Michigan Football, Team 139, 2018 Season

[froot loops]

pssst...

talent expected OSU to win irrespective of his consistent sandbagging.

[hack]

Talent can speak for himself if he wishes to, but I go by his performance in AA's contest. But the point stands. Hindsight is obvious. Without the benefit of it, everyone thought Michigan would win.

[WingsFan]

Talent thought Michigan was going to win

[Jeff Buchanan]

Talent can speak for himself if he wishes to, but I go by his performance in AA's contest. But the point stands. Hindsight is obvious. Without the benefit of it, everyone thought Michigan would win.

That's accurate. What I thought you were questioning was that I didn't see problems in both osu's and M's offense and defense pre-game. The thing I was most confident about and most wrong about was the failure of Brown's defense to pressure Haskins and provide good coverage on the back end to make him think twice about his throws......long enough to get him out of rhythm or sack him.

[iam416]

[WM Wolverine]

My defense of the offense was more personnel/talent. I dislike the overly conservative play calling (too many runs on 1st down) that leads to difficult to convert passing situations. This issue has been here all four years of JH, can't really put fault at Pep like many want to do...

This strategy only works when you're gaining 6 yards a rush. When faced against a better defense, JH is to slow to adjust to throw the ball more if he adjusts at all.

[Jeff Buchanan]

My defense of the offense was more personnel/talent. I dislike the overly conservative play calling (too many runs on 1st down) that leads to difficult to convert passing situations. This issue has been here all four years of JH, can't really put fault at Pep like many want to do...

This strategy only works when you're gaining 6 yards a rush. When faced against a better defense, JH is to slow to adjust to throw the ball more if he adjusts at all.

Generally, this has been the standard complaint regarding JH's offense at M. I read an article a while back that gave some impressive statistical analysis of why JH runs a run-centric offense. What the analysis did was to compare the run/pass percentage in every Harbaugh game as a head coach, including his SDSU, Stanford and SF HC'ing gigs, to wins and losses. When the passing rate exceeded 40%. Harbaugh's teams lost. He also didn't lose a lot so, you do the math.

The analysis opined that running the ball is baked into how Harbaugh schemes for games. My take is that when he HAS to pass because it's the 4th quarter and he's behind by 2 or more scores, he loses possibly because he doesn't have a plan B to cope with an opponent that is stopping the run and busting the chops of his defense (see osu). I don't know if there is a pattern to when JH starts to increase the run to pass ratio in favor of the pass. My take, like WM's, is that he waits too long trying to reimpose his game strategy on the opponent.

It's already been said so I'm just stating the obvious. Harbaugh has the tools on his roster to be way more dynamic on offense than he chooses to be if he wants to compete on an elite level. Will he change going forward? This is what I'll be watching in the coming months: Jim did a good job bringing in coaches (and Shea Patterson) to improve aspects of the offense that needed improving after the 2017 season. If that's a pattern, then he'll bring in some fresh minds on offense. I don't care if Pep Hamilton stays or goes. I'd prefer the later and he still may get taken - following the Tim Drevno treatment by JH. If he stays, the combo of JH/PH needs to be infused with some new thinking and these two need to be willing to listen.

Of course one can argue that no top offensive mind or someone lower down on the food chain of the offensive staff with the resume is going to sign with Michigan to be behind Pep Hamilton. Based on the way Harbaugh landed Ed Warriner though, maybe he can arrange something. He's no fool. I find it hard to believe he didn't see his approach to the game crumble before his eyes in c-bus. One can only hope and I'm running out of patience continuing to do that.

[iam416]

t's already been said so I'm just stating the obvious. Harbaugh has the tools on his roster to be way more dynamic on offense than he chooses to be if he wants to compete on an elite level.

It really is obvious. Love their downfield targets. I think Shea is pretty good and can be really good. I'm really hoping he goes pro, but, unfortunately, he didn't show enough. And Higdon is a solid grinder. OL is a little sketchy in pass defense at times, but, honestly, no worse than OSU's. Maybe even better.

[UMStan White]

The end of days are here. Three cogent posts by Wiz is evidence the apocalypse has started. Make your peace with God before it is too late

[Jeff Buchanan]

Every Michigan fan knows this ...... once you have M football in your blood, there's no turning away. No quitting, no giving up hope, you're stuck with it and all its warts.

I'm reading a book called "Factfulness - Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World - and Why Things Are Better Than You Think," By Hans Rosling; Flatiron Books, April 2018.

Rosling has been a data watcher and does that in some capacity for NGOs and the UN. He does a lot of lecturing at high level economic and humanitarian gatherings. with the subject being things are not as awful as the appear to be. He undertook this lecturing after years of study of average people's and very smart people's views of the world. He found these views were stunningly wrong and easily proven so with the facts. Yet, many of those he interacted with, as wrong as they were, were involved in major policy decisions of governments world wide or advising government entities on formulating policy.

He's Swedish; he's a socialist I would assume or at least an enlightened one, I would think, based on his generally favorable views of the impact of Capitalism on good in the world. Anyway, he informs readers to look at the middle not the extremes upon which you might conclude the world is going to shit in a hand basket. He notes, to no one's surprise, that the press loves and reports about the extremes, the crisis of the world and rarely reports the good that happens every day, unless they want to lose their jobs.

He sites a lot of data and graphs in the book that demonstrate what he's talking about. Remember the fears that the author of books who spouted the line that the planet will no longer be able to support the exploding global population by some future date? Well, the author based his claims on the straight line projection of global population growth. However, it's not a linear or straight line. It's complicated. Read the book. Bottom line: Population is increasing but, like history demonstrates, it will flatten out and remain constant like it did from 1200 to around the middle of the 20th century. He shows the reason for that is progress, the progress that lifts the world's population out of poverty and poor health that accompanies it. Better educated and wealthier populations that come with that bear fewer babies. Population reaches a balance between lower birth rates and longer life expectancy. Facts ..... the destroyer of ill-informed hot takes, bad data and the bad conclusions that spring from these.

So, why do I bring this up? Because things are not as bad as they appear to be with M football. Since Jim Harbaugh arrived, M has gone 38-13 and has a good chance to go 11-2 in 2018. There are a dozen notable positive achievement for M football for every ND or osu loss ....... we attach too much importance to these outliers. We are over focused on them. The facts paint a different picture. I think Harbugh understands this better than we do. There's no scandals, no hint of untoward booster behavior enticing recruits to sign and from what we know of it, Harbaugh and his staff don't negative recruit other programs. Our rivals and other programs at the elite level, where M would like to be, can shit allover this assessment. Fine, have at it. I tend to define excellence, perhaps have been forced to but I'm ok with that, in different ways than beating team X or team Y.

In terms of Rosling's thesis, there are bad things going on with M football but M football is getting better. Can't ignore the problems - and there are some, most of us who watch the team know what they are - but we also should not ignore things are getting better. Let the experts employed by the U to coach and manage the football program address the problems. This is not settling for second tier, also-ran or any of that stuff I can be accused of for seeing the middle and not the extremes. It's learning how to deal with the extremes in a rational manner and not let those distort one's appreciation and enjoyment of a great football program and tradition. Michigan football is fine.

[iam416]

He's Swedish; he's a socialist I would assume or at least an enlightened one, I would think, based on his generally favorable views of the impact of Capitalism on good in the world. Anyway, he informs readers to look at the middle not the extremes upon which you might conclude the world is going to shit in a hand basket. He notes, to no one's surprise, that the press loves and reports about the extremes, the crisis of the world and rarely reports the good that happens every day, unless they want to lose their jobs.

He sites a lot of data and graphs in the book that demonstrate what he's talking about. Remember the fears that the author of books who spouted the line that the planet will no longer be able to support the exploding global population by some future date? Well, the author based his claims on the straight line projection of global population growth. However, it's not a linear or straight line. It's complicated. Read the book. Bottom line: Population is increasing but, like history demonstrates, it will flatten out and remain constant like it did from 1200 to around the middle of the 20th century. He shows the reason for that is progress, the progress that lifts the world's population out of poverty and poor health that accompanies it. Better educated and wealthier populations that come with that bear fewer babies. Population reaches a balance between lower birth rates and longer life expectancy. Facts ..... the destroyer of ill-informed hot takes, bad data and the bad conclusions that spring from these.

Dude sounds a lot like me. Except the Swedish part. And the socialist part. And especially the enlightened part.

As more M football, I think your take does deserve mockery, but I also think the rational view is that M is in a pretty good spot but it may be hard to get to the elite spot M fans so entitled to.

[hack]

Jeff's discovery of a Michigan-football angle is just absolutely sublime -- thanks for connecting those dots, Jeff. It might be exactly right.

Rosling died a year ago or so, and his son has followed in his footsteps and finished off the book. I think he is going to be a fascinating person to watch. He's the caretaker of his father's powerful legacy, but also more keenly aware of the risks to it, as far as I can see. Rosling Sr. was data-driven, and a candle-against-the-darkness kind of guy, in the way that boomers can sometimes be. What made him so powerful is that he went and saw it for himself around the world, rather than just crunching the numbers from his desk at home. I don't think his washing-machine TED talk would have become so famous or powerful without him being witness to this stuff in situ. (https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosli...ashing_machine)

Nicholas Nasim Taleb's turkey/Thanksgiving fallacy in Black Swan IMO makes a good response to the population argument. It's a great example of Rosling and where being totally dedicated to the data can sometimes fall short. He's right about progress, but another factor is that the original thesis about food production and population was posited before the Europeans who made it (Malthus) fully understood the agricultural potential of the Americas, which altered the demand-supply equation permanently. So it's not just progress but natural endowment. I don't know if Rosling addresses that in the book, but in past bits of his that I have consumed, he has not. IMO the next step in proofing the argument would be to demonstrate why progress is both a) expected to continue and b) will benefit all. For most of his life it was true, and was a bedrock assumption for people of his generation. Hard to deny them that -- people living longer and moving up the economic ladder was what they saw for most of their lives. But it's not what the people that came before them saw for most of their lives, or what the people that have come later are seeing. Maybe the low-hanging fruit has been picked. The new book coauthored by The Economist's Bagehot columnist and Alan Greenspan makes this argument. That's why for me the son is going to be so interesting to follow in the years to come.

[WM Wolverine]

"rational view is that M is in a pretty good spot but it may be hard to get to the elite spot M fans so entitled to"

This...

Harbaugh brought M up to a top 5-10 program, that's where M belongs with an adult in charge. But it's another major step to get where Bama, Clemson and the Buckeyes are.

[iam416]

Alabama did it with sheer talent overload and arguably the best CFB coach ever. Ohio State did it in much the same way, but just a little lesser in both. For Dabo, though, it took some time. An DeShaun Watson. And then a ridiculous DL. And Lawrence going forward. And the ACC is trash.

If M goes the OSU route and they're still a long way off from taking the field against Alabama with a non-laughable expectation of winning. The Clemson route may be better IF Day proves average and IF M can find their own Watson. The B10 West will put up no resistance for awhile, so it's all about winning the East with 1 or fewer conference losses. But, then you face CFP obliteration without a QB that can save your ass.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Fully agree with the notion that its's another major step to get Michigan to where Alabama, Clemson and osu are. I don't think Harbaugh's or Brown's reputations are going to reel in the 5* talent to do it either. My view is that there are too many obstacles - Michigan's criteria for recruits (not talking about academic standards - it's about the character and personality of players that Jim's staff is willing to invest in), geography, local HS player pool from a talent standpoint.

Moreover, unless Harbaugh makes a concerted effort to implement a more dynamic offense, I don't think he can consistently win the East regardless of talent. There's plenty of takes out there that indicate there are quality offensive players, particularly QBs, that look at Michigan's approach to the game and don't want to play in that offense. Patterson has all the tools. It doesn't take a lot to see Pep's passing game doesn't appear to be optimizing it. Shea not only has a quick release for the short passing game but he also has has a very good long ball. Observers have noted that he appears to be so concerned about turning the ball over that he tends to guide the ball. It causes a lot of balls to be under thrown. He's inconsistent in this regard. Sometimes he's scarry, dead on good throwing long or short. Sometimes he's not and this season he got good protection most of the time. Good arguments are out there that Pep's overall approach to the passing game is also not going to recruit anymore DPJ and Nico Collins types ..... these are two great receivers whose numbers in the targeting department, completions and yards per show a decided tendency to under-use the talent these two have.

Like has been said, M's in a good spot. We'll see in the off season whether or not Harbaugh does anything to enhance the passing game simply by watching coaching staff changes if there are any. We could get a glimpse of, "yeah, I get it, my approach to facing a dynamic offense that successfully throws the ball against my defense and scores points, requires changing how I deal with that" v. Florida. Because if I'm Dan Mullen, I attack M's defense exactly how ufm and day did...... and I don't let Harbaugh dictate his type of game like ufm and day refused to do.

I'm not confident he will change his strategic approach to the game for all the reasons we've all talked about here. But, then again, I'm not going to get all worked up about it either. It is what it is. My new reality.