Michigan @ Wisconsin, Saturday, 9/21/19, Noon(EDT), Fox Sports

[Hannibal]

Meyer would never come to Michigan. A phone call is free so they should ask, but he would never say yes.

[froot loops]

I don't know, Meyer is a weird dude. I can't quite figure him out. I wouldn't put it past him, the dude was truly bummed last week that the Spartans lost and there was a lot of bad blood between him and Dantonio at one point. I don't think he is that wedded to rivalries as the average fan.. it would be a true nightmare because he wouldn't screw around. Their would be no silver lining but it would make Brian Cook mad.

[froot loops]

The results would match the rhetoric with Meyer. Send him to LA pronto.

[paul daugherity]

[Whitley]

Man, they are worse than I thought. This should be a real wake up call for a lot of the Michigan fan base. I am not sure this team gets to a bowl game this year. Think about that. I think right now you can for sure count Ohio State and Notre Dame as blowouts. I am not sure this team is capable of beating MSU, Penn State or even Iowa right now.

[hack]

I don't think it would happen either. Too much pride in A2.

[maxreturn]

Excellent point. My thoughts exactly. At UM he has faced an entirely different class of teams and he had utterly failed to adapt.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Patterson sucks. The DTs will get fully exposed in this game. I'm calling 35-17 Wisconsin.

Got that about right.

Unfathomably bad loss.

Biggest take-aways for me:

• Patterson is mentally toasted, probably damaged goods and functionally incapable of leading M's offense no matter it's identity when it can find one.
• Don Brown suffered the fourth consecutive depantsing of his scheme.
• The Gattis offense is an abject failure.
• Jim Harbaugh accelerates the 13 year decline of Michigan football.

[iam416]

*I think Shea is what he is and you're more or less correct
*I think Don Brown is working with less than he'd prefer but he's still gonna Don Brown and that's a problem
*I think it's too early on Gattis, but warning sirens are blaring
*HARBAUGH!!!! arrested the decline and improved the program. It could be that M's ceiling is further cemented.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Agree with the warning signs blaring on Gattis. "Abject failure" was a little strong.

When I speak of Harbaugh "accelerating (sic.) the decline of Michigan football," I should have described his tenure as accelerating the trend toward irrelevance. People talk about brands and Michigan is certainly a brand and a powerful one. Keep this in mind about brands: no matter how shitty Kleenex tissue might become, facial tissue is still going to be known as Kleenex and 3M's Cellophane tape is going to be known as Scotch tape and you'll continue to buy those products because of that branding.

I think the power of the Michigan brand is conflated with the greatness, and in this case the stunning lack thereof, of Michigan's football program. We've been talking about how bad the program has been for a looooong time when it comes to winning championships and that's what should give a football program staying power ..... relevance on the national CFB scene. The last time M won the outright BT Championship? 2004. Since then, they've been a bridesmaid, an also ran.

I don't see Harbaugh winning Championships any time soon. The trend of putting teams on the field that lose big games, rivalry games, statement games is well established over his nearly 5 year tenure as M's HC. I don't see it happening, certainly not this season, or any time soon. Given what we know about Patterson and continuing problems on the OL and Don Brown continue to do his thing it appears to be a lost cause for 2019. I would not doubt the top HS recruits aren't going to want to play for a loser so, the kinds of embarrassing loses M has sustained under Coach Harbaugh is going to be instrumental in keeping the gap between Michigan's talent level and that of the elite contenders wide.

[Hannibal]

[Lem B]

But Bo's bowl record was 5-12 so what's the difference?

[hack]

Beating OSU.

[Hannibal]

Bo could beat OSU. And he beat some really good ones too.

[iam416]

10 wins is a nice milepost-type metric, but it's not a good one for comparing eras because, well, the extra game(s). It's still losses. HARBAUGH!!!!'s best seasons were 3-loss seasons. That's not impressive.

Finally, losses are a better metric because the extra regular season game is generally a total wipeout game and the Power Schools of yore rarely, if ever, played MAC-level teams. Bo's non-conference was almost always against other "power" conference teams. Losses may not be as good a metric if you ended up in the CCG or CFP playing extra "hard" games, but that's not the case. The only thing in Bo's favor re "losses" is archaic rules kept him out of probably 5 bowl games (and thus, potential losses -- even with his best teams).

In any event, 3-loss seasons aren't particularly grand. Recall that good ol' Earle Bruce was "ol' 9-3" -- and if he were coaching with an extra game, "ol' 10-3".