Michigan Football, the 2020 Abbreviated COVID Season

[Jeff Buchanan]

I have had three computers open constructing this thread. One to the Wisconsin Game thread and the other to the Team 140/2019 thread. I'm wrote this on a third computer.

The post game inputs in these two threads from Hack, Hannibal, Tom W., Froot, AA, Wiz, Linesman and talent, others intermittently are really good stuff but they are dispersed in two threads. I've started this one, stuck it and relegated the Team 140/2019 thread to the unstuck stack below.

The purpose is to try to put these insightful posts into one place and discuss them further, if posters choose to do so, by number(s). All these excellent posts have a central theme: they try to shed light on the problems within the Michigan football program and explain the Wisconsin turd. There were lots of different issues having a baring on multiple levelsof the football program. Anyway, here's a distillation of the important points made in the two threads all in one place.

(1) Patterson's issues - the ones that are well documented by credible observation, e.g., NFL scouting reports, mgo UFR's, Gerdman's Michigan Mondays, this forum - are having a bigger impact on the efficiency of the 2019 Gattis offense than was anticipated. Injury? The "yips?" Is who we thought he would be? These are all speculated as reasons for his poor performance. His numbers to date back that up.

(a) Questions regarding Harbaugh's QB recruiting and development go back to Jake Rudock - a transfer QB that JH had good results with - to Patterson - another transfer. Since Rudock, Harbaugh has put QBs on the field that compared to their cohort QBs aren't good. The M's QB stats through the years support that assertion. Dillon McCaffrey and Cade Mcnamara remain unknowns with respect to Harbaugh's QB development skills.

(2) The introduction of the Gattis offense has produced offensive inefficiencies that are substantially greater than anticipated. This is both factual through 3 games (the stats) and anecdotal/credibly observed and reported

(a) It appears that through the first three games, Josh Gattis has made sweeping changes to the offense that were not necessary and have moved the offense away from what Patterson the OL under Warinner and Harbaugh are comfortable with. It's argued that a more incremental change that added what Gattis is good at but retained what Harbaugh has a record of being cutting edge with is called for. Could it be a reasonable approach going forward? Maybe. Some argue you have to go with what you have, find what yo do well and don't and tweek the play calling from there.

(b) In the Gattis era it appears that the coaches are trying to out-scheme opponents rather than focus on the details of execution, and coherence. This leads to the additional observation that the offense lacks an identity.

(3) Although speculative in it's character, Harbaugh appears to be average and ineffective as a coach when judging his 4 years and change as M's HC. That is contrary to a previous record that would indicate he is an elite coach.

(a) Reasons for that include staff churn, burn-out, the Zoloft theory, he was never elite, organizational skills insufficient to produce an elite college football team, bad game-day manager, becoming uninvolved at the detail level or ceding too much responsibility and control to the DC and OC, making bad strategic decisions (hiring Gattis based on a 20 minute phone call).

(b) Worth mentioning separately because it was mentioned in the Spath collection of former player interviews: Harbaugh is not good at pre-game motivational speeches. This affects road game performance. At home, it doesn't matter because you have the home-crowd, in the Big House, racing onto the field under the M banner .... those are motivational enough at home and they aren't present on the road. Might explain a good deal of Harbaugh's factual road record.

(c) Winning in the BT format and that of CFB is hard, harder than Harbaugh probably expected - can't scheme to overcome depth issues or talent deficiencies. Harbaugh's brand of power football that plays to the D was successful elsewhere for various reasons isn't good enough in the BT or nationally with competitive P5 teams ......Wisconsin may be an outlier but in 2019 mainly because of Taylor. Still, this is an Alvarez/Chryst theme that has brought Wisconsin
success.

(4) M football fan expectations for Harbaugh's ability to restore the program to elite status were unrealistic to begin with and remain so. He is a 9-3 coach with an occasional 10-2 season that will not compete for championships as expected. His coaching record in total supports that argument (excepting his NFC Championship at SF).

(a) A reason for that is the factual case that can be made that Harbaugh's recruiting is sub par when compared to the elite teams sustainably in contention for those championships.

(5) Harbaugh can't develop or retain the talent he does recruit (affects depth) in comparison to MSU, PSU or Wisconsin. This is a speculative position but it seems well supported by credible observation. IOW, Dantonio, Franklin and Chryst have comparable to less successful recruiting as measured by composite 247 rankings but are outperforming Harbaugh's football teams on the field.

(a) This includes a recent uptake in processing players or chasing them off. Without All-Americans on your roster, play-makers, you have to rely on your program players then retain and develop them.

(6) From Spath in his interview with former players posted today: The players on offense may be questioning who is in charge - Gattis or Harbaugh - and may not be buying into what is being offered up as the way to play football. We generally call this "losing the team." This is mere speculation because, even the interviewed players admit, they can't tell if team chemistry is being lost because they are no longer in the locker room. Most observed a drop off in offensive cohesion and intensity after the Mason fumble. Inserting Mason was 100% Harbaugh whihc brings inot question which offense - power or spread - are we going to run? What's our identity.

(7) The defense: Poor recruiting and a lot of misses on quality DTs are dictating what Brown has to do and it is hard to do it with scheme.

(a) Shitty offense as detailed above, contributes to the woes of the defense. That the D has woes is beyond question and the stats from the last 2 games in 2018 and the first three in 2019 support that position.

(b) The man-v. zone argument is present in an assessment of Brown's D. So are risk management decisions he is making as it pertains to determining the benefits v. the risks of his aggressive approach (Brown being Brown).

(8) Michigan Super-Fan Review .... "It's all on the head coach and he is not the same Harbaugh that M hired in 2013 - he is being treated for a health issue (that is affecting his performance)."

[Jeff Buchanan]

(8) Super Fan's allegation that Harbaugh is being medicated.

I can't support this as there are insufficient additional observations from qualified observers to make such observations to corroborate it.

I think he is changed - the old versus the new Harbaugh argument. But my take is that it comes with the territory of aging both in positive and negative ways. I am more inclined to think that his change is assignable to age. I use my own life experience, especially that from my mid to late 50s and into my 70s, to make that call.

The important point is that I think that change has little if any affect on his capacity as a coach. You adapt, at least that's been my experience. Stress is a factor and so is burn-out and becoming phlegmatic about your duties. You can get lazy and he may be experiencing that. The response, at least mine was, to look at yourself and evaluate how you are doing and answer the question do you want to be doing better at your job or have circumstances changed and you found new interests and priorities and want to move on.

I think Jim is in that place and we'll see what happens. Lots of folks are calling the next three games critical in determining Jim's future and I see it as a measure of how he will have made that decision.

[Hannibal]

If Jim is suddenly tired, burned out, and that has made him complacent, it is happening at the age of 55 after only four years at his alma mater. I'm pretty sure that it is the first time that I have ever seen a coach get "tired" under this circumstance. The nature of Harbaugh's failure is unprecedented and it begs for an explanation.

[hack]

It does. I do hate the speculation, but you just don't see lifelong tantrum throwers suddenly find their calm and peaceful place and never raise their voices again. We'll probably always be just speculating about this, but it's a fair question.

[Jeff Buchanan]

If Jim is suddenly tired, burned out, and that has made him complacent, it is happening at the age of 55 after only four years at his alma mater. I'm pretty sure that it is the first time that I have ever seen a coach get "tired" under this circumstance. The nature of Harbaugh's failure is unprecedented and it begs for an explanation.

Harbaugh's been on a continuous 27 year tear as a college player, NFL player, college and NFL coach. There have been no breaks in employing his craft. I don't find it odd at all that he might be at a place in his life where he is going through some kind of assessment of where he is and where he wants to go from here.

I was 42 when I retired from the Marine Corps after 21 years of almost exclusively flying fighters. I never had a desk job, was constantly deployed, including aboard aircraft carriers, had a wife and children at home that barely knew who I was and I barely knew them. You reassess. I could have stayed on and taken a comfy staff job made at least one more rank, maybe become a general but the thought of leaving what I loved most but was getting lazy about - flying - then staying in uniform was one I chose not to pursue. I went to Medical school instead. It was challenging and the practice setting I chose wasn't much different than flying jets. After 22 years of that I reasses again and retired.

It happens. I find this a much more believable circumstance for Harbaugh than the Zoloft Theory. YMMV

[hack]

You're not a football coach.

[Jeff Buchanan]

You're not a football coach.

Correct.

There are unmistakable parallels between what I've done for the last 50 years and what Harbaugh has done for the last 27. We are/were both engaged in high performance professions. You know, like fire fighters and policemen. Your shelf life in one of these professions, among many others that are not nearly as dangerous, e.g., trial layers working for high profile law firms, cooperate CEOs and the like, that wear suits and not uniforms is short.

Again, I find "use before September 2019" a much more supportable theory for JH's seemingly being vacant, checked out or any of the innumerable descriptors I have heard of his side line and presser behavior than Harbaugh is "medicated." JMO. I don't think you and I are going to agree even though I am right.

[Jeff Buchanan]

The role of the defense in M's collapse v. Wisconsin and in fact, its under-performance in all of the 2019 season to date, hasn't gotten nearly the attention the offense has received. This is a terrific piece from mgo that goes through the details of what Brown has been trying to do to mitigate the poor DT play and how this has failed against both Army and Wisconsin. The truth of the matter though is that if Brown had simply played his DTs straight up in some sort of 4-3 configuration, Wisconsin would have just run right at them. It would have looked like RR's game v. Wisconsin in AA where Wisconsin didn't throw a single pass. At least Brown made Chryst think ...... didn't take him long to figure it out though. Props to Wisconsin.

Did Don Brown get exposed?

I think he got beat, but that's not the same thing. I've been hammering this and hammering this ever since we got our first glimpse over the horizon of life after Mo Hurst: good defense in modern footballs starts with the defensive tackles. When you have good ones, offenses have to burn resources and remove chunks of their playbooks to account for that, and you can pay off your pass rush by making sure there's no pocket to step into. When you have bad ones, the offense can use extra blockers for your pass rushers, send more receivers into routes, and force you into playing risky defense with your linebackers to make up for those deficiencies. If you don't roll the dice, they'll just shove you down the field five yards at a time. The more risk you add, the more you're likely to have failures.

Some of the risks Michigan took made sense, some paid off, and some were just goofy. With some better luck, and not having to face Wisconsin again, I don't think we're going to see them exposed again this badly. From the first drive it was Wisconsin was a bad matchup for a flawed defense. I didn't see anything to substantially change our opinions on Don Brown.

https://mgoblog.com/content/neck-sha...yway#read-more

[Niffla]

So, just for fun...if Jim either moves on via his own decision, or gets let go (still very difficult for me to see this happening, I mean they would give him at least one more year if they were really starting to have doubts....right??), who would you guys want? Realistically, too.

[hack]

Why compare him to you when there are hundreds of other football coaches? That's a direct comparison.

[hack]

So, just for fun...if Jim either moves on via his own decision, or gets let go (still very difficult for me to see this happening, I mean they would give him at least one more year if they were really starting to have doubts....right??), who would you guys want? Realistically, too.

One more year means a year to observe Urban Meyer's OC at USC. It's always a good decision to hire his OC.

[iam416]

You already hired one. Ed Warinner. Heh.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Wizard- I found your post on the closed thread to be both informative and witty. However, it is incorrect to say AA drinks Zima.

He drinks White Claw. Which is, to say, Zima.

[hack]

You already hired one. Ed Warinner. Heh.

No regrets, tho LOL at his ranking amongst them of course.

[iam416]