Michigan Football, Team 139, 2018 Season

[AlabamAlum]

There, there...show me on the doll where the Slive man hurt you.

[hack]

If that's one of Wiz's dolls I'm not going anywhere near it.

[FanFromCali]

I'm curious:

As Michigan fans what are your expectations for next year? Where are you with Harbaugh? What would it take before you would want the school to make a change?

[Hannibal]

My expectations for 2018 are 7-5, with a chance at 8-4 if we hold serve in every game where we are favored.

There's not much that will make me want a change. We'll never find a guy with a better resume than Harbaugh. If Harbaugh fails than the next guy will fail worse. This is the endgame. We're a rich man's Iowa now.

[iam416]

@ND
WMU
SMU
UNL
@NW
Maryland
Wisconsin
@Sparty
Penn State
@Rutgers
Indiana
@OSU

It's hard, at least for me, because I don't know what to think of the offense. I have a pretty good idea that the defense will be very solid. I think it impossible for the offense not to improve, but how much is a mystery. I'll say this, as an optimistic note -- Troy Smith was hot garbage when first replaced Zwick in 2004 (as a redshirt soph). He didn't really flash until the M game and even that felt fluky. All of that is to say that I wouldn't write off Peters. The flip side, of course, is that more often than not they player is exactly what they seem, but I don't think that's true with Peters.

Anywho -- with modest offensive improvement:

Sure Wins: WMU, SMU, UNL, Maryland, Rutgers, Indiana

More likely than not: NW

Toss-ups: Wisky and Penn State

Probable losses: Sparty, ND and OSU (I actually think Sparty and ND are more of a toss-up, but Hanni will crush that idea).

My personal O/U is 8.5 (my guess is that Vegas will have it at 8 ). I think 8-4 with a marginally improved offense; 9-3 with real improvement and 10-2/11-1 if the lights come on like the Griswold home at Christmas.

[iam416]

The hardest thing for me is the way the offense LOOKS. It's also my problem with OSU (brief digression on that at the end). When I watch M's offense play it just LOOKS terrible. Even when they're moving the ball it seems like they're living on borrowed time. The OL looks cemented in pass protection. The running backs have little space. And the passing game just looks bad. The look and feel is just so bad that it's hard to muster a ton of faith in massive improvement.

Digression -- it's the same way with JTB and OSU. Most games -- even when they're bulldozing teams -- I'm watching and thinking "that will never work against a real defense." They just never LOOK dominant (with the exception of the Sparty anomaly). It creates the sense that if they/when they played a really good defense they'd get smoked.

[Rocky Bleier]

Double or cross post, Rocky. I posted the link to the claims v. RR by the alleged victim's attorney in The Rest of CFB thread where it belongs. I just deleted yours, sorry, so the discussion, if anyone wants to have it on this disgusting behavior, is in another thread.

No problem. I didn't know where to put it , but now I see that's where it should be.

[Rocky Bleier]

The hardest thing for me is the way the offense LOOKS. It's also my problem with OSU (brief digression on that at the end). When I watch M's offense play it just LOOKS terrible. Even when they're moving the ball it seems like they're living on borrowed time. The OL looks cemented in pass protection. The running backs have little space. And the passing game just looks bad. The look and feel is just so bad that it's hard to muster a ton of faith in massive improvement.

That's a great way to put it. Every first down seems to require a bit of luck.

[froot loops]

It's silly to think if Harbaugh fails then it's the endgame. He hasn't failed yet and if he does fail, nothing says the next guy coming in won't be the next Nick Saban. If anything it shows how hard it is to succeed even at a blue blood school. Really the only thing Harbaugh is failing is the easy button test.

This year you were bound to have a downturn, it was a little ugly but if you have a defense it's easier to turn it around. Maybe 2018 brings a little needed underdog mentality, as a Spartan I prefer the program keep the entitled front runner persona though.

[Hannibal]

@MSU and @OSU are 100% guaranteed lock losses.

We'll be underdogs at ND but we have had uncanny success (IMHO) against Brian Kelly (RichRod and Hoke when 3-2 against him!). So I'm not calling that one a lock. But we'll still be 'dogs.

There's easily one more loss in there between PSU, @NW, Wisky, Nebraska, and Maryland.

[Hannibal]

Froot -- Harbaugh's predecessors lowered the bar enough to where Harbaugh would have to have back-to-back losing seasons to even be on the hot seat. At the very least, he is the most deeply entrenched coach that we are ever going to have. With most bad coaches, you can look in hindsight to see that it wasn't a good hire. You can't do that with Jimmy. It's not impossible to imagine that somebody else could do better, but we'll never find another guy who comes in with an A+ resume and who is also a perfect fit like Harbaugh.

[froot loops]

You don't need to find the guy with the A+ resume, you need to find the guy who is the right fit. Harbaugh checks a lot of the boxes that would seemingly make a perfect fit, but I don't think he is actually is. I think that's what you are seeing here, he is struggling to fit here beyond the fan service stuff.

He might turn it on in year 4 and defy expectations with a little underdog mentality that they are bound (and need) to have. But he can also get frustrated in year 5 and bolt for the NFL. Nobody knows, but if he did the latter there is nothing that says the next coach won't be the perfect fit. The tools will always be there, it's up to the coach to deploy them correctly.

[Hannibal]

How is Harbaugh not a perfect fit? He is an alumnus. He knows the fans. He knows the expectations and he had met those types of expectations in his previous jobs. He knows the traditions. He was a hero to the old timers and he played during Michigan's glory days. There is a small handful of up-and-coming guys like Mike Hart who played for Lloyd, but I'd prefer a guy who knows what it's like to win big. He instantly reunited and energized a cranky fanbase when he arrived. On offense, the personnel that Hoke recruited was also a very good fit for what Harbaugh wanted to do there, so there was little to no transitional pain expected.

I like quite a few coaches in the B1G better, but who would be a better fit? The only guy that I would want who I think even comes close in the fit department is Paul Chryst.

I would be surprised if Harbaugh ever gets fired from this job. I could very easily see him going back to the NFL though if he has another crappy season because he will start to feel "underappreciated". In that case I would probably just shrug my shoulders and brace for another coaching search that would likely end in disappointment.

Anywho, FanfromCali asks a great question, which is "what would it take for Harbaugh to get on the hot seat"? I expect that you will start hearing that question more. My answer is that it would take a lot more losing than it would for just about any other guy.

[Hannibal]

The hardest thing for me is the way the offense LOOKS. It's also my problem with OSU (brief digression on that at the end). When I watch M's offense play it just LOOKS terrible. Even when they're moving the ball it seems like they're living on borrowed time. The OL looks cemented in pass protection. The running backs have little space. And the passing game just looks bad. The look and feel is just so bad that it's hard to muster a ton of faith in massive improvement.

That's as good a way to put it as any. The offense this year was a disastrous clusterfuck. On the whole, I think that I would rank it about even with the 2013 offense, which sucked a lot worse running the ball but was able to scheme and DevinGardner their way to a handful of offensive explosions (41 vs. OSU, 63 vs. Indiana, 52 vs. CMU, and 41 vs. ND!).

There is some evidence that Greg Frey was a horrible fit and that may have been a contributing factor. There was so much wrong with our coaching staff on offense this year.

[froot loops]

It's just my opinion, but a lot the things you listed parts of his resume that make him a perfect fit I consider fan service and absolutely inessential to building a program. That includes alumnus, hero to old timers, instantly energizing the cranky fan base upon arrival. That's what I call Easy Button fixes, winning the press conference if you will. The success at other places is good and probably a prerequisite, but fans all over America make the mistake of extrapolating prior success to their team of choice in the present.