OK. so people are freaking out after being annihilated by Ohio State. I can understand this. But sometimes we need to look at the forest instead of the trees. Just a few thoughts:
1. We won 10 games this regular season, which was actually my projected ceiling for the team heading into the year. Sure, Michigan State, Penn State and Wisconsin proved not to be as good as feared, but we still soundly beat them. We had a 10 game winning streak that was book-ended by a tough season-opener, where our offense was still getting its feet wet, and a terrible game in Columbus. Our two losses are to two teams that could well be in the playoffs, so we are beating teams we should now regularly beat but are not yet their against elite programs. Still, three double-digit victory seasons in four years at Michigan, and last year we had the youngest team in our history.
2. Recrutiing cycles. The fact is that Harbaugh´s first three full recruiting cycles are only the true freshman through true junior classes. is first class, the true seniors, he only had a month to recruit and it was a small class. The fifth year class, Hoke´s last full class, was also very small and lacking in big-time talent. Our core elite talent is in our junior and sophomore classes . Just hoping we do not have too many early defections to the NFL as this could define how strong a playoffs contender we are next year. I assume that Gary and Bush, our two best defenders are gone. Everybody else should come back. I suspect L. Hill leaves ad if we also lose David Long it will be tough to fill our CB spots next season (of course, if Haskins goes pro, that would probably negate in good measure OSU's ability to pick our secondary apart). Hudson pulled a disappearing act this year ad should return. Gentry is tall and fast, but is nowhere near ready for the NFL. Not only is his blocking very weak, but he simply drops too many balls. Bredeson would be well served to return for a fourth year. Rare for a true junior OL to leave early and be ready for the NFL grind.
3. Was today's game a teaching moment for Harbaugh? Hope so, and I hope it pushed him to the next level of coaching staff and coaching philosophy changes that he did indeed to start to implement after last season (e.g. adapt offense to Shea's skill set, bring in a proven OL coach, oust Drevno, bring in a stud strength and conditioning coach, hire a couple of solid young recruiters)i. those changes placed us in a position where we were able to beat the teams we should beat on our schedule, already a huge step up from 2017. Now Harbaugh needs to address the issues, both on offense and defense, that crystallized in Columbus. I think that the focus needs to be more on philosophical issues as opposed to staffing issues. The rules of football have substantially changed since Harbaugh played for Bo. The era of establishing the running game/three yards and a cloud of dust, are over. The elite/near elite programs (Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, Ohio State, Oklahoma) run much more wide-open offense and get their elite playmakers the ball in space. Spreading the field out is much more the way to go in terms of putting points on the board, but our staff still insists on establishing the line of scrimmage and playing power football in order top open up the passing game. It is good to have a bit of this, and it works against lesser talented teams, but they need to open things up to compete with the best of the best. On defense, the question needs to be asked whether Don Brown's scheming works against elite opponents. Marcus Ray, of all people, actually made a very good point a few weeks ago when he stated something akin to Brown's defense being impressive from a statistical perspective but not being built to beat elite teams like Ohio State. In other words, Michigan can get away with manning up against lesser talent, but it doesn't work when going up against elite talent and great speed. I think that we have enough data points just from the past three Ohio State games to verify this. Now, whether Harbaugh/Brown recognize this as an issue is quite another matter, but the fact fat that Ohio State could have easily put up 70 points against us should at least get them to thinking about how to correct these issues.
4. Finally, we have had the misfortune of playing Ohio State on the road (2016, 2018) during Harbaugh's two strongest teams. We played them at home (2015, 2017) when we were clearly the inferior team. The way we played Saturday, I don't think it would have really mattered where we played them but I want to point out that the 2019 season was always the year that I was pointing towards when both scheduling and talent would be aligned. Now the hard part, we need to actually go out and beat them.
1. We won 10 games this regular season, which was actually my projected ceiling for the team heading into the year. Sure, Michigan State, Penn State and Wisconsin proved not to be as good as feared, but we still soundly beat them. We had a 10 game winning streak that was book-ended by a tough season-opener, where our offense was still getting its feet wet, and a terrible game in Columbus. Our two losses are to two teams that could well be in the playoffs, so we are beating teams we should now regularly beat but are not yet their against elite programs. Still, three double-digit victory seasons in four years at Michigan, and last year we had the youngest team in our history.
2. Recrutiing cycles. The fact is that Harbaugh´s first three full recruiting cycles are only the true freshman through true junior classes. is first class, the true seniors, he only had a month to recruit and it was a small class. The fifth year class, Hoke´s last full class, was also very small and lacking in big-time talent. Our core elite talent is in our junior and sophomore classes . Just hoping we do not have too many early defections to the NFL as this could define how strong a playoffs contender we are next year. I assume that Gary and Bush, our two best defenders are gone. Everybody else should come back. I suspect L. Hill leaves ad if we also lose David Long it will be tough to fill our CB spots next season (of course, if Haskins goes pro, that would probably negate in good measure OSU's ability to pick our secondary apart). Hudson pulled a disappearing act this year ad should return. Gentry is tall and fast, but is nowhere near ready for the NFL. Not only is his blocking very weak, but he simply drops too many balls. Bredeson would be well served to return for a fourth year. Rare for a true junior OL to leave early and be ready for the NFL grind.
3. Was today's game a teaching moment for Harbaugh? Hope so, and I hope it pushed him to the next level of coaching staff and coaching philosophy changes that he did indeed to start to implement after last season (e.g. adapt offense to Shea's skill set, bring in a proven OL coach, oust Drevno, bring in a stud strength and conditioning coach, hire a couple of solid young recruiters)i. those changes placed us in a position where we were able to beat the teams we should beat on our schedule, already a huge step up from 2017. Now Harbaugh needs to address the issues, both on offense and defense, that crystallized in Columbus. I think that the focus needs to be more on philosophical issues as opposed to staffing issues. The rules of football have substantially changed since Harbaugh played for Bo. The era of establishing the running game/three yards and a cloud of dust, are over. The elite/near elite programs (Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, Ohio State, Oklahoma) run much more wide-open offense and get their elite playmakers the ball in space. Spreading the field out is much more the way to go in terms of putting points on the board, but our staff still insists on establishing the line of scrimmage and playing power football in order top open up the passing game. It is good to have a bit of this, and it works against lesser talented teams, but they need to open things up to compete with the best of the best. On defense, the question needs to be asked whether Don Brown's scheming works against elite opponents. Marcus Ray, of all people, actually made a very good point a few weeks ago when he stated something akin to Brown's defense being impressive from a statistical perspective but not being built to beat elite teams like Ohio State. In other words, Michigan can get away with manning up against lesser talent, but it doesn't work when going up against elite talent and great speed. I think that we have enough data points just from the past three Ohio State games to verify this. Now, whether Harbaugh/Brown recognize this as an issue is quite another matter, but the fact fat that Ohio State could have easily put up 70 points against us should at least get them to thinking about how to correct these issues.
4. Finally, we have had the misfortune of playing Ohio State on the road (2016, 2018) during Harbaugh's two strongest teams. We played them at home (2015, 2017) when we were clearly the inferior team. The way we played Saturday, I don't think it would have really mattered where we played them but I want to point out that the 2019 season was always the year that I was pointing towards when both scheduling and talent would be aligned. Now the hard part, we need to actually go out and beat them.
