For those ball washing Harbaugh at Michigan and what a great coach he is....insiders from Michigan know what a MESS that program is right now.
The Elephant in the Room
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Jim__S
.........we all know that the issues revolving around this team run much, much deeper and true frosh contributions are among the least of our problems. I spoke with many coaches at the AFCA, including several Wolverine staffers and former players and coaches. I asked questions, looked, learned and listened. There was a dynamic that made me feel uneasy with respect to both the current status and future direction of the program. Actually, very uneasy. This uneasiness emanates from several factors, some of which I will touch upon, others of which I will not. Suffice to say, I was on the brink of having a Darth Vader moment, and simply turning to the dark side when it comes to the program. I am an optimist by nature, especially as a Michigan fan, but as fans we sometimes see what we want to, or hope to see. Talking to coaches and people more connected to Ann Arbor, a different reality emerges. So where to begin? What to share in this posting and where to, shall we say, tread very lightly, if at all?
I guess the most logical place to start is with the Elephant in the Room. When Jim Harbaugh signed up to be head coach at Michigan there was a sense of inevitability amongst the fan base that he was the chosen one, the coach who would lead us to the promised land and etched in stone on the college football version of Mount Rushmore amongst the great current coaches, alongside the likes of Saban and Urban. The question was not if it would happen, but when. But here we are three years down the road coming off an 8-5 season. Yes, I expected a speed bump this season and was more pessimistic than most. That meant hoping for 10-2 and expecting 9-3, certainly not 8-5. The problem is that the losses were in good part due to issues that I do not expect to be resolved in the near future. Only so much of what we saw this season can be attributed to youth, especially on offense. Most of the responsibility, in my view, rests with the coaching staff. And Jim Harbaugh runs the show and the buck stops with him. That is the Elephant in the Room. Posing the question of what next IF Harbaugh fails, a possibility that seemed virtually impossible just months ago. We as fans have assigned blame to every staffer on the offensive side of the ball – Pep, Drevno, Jay and Frey. All of them have received their fair share of the heat. But the fact of the matter is that they were all hired by the same man, Jim Harbaugh, and for better or for worse he is accountable for what we saw on the field this season when it came to the offense.
Some people are hoping for Harbaugh to go out and hire another Don Brown to take control of the offense. This will not happen. Those people do not understand that Harbaugh is THE GUY when it comes to this offense. When Harbaugh was hired by Michigan, he was best known for his successful offensive coaching identity that had led to success at all his prior head coaching stops. A smash-mouth pro-style offense. An offensive line that dominates at the point of attack and creates space for backs to pick up nice chunks of yards often before even being touched. Tall, athletic QBs like Andrew Luck who know how to pick apart a secondary, especially through usage of the taller and physical array of tight ends. They are his schemes, he calls the plays (or at least has final veto power on them), and the kids that are being recruited on offense are being recruited to fit HIS scheme. He is not about to relinquish control over those responsibilities to an offensive version of Don Brown. Jim is the bossman on offense and that ain’t about to change. And that also may be why we may not see some of the coaching changes on offense that most are pining for. Lynch Drevno? Run Pep out of town. Tell Jay to get a job on his own? Anything, any measure that makes it seem as though steps are being taken by the almighty, Jim Harbaugh, to fix the problem. But what if he is the problem? What if the emperor has no clothes? What if what he did in his stops at Stanford and San Francisco can’t be replicated by him at Michigan, for whatever reason? We are all praying that is not the case, because if it is the alternative reality is downright scary. If Harbaughcan’t turn Michigan back into a major power, who can? Where do we go from here? I certainly don’t have the answers, but the question has to be posed. If he fails, will we turn into the next Nebraska, a formerly great program that we all know will never return to greatness given their location. Well folks, Michigan ain’t Georgia or Florida when it comes to talent, and the Rust Belt isn’t getting any better when it comes to producing blue-chip players.
So, yeah, I am asking about the Elephant in the Room, but why now, why not after the Ohio State or South Carolina loss? Anybody can go off on the sort of diatribe I have launched into thus far in this post without having any more concrete reasons than what has been seen in watching the games this season. Well, my answer is complicated in that I can only share so much in this post. Suffice to say, I have spoken to people close to the program and I have been far from comforted. Here are some of the comments I CAN share (the mild ones):
“I keep telling you. Michigan is in very bad shape. There are major problems at Michigan.”
“Same as usual……..It will be hard to win a championship with the same continued problems as every staff has had since Lloyd”
“We keep going through ADs and head coaches but have not figured out how to get the right assistants on both sides of the ball and put together a solid recruiting staff. You’ve got kids on the recruiting staff who are coming from Cincinnati and Navy. They have no clue when it comes to recruiting for a program like Michigan and it is starting to show”
“Martin screwed up royally hiring Rodriguez. I don’t think Harbaugh can turn it around. I honestly think that this could be a twenty-year recovery process”
“Michigan fans are nuts. They pretty much drove Lloyd out after he had gone to three Rose Bowls in five years. Now look at what they’ve got.”
“Harbaugh does not know how to recruit. He knows how to buy players within the rules. Hired Partridge and tapped into Gary, Singleton and other NJ kids. Hired Bush and got three kids from his school. Hired Biff and got Spanellis and had the other tackle before he flipped to Stanford. Hired Bam Richards who did not bring a lot of added value (J. Woods, K. Davis), so he was let go. Hired the Polynesian guy to tap into his connections. Give him credit because he was doing it within the rules, but the rules are changing and the screws are tightening on him. Plus the word gets out on how he operates. It is just not a sustainable model for success.”
“Recruiting was a disaster this year. They had to move on to many Plan B and Plan C types. The thing is, they think they can swoop in and land anybody they want when they want. That they are so smart and Michigan is so great. Confidence here, confidence there. Then they fail. They were SURE they had Isaiah Wilson and Najee last year. They can’t sleep on kids, they need to recruit like you play, through the whistle. I fear that hubris will be their downfall……..”
“Of course, with Harbaugh comes a certain image of a jackhammer who never stops working. Work ethic? If he is putting in so many hours how does he have time to watch full seasons of programs on Netflix? Working? Such as in his weekly podcast? His astute tweets. The first few years he did a great job of making Michigan a national brand again, especially in the off-season. The problem in so doing is that eventually you have to back up the “marketing” with on-the-field performance. Winning the off-season? Not a problem when you perform during the season. Perhaps work allocation is the issue. Perhaps he should be spending more time on working on offensive schematics and putting into place a quality offensive staff.”
Of course, once things head south on the win/loss column the knives come out in full force. I have factored this in. In fact, a couple of these people were already forewarning me of problems over a year ago when we were unbeaten. I did not listen.
Now, the scary thing is that I have not even gotten into the primary reasons why I have turned to the pessimistic side in terms of the direction of the program. Those are things I don’t want to talk about. No questions on that please. I pray that I am wrong
