Michigan Football, the 2020 Abbreviated COVID Season

[WM Wolverine]

I was joking of course... It is one of those first world problems but it still requires you to constantly make good position coach hires. Continuity is a good thing, players can't like the turnover not to mention players being recruited.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Yeah, the churning of assistant coaches hurts. But like I said, in the business world, key employees are going to move on for higher pay, a rung up in the ladder, more perks, etc.

My grandson is a techy. He was offered a $60K signing bonus to go to work for Amazon after graduating from GaTech with a 2 year commitment at a starting salary around $100K annually. Once he started working at Amazon he also started networking with peers. Among this group of skilled employees, it's common to be constantly looking for the next position. The tech world changes constantly and skill sets change with it. He told me he interviewed about 2X per month while in the job he held at Amazon to sharpen his interview skills, such interviews being all technical and computer coding problem solving questions. He says you keep abreast of what tech companies are looking for this way.

His bosses at Amazon know this and there are hard plans in place to replace people who move on. He's had three jobs since he graduated in 2015, each one a step up in pay or perks. I assume CFB teams know or should know that assistants will move on and be fully prepared to slide guys already employed up or be networked sufficiently to know who is looking around ...... and these days, it seems most assistants are doing just that.

[Niffla]

I wouldn't say that Harbaugh ISN'T a QB whisperer- it's just that he whispers in a language that too "high level" for a lot of (most) QBs to understand. He's had a lot more success with the "intellectuals" (Luck, Ruddock, maybe even Kaepernick) that were less talented than skilled players like Speight and Patterson.

Wait. Did you just say that Andrew Luck and Colin Kaepernick are less talented than Wilton Speight (and Shea for that matter) or am I reading that wrong

[WingsFan]

Shoop fucking joke, old buddy of Browns who cant recruit. One and done.

Harbaugh is a great guy, but he needs to go back to the NFL . Then again all the coaches got bonuses for the Bowl game lol for a 9 win season, shows what the program is happy with.

[Hannibal]

Wow.

Don't know what to say about this one. What a huge disappointment this clown has been...

https://www.si.com/college/michigan/...higan-football

A respected insider on TheWolverine.com posts about Harbaugh and his staff weeding out a sense of "entitlement within the program" and guys that "aren't all in for the team" suggesting changes in recruiting philosophy and leadership to better assess players that will be selfless in their commitment to Michigan football. Ohio Staten the August of 2019, first-year offensive coordinator Josh Gattis jokingly references his starting quarterback spending too much time on the golf course during the summer, a comment that carried much more serious undertones behind the scenes. In fact, the players send a message, not electing senior Shea Patterson captain.

"There wasn't a lot we could do because Shea was our starting quarterback, but we wanted to let him and our coaches know we weren't happy with his work in the summer - both Joe [Milton] and Dylan [McCaffrey] outworked him, and then Coach immediately went against our decision and named him a captain," a recent departure shared. "Guys weren't happy."From the moment Shea arrived, he was treated differently, like he could never do anything wrong," another recent exiting player shared with WolverineDigest.com. "Wilton [Speight], John [O'Korn], Brandon [Peters] would all get chewed out for things that they just looked the other way with when it came to Shea."according to a friend of wide receiver Donovan Peoples-Jones, the DPJ camp was worried Michigan would not "put him in the best position to showcase his talent, just like they did with Jabrill Peppers and Rashan Garyat home After U-M's fourth straight bowl loss, rising senior cornerback Ambry Thomas gives an interview to Michigan's official network that the Wolverines did not do a good enough job in 2019 holding players accountable nsiders on both TheWolverine.com and TheMichiganInsider.com once again discuss "entitlement" and "playing favorites" and Harbaugh's desire to craft a program in his image,

[Tom W]

Wait. Did you just say that Andrew Luck and Colin Kaepernick are less talented than Wilton Speight (and Shea for that matter) or am I reading that wrong

You might be reading it, but the point lies in the whispers that you aren't hearing.

[hack]

That's a very long list of leadership problems, and unfortunately I don't think it's comprehensive. Something is just off about him now. We didn't get the guy SF and Stanford had. Got a different version.

?

[iam416]

To me, he has an odd fixation on Schembechler that really only shows itself at M. I expressed contemporaneous concerns about his ability to recruit at an elite level. But, I was not concerned, at all, with player development. The former is about where I thought it'd be -- pretty good, not elite. The latter is way below my expectations.

[WingsFan]

No more winning the off-season, this college football turning into the NBA where there are same 4 teams every year is turning me off. Never thought the osu vs Michigan game is a 'yea Ill pass' already know who's winning. All other sports in one way or another are not as good either, im watching less and less of all each year. Doesn't help all teams in Det-Metro suck. Fantasy football and betting is what keeps me interested. As a only a fan I just want the Red Wings back contending and they will be soon.




College football is broken and shows no signs of being fixedhttps://www.freep.com/story/sports/c...ff/4492794002/

[lineygoblue]

You know its getting pretty bad when the NFL Super Bowl champion is more unpredictable than CFB's champion.

Next year's CFB champion will most definitely be one of the top five from this year. It will be one of:

Alabama
Ohio State
Clemson
LSU
Oklahoma

Those are the only teams with a real shot at the championship. Nobody else is getting past them. If I were betting, I'd take those five against the rest of the entire field for 2020.

At least in the NFL there is some suspense as to whom will replace the Patriots.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I don't think the SI piece that Michael Spath wrote is terribly revealing. I think it elaborates on, a little too speculatively for my taste, player transfers and assistant coaching moves. Michigan football has them. Duhhh. No one on the outside, and Spath is in that space, can know with certainty what the causes are. A player quote here and there does not, IMO, allow for the extrapolations Spath makes. That does not mean everything he posted recently should be dismissed.

I think most observers know the M football machine is not well oiled and Jim Harbaugh is not the football coach we expected him to be when we compare how he has brought the program along in his 5 seasons as HC compared to the elites. Do I think Jim Harbaugh knows what the problems are, why his teams aren't competing with the elites and can identify solutions? Absolutely. Furthermore, unless he decides to leave, he's not leaving anytime soon. So raising red flags, like Spath is doing, is tilting at the proverbial windmill.

As well JH does not and should not listen to critics like Spath or those that emanate from the mostly uninformed M football posters on the vast web.

M football as I have said over and over recently is what it is. None of us are going to change it mostly because we don't know enough facts to make sound recommendations for fixes. It is entertaining and sometimes informative to discuss this stuff but no one should take it too seriously.

[froot loops]

The constant turnover of assistants is alarming, it is like the direct opposite of MSU's problem. Dantonio is loathe to get rid of any assistants and it is costing him, Harbaugh has new important assistants every year. I don't get the Partridge move myself, after you lose Washington and Mattison you would think they really would have focused on keeping their best recruiter.

[WingsFan]

Maybe "Coach Tank" will save the day!

[lineygoblue]

I see it a lot like Jeff does.

Today on "Pardon The Interruption" they showed that LSU is losing four (4) assistants. Coaches move on all the time. Even during Bo's years, coaches who worked for him went on and took on other jobs.

I'd like to see more continuity in the program. I absolutely wish we could have kept some of the people who have left. Campanile and Partridge among them. But coaches are people too. They want to build resumes' and they want to make more money. They want promotions, and sometimes there is no upward movement possible where they are now. Nobody is going to become the DC at Michigan as long as Don Brown is around. He's had chances to leave, but he's still here, which indicates to me he's probably staying for the long run. I wish we could have kept Jed Fisch, because if Harbaugh was supposedly the QB "whisperer", Fisch was the echo. He had a lot to do with Ruddock's development. We lost him right after that.

I don't think its indicative of some sort of a toxic environment, or some sort of hatred of Harbaugh. Its just part of the business.

[hack]

Re the Spath story, it would be easier to just shoot the messenger and move on if the volume of data pointing all in the same direction wasn't so big. You've now got this mix of anonymous player comments, not-anonymous player comments, former player comments, clear and verifiable observations, comparisons of transfer rates with OSU and PSU there, etc. etc. Spath's list isn't exhaustive, and it doesn't matter if he's an insider or an outsider for you to check most of those bullet points yourself. Spath maybe isn't the most respected of Michigan writers, but he's not new, he works for a credible publication, isn't Yoder, etc. Jeff, it's hard to understand why that's seen as significantly less credible than a guy you never heard of before popping up with an inconsistent and at times mildly contradictory mgoblog diary that's impossible to verify.