not going to field teams that match the big dogs in talent. And, right now, he's not closing that gap with coaching acumen.

Enthusiastic agreement with points 1 through 3. As for recruiting, well, I don't know. There's tons of talent here, although concentrated at position groups they can't use (WR) and not at ones they can (DT). I don't know how kids are in their right mind considering Michigan anymore, especially if you're a bluechip WR, or a QB. But they still come here, which indicates to me that the program's natural assets are still enough to attract a very high level of talent. Not that elite level, but one sufficient to win the conference 3-5 times a decade, beat OSU 4-5 times a decade, and maybe sneak in a national championship every 20 years or so. I'd take that as a hard cap. It's just a matter of getting a coach who isn't trying to outsmart himself like JH, a nepotism hire like Hoke, or a flavor of the month like RichRod. I don't know if Michigan can do a proper coaching search, though. There is so much pressure on the AD at those times from so many angles. It would take an extremely able person to navigate all the factions and come up with a candidate that satisfies them and their vanities whilst also being able to recruit talent and win games.