Michigan Football, the 2020 Abbreviated COVID Season

[Hannibal]

UC San Diego isn't I-A, but his dominance there in a short time should be factored into the equation. Harbaugh's stop there was a resounding success.

Harbaugh took over a program in 2007 that was in about the same shape as Rutgers right now. His final season at Stanford should be given far more weight than his first couple of seasons there. It took Harbaugh exactly as long as it would take any elite coach to convert a smoking crater into a great football team. And his teams didn't win with lower case "l" luck. They didn't Northwestern their way to a one loss season ala Gary Barnett's purple overacheivers. They beat the shit out of you unless you were Oregon.

Jimmy has had too many successful quarterbacks under him to write off his success as "muh Andrew Luck". Even Wilton Speight was a miracle salvage job in his first starting year (2016). Speight was a low to middle 3* Al Borges special that nobody of Michigan's caliber wanted, and the guy clearly lacked talent.

If we Michigan fans had unreasonable expectations when Harbaugh was hired, then that is still a smaller factor in our disappointment with Harbaugh over his performance at Michigan than the outright decline in his coaching. Especially his performance the past few years. Even in 2015 and 2016 there were some slightly troubling signs (e.g. the misjudgement of the Pepcat).

[Hannibal]

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This needs to happen.

[THE_WIZARD_]

M would have better luck playing pick up sticks with their butt cheeks than getting Urbs to coach in AA...

[Hannibal]

M would have better luck playing pick up sticks with their butt cheeks than getting Urbs to coach in AA...

Squatting on the ground now...

[THE_WIZARD_]

heh

[Hannibal]

Meyer is a nice fantasy to tide us over through our misery -- in the same way that comic book movies make for good wish fulfillment cinema for 350 pound nerds. The next guy willing to come to Michigan is going to have shortcomings and question marks though. We're never going to hire a guy with Harbaugh's pre-Michigan track record again. But there are some good coaches out there to be had.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Jay Gruden will be available soon...

[WingsFan]

Urbs would probably do it b/c he has no soul and he could name his price. Plus he is bitter about how he left osu. Michigan would never hire a cheater.

[hack]

Quality content from Talent. Thanks.

INDISPUTABLE -- 4.

AGREED -- 5, 6. Only point to contend that he didn't want to. Nobody was going to force him to do that. I've read in multiple places that he has absolute control with nobody questioning him or able to influence him in the way that an AD or some program elder might. I think he made a rash decision. One of the things keeping him from being an elite coach is that he appears to be too impulsive.

YES BUT - 2. Reasonable expectation at this point for JH would be to win this game 3-4 times a decade, or something like that. Results in that rivalry, like most, aren't a sum of the parts. It's still fair to wonder why beyond a talent gap. Coaches who are also clearly inferior like Hoke played OSU tougher, for the most part. Last year was the first time in three years that JH went into The Game with a healthy QB. I think that's more a matter of something wrong with the whole program than just bad luck. Maybe we didn't have Charbonnett on Saturday for similar-but-not-identical reasons to do with overall roster management.

MAYBE - 1, 3. Plenty of other coaches squander the talent he inherited in SF. He did what you should do with it. Luck wasn't his only success story -- the SD QB before luck, and after him Kaep and Alex Smith. To me it's more likely that Harbaugh's a very good QB coach, but not good enough to overcome what was once a good offense and now is a stale one. Any of his QBs would look much better and develop faster in an offense that made sense, IMO.

PROBABLY NOT - 7. I think there will be games where Brown takes the right risks, but less likely that they'll be the games we want them to be. This defense isn't going to be a good defense. The season rides on JH's ability to fix things on the fly after making dumb offseason decisions. I think there's an argument that he's at his best doing just that, and at his worst at season's end, when it's time to be clear-headed with diagnosis and make the right staff decisions that are so influential in determining your fate for the next 12 months.

[THE_WIZARD_]

...the Urbs went up to AA...he was lookin' for a soul to steal...he was in a bind cuz he was way behind (The Nick)...he was willin' to make a deal...

[hack]

Meyer is a nice fantasy to tide us over through our misery -- in the same way that comic book movies make for good wish fulfillment cinema for 350 pound nerds. The next guy willing to come to Michigan is going to have shortcomings and question marks though. We're never going to hire a guy with Harbaugh's pre-Michigan track record again. But there are some good coaches out there to be had.

Yes. Time to sort through the pile of up-and-coming candidates and pick the right one. Time to stop expecting to poach an elite coach and expect him to retire in place. One caveat -- it's not beyond the realm of possibility that Harbaugh rights his ship. I put the odds at 5%.

[hack]

...the Urbs went up to AA...he was lookin' for a soul to steal...he was in a bind cuz he was way behind (The Nick)...he was willin' to make a deal...

I suppose in this scenario Johnny is Denard Robinson?

[THE_WIZARD_]

no

[Jeff Buchanan]

You guys lost one friggin' game...hell tOSU was pounded by Purdue last year...at Iowa the year before...it happens...it's a long season...the sky isn't falling...

No, I don't think so. You watched the Wisconsin game, right? You're reading this thread, right? What went down in Madison suggests a 5 alarm fire is now raging in the dumpster that is Michigan football and has been smoldering for about 14 months.

[THE_WIZARD_]

pfffft