Michigan V. Army, Saturday, September 7th, Noon EDT, FOX/Fox Video

[froot loops]

I've made the case for years that HARBAUGH!!!! may have had an undeserved reputation. He's a good coach, but folks had him at the top of the heap. Those types of coaches usually have won something. He certainly had that reputation, but it amounted to Andrew Luck and getting a half-decent season from Kap.

I think his work with Alex Smith did a lot for the reputation, but Smith was a #1 pick. To me, it's too much quick fix. It's one thing to get a Jake Rudock as a grad transfer in the first season. You need a quick fix there and he did well for them. But in the meantime you needed to get a firm stable of recruits to do what he wanted to do. The Shea Patterson transfer looks like it was all sizzle no steak, I still don't know how he was rated so highly and he wasn't a fit for what Harbaugh is known for.

My impression is it is easier to find pocket passers and that is what Harbaugh is most comfortable with, I don't quite get the Gattis hire.

[Jeff Buchanan]

The Gattis hire was a good way to move M football into the 21st. Century. Im not seeing an impact at all. Something is amiss. I dont think us fans know what it is. I've seen nothing solid this morning to suggest a problem with an injury to Patterson that would suggest he can't safely execute the zone RO or RPO.

I'm waiting for someone with the balls to forcefully challenge JH at his Monday presser and ask him WTF.

The way you lose to Army is to get predictable and down with them in the mud - exactly what Harbaugh, I suppose, directed his offensive staff to do in the second half. Look at the numbers I posted earlier.

To me that strategy is a perfect example of why Harbaugh isn't what most of us thought he was.

[Hannibal]

I've made the case for years that HARBAUGH!!!! may have had an undeserved reputation. He's a good coach, but folks had him at the top of the heap. Those types of coaches usually have won something. He certainly had that reputation, but it amounted to Andrew Luck and getting a half-decent season from Kap.

There's no writing off Harbaugh's accomplishments before he arrived at Michigan. He was a legitimately elite coach. For what it's worth, he did win championships at UC San Diego. In his second and third year there, he won the conference championships and went 22-2. He turned Stanford into a national power in just four years. That would be like a new coach coming into Rutgers next year, scoring an upset over OSU in year one and then blowing out Michigan in year 3.

Winning championships seems like a pretty arbitrary crieria. He went 11-1 in 2010, which is no worse than at least a few seasons that OSU has won the conference or appeared in the national playoff under Tressel or Meyer with one or more losses. But it just so happens that Oregon went undefeated and played for a national title that year. It's not realistic to expect even an elite coach to take a smoking crater of a program like Stanford and score an undefeated season with that program within four years.

Does an NFC championship count as a championship? Because he did win one of those He also won three division championships. You have to beat more competitors to get to the Super Bowl than to win a college conference championship. He had smashing success in the NFL pretty quickly and he appeared in three consecutive conference championship games. Nick Saban bombed in the NFL and he never won a championship at MSU. He never had a one loss season either. Other than Jimmy Johnson, nobody has ever had that kind of success transitioning to the NFL that Harbaugh had.

The answer to Harbaugh's suckage at Michigan is not that he was never great to begin with. The answer is that for some reason, he and his teams have completely lost their edge. Harbaugh sucks. The doppleganger that is currently wearing the headset at Michigan is not the same guy that scored two upsets over USC at Stanford and almost won a Super Bowl.

[Hannibal]

Found via mgoblog:

Good post-game analysis by Joel Klatt

[lineygoblue]

Excellent analysis. A lot of great questions that Harbaugh better answer and fix before Wisconsin. That team we saw yesterday will struggle to win 7 games.

[iam416]

You and I disagree re Harbaugh pre-M.

[Hannibal]

Your lone criticism of Harbaugh pre-M seems to be "no championships", but he did win them at UC San Diego and with the 49ers, if you count NFL division or conference championships in that bucket. If your criticism is that he didn't with a Super Bowl in the NFL or a PAC-12 championship at Stanford, then that is a picky and unreasonable criteria. His 2010 Stanford team was good enough to win a conference championship most years, but that just so happened to be a year that somebody else in the conference went undefeated. In four years at MSU, Nick Saban never won jack shit and he didn't accomplish anything in the NFL either, and he never ran the table in college until 2009. His first conference championship came with three regular season losses, and his first national championship came with one loss.

If you don't think that Harbaugh was legitimately elite pre-M, then you have to at least acknowledge that he is significantly worse as a coach than he used to be. Harbaugh's work at UM is far and away the worst work that he has ever done as a coach. The Harbaugh of 2010 would have kicked the ever living shit out of Army. I think that even the Harbaugh of 2015 would have done that.

[iam416]

[maxreturn]

The triple option that Army runs is typically defended with a 3-3-5 formation - although this does not begin to describe the hybrid formations Brown runs. It does, however, in general and for my purposes in exposing Klatt, describe how M lined up almost exclusively v, Army with 3 tackles and a 3 Tech on the strong side and 3 LBs who are A, B and C gap fillers.

If you watch film of Army's OL play, what they do is available to any coaching staff ...... it's here's what we do, try to stop us. Their bread and butter play is the FB dive through the A and B gap. Their counter to it is the option play. It's not hard to understand Army's offense.

At the snap, the C and play side G block down on the DT that shows up in the A or B gap that the FB is going to run through - one blocks hi, the other low - this is not a chop block - and work to create a lane for the FB or QB to get as low as they can and get underneath the defenders. The back side G and T get as low as they can and force defender's outside. They do this better than any CFB team. The 3-Tech who lines up on the heavy side - usually the play side and on that G's outside shoulder is responsible for ripping through the first guy that shows up in his face and tackling the ball carrier in the back field. That would be, in this game, Jeter, Paye (sometimes) and Kemp. This guy's effectiveness is critical to keeping Army's offense off schedule.

They did this surprisingly well. There were plenty of times when M's DL held the FB or QB to a 2 yard or less gain but sometimes the FB or QB already had gained 3+ yards. Its not hard to take the hand-off and fall forward for 3 yards - to be concise about 9 feet or near the 6 foot height of their FB or QB - even if the LBs fill.

The defense wasn't the problem. They did their job and won the game on the last play of OT. Fitting.J oe Klatt is an idiot.

M's problem was the offense that was 2018 predictable and easily defended without the zone read option (why this wasn't available/executed remains a mystery), turned the ball over essentially 5 or 6 times by fumble, penalty or failed 4th and short, OL play that exposed Patterson and Patterson's janky accuracy/touch when he had time to go throough his progressions along with his dumb mistakes.

I don't think this is going to get fixed or change with Gattis "speed in space" play calling - it still looks very Harbuaghesque, If it was going to be championship level good, the first two games M has played would have been blowouts, especially the 2nd v. Army. Once again, as has been the case since Harbaugh arrived at Michigan 4 years ago, the team has no clear offensive identity and is generally one that can win v.bad opponents, loose close games against well coached, above average opponents (Army was very close and probably should have won that game) but is not likely to win championships.

I agree that the defense wasn't the problem. Clearly the offense was mostly to blame. I still say that when Army was in a a 3rd or 4th and short, it was just stupid that Brown stuck with the same scheme. The gaps or "bubbles" as Klatt put it were far too large. Michigan knew with a 90% probability what Army would do in those situations. Why not line up a beefy D lineman man for man?

[WM Wolverine]

Shea had 0 carries on all those RPO's, confirms he didn't have the option to pull and if not, M is best off just doing play action.

[lineygoblue]

Just a quick note to those of you that have been posting here for a long time.

We had a reunion of sorts, of the old "Borg" members at the Scio Church Road lot yesterday, and it was probably the largest group of original members that we've had in some time. Lots of pictures were taken, and a great time was had by all. The main attraction of the day was Dr. Hodgeman who is 88 years young, and has been with us since the old Freep days. He showed us a picture of his ticket stub for the Michigan vs MSC (msu) game in 1939, where he saw Tom Harmon play. It was his first game at Michigan Stadium. The price on the ticket was $2.75. That wouldn't buy you a hot dog nowadays.

I know Jeff took a few pics, and so did some others. Hopefully we'll get to see them within the next few days. Thanks to all who came out.

[drok]

His 2010 Stanford team was good enough to win a conference championship most years, but that just so happened to be a year that somebody else in the conference went undefeated.

I'm not looking to defend Harbaugh as I agree that he doesn't seem like the coach that he was, but you might say the same thing about M 2016.

[hack]

Good post, Hanni. He's clearly not the same guy. Granted, he did sneak up on the Pac-10 with his unique brand of brutal LOS physicality, and during the period in which he was in the NFL he arrived when there was a young core ready to rock. And college football went full spread while he was gone. So he's a bit of a dinosaur, perhaps. But that does not explain the mental mistakes, the flags, the wilting, and the lack of playmaking from supposed playmakers. But it very well could be true that he's just not the same guy. Made it to the top of his own personal mountain, and perhaps that adjustment in conjunction with the adjustment to the spread is a whole lot to adjust to.

[hack]

I'm not looking to defend Harbaugh as I agree that he doesn't seem like the coach that he was, but you might say the same thing about M 2016.

Important to remember this. '15 MSU and '16 OSU were exceptionally improbable loses, and in one of those games Michigan was not afforded the opportunity to compete on a level playing field. Those two outcomes have fundamentally shaped his tenure here and recruiting.

I also come back to the '17 OSU game. He had O'Korn in position to lead them to a win, and it sure would have helped if Metellus had caught that would-have-been massive interception. That '17 game plan shows me that you can't just assume the game has passed him by.

[hodgkal]

Just rejoined this forum. Saw several of the old regulars at the tailgate yesterday. I'm starting to agree we have a coaching problem. Not ready to give up on this team yet. I remember the consensus about Bo was that his teams always improved as the season progressed. This season may be Harbaughs last chance to dispel all the doubts that are growing..