Michigan @ PSU, 10/21/17, 7:30p Eastern, ABC/Stream Watch ESPN

[Rocky Bleier]

Youngest and most inexperienced team in CFB... We lost our starting quarterback to injury too...

Team isn't as good as they were last season, which isn't surprising given how many second year players are starting. We also played the #2 team in the country yesterday, they are pretty good and Michigan isn't.

Should just be a 1-year blip as M will return most everyone but Hurst, McCray, Cole as starters... 10 wins next season? I'll take the over.

Good morning, Optimigos. I was wrong. Michigan did not lose 31 - 0. Hurst will be a huge loss. McCray is too slow in coverage. Cole is not such a huge loss, except he plays on the team's weakest unit. Kugler will be done as well. They're young, but they also lack elite talent. Michigan is getting out-recruited, and it shows. Kids like Metellus, Kinnel, and Hudson are backups on other rosters. Michigan doesn't reload with elite young players like OSU. They don't redshirt and develop like Wisconsin either. I'm pretty sure Georgia and Alabama will flip some of the current verbal commits. The team will be mediocre unless Harbaugh recruits and develops O-linemen like Bo, Mo, and Carr did. Welcome to reality. We're not OSU. We're not PSU. We're not even Wisconsin.

P.S. The season was over two weeks ago...

[maxreturn]

Good morning, Optimigos. I was wrong. Michigan did not lose 31 - 0. Hurst will be a huge loss. McCray is too slow in coverage. Cole is not such a huge loss, except he plays on the team's weakest unit. Kugler will be done as well. They're young, but they also lack elite talent. Michigan is getting out-recruited, and it shows. Kids like Metellus, Kinnel, and Hudson are backups on other rosters. Michigan doesn't reload with elite young players like OSU. They don't redshirt and develop like Wisconsin either. I'm pretty sure Georgia and Alabama will flip some of the current verbal commits. The team will be mediocre unless Harbaugh recruits and develops O-linemen like Bo, Mo, and Carr did. Welcome to reality. We're not OSU. We're not PSU. We're not even Wisconsin.

P.S. The season was over two weeks ago...

That about sums it up. Depressing but true.

[paul daugherity]

Look at it this way: it should free up your saturdays. I no longer have an overwhelming desire to drop everything in order to watch UM games. This team is not good. 8-4 is the ceiling. Too many roster holes, too many coaching questions - both decision making and personnel wise. Some recruiting and personnel questions. Harbaugh is thus far not living up to the hype or the $. I hope he can turn things around next year, but that's about all I've got at this point.

[hack]

Max, Michigan was a refjob away from a road win in Columbus and playing in the playoffs last year. I know that it's a bottom-line profession, but it's awfully hard to just call the guy a bust when the team endured the bullshit it did that day. I'm really disappointed with how things have gone this year, but Harbaugh's not going to follow up a few decades of excellent with a sudden bust. It's unfortunate how it's gone down, and sports are where one goes in life to kill any sort of belief in karma, but I don't think you can let, ultimately, random bullshit, be the most important variable in evaluating the situtation.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Optimigos ....... good one.

I'm not in that camp. Realism is for me.

The debacle that is the OL is completely on Harbaugh. Completely. He and his staff did a terrible job recruiting and developing what they did get.

The offense is inefficient. That's on Harbaugh. He has put all his chips on power and IZ as bread and butter plays that should act as constraints to the outside game. This sets up the long ball. Not working.

My view is that he insists on sticking with that approach when it has been clear he lacks the QB and line play to make that a sensible thing to do...... and this has been going on since he led his first spring camp as M's HC and is now into his 30th game at M.

Harbaugh has been blessed with credible defenses that tend to make the inefficiencies attendant to his approach on offense less dramatic ...... but most of us knew there were problems. When facing opponents with credible offenses or teams like MSU that worked him in bad weather, his approach gets it's pants pulled down. PSU was the culminating example of finding himself as the emperor without any clothes.

Having said that, he remains as M's best and, at this point, only option. He's not going anywhere until he has achieved a level of success at M that involves winning championships and feels he's left the program in the best possible state. That's my take and in the long term, I think he will.

So realism should dictate an understanding that while his resistance to change/adjustments in the face of poor results produced disappointment, a maturing team in JH's 4th year will very likely be the elixir M fans need...... and my guess is he'll achieve success doing exactly what he is doing now only better.

[WM Wolverine]

Metellus, Hudson should get better as should Gary, Hill, Long, etc. Defense will be better next season, even without Hurst who wrecks tons of plays all by himself...

I've seen lots of improvement during the season with run blocking, pass blocking is usually more difficult to pick up... Wide receivers without Black aren't good enough, they need to develop football skills; route running, finding holes in zone coverage, blocking down field, and catching the ball...

Talent level isn't where it needs to be, but is good enough and more is on the way. M has recruited well to replace their seniors other than at offensive tackle...

Agree that McCray won't be missed, out of position often, exposed even more when the other linebackers are blitzing and he has to make the play...

[Rocky Bleier]

What really grinds me is that Franklin is going to continue to build on this success in recruiting, which I think is his biggest strength as a head coach. The guy may look like a 6 ft. penis, but he can sell the rebirth of a program to recruits. Urban has Ohio. Franklin has Pennsylvania. Dantonio has Ohio's 2nd tier. Harbaugh needs to win, or tree climbing and sleepovers will no longer work. Still can't understand how he could build an offense at Stanford but not Michigan. Maybe it was the weather and the scenery.

[paul daugherity]

Stanford also is in California. Lots of talent to go around in that state. I don't un stand his inability/reluctance to go after Ohio kids. There is a lot of talent in that state too.

[Rocky Bleier]

Stanford also is in California. Lots of talent to go around in that state. I don't un stand his inability/reluctance to go after Ohio kids. There is a lot of talent in that state too.

Yep, but I was thinking about their strict academic standards and clean reputation.

[Hannibal]

Rocky is right. The program is fucked. Harbaugh has pulled in a couple of nice classes but the 2018 class is garbage and OT recruiting has sucked horribly for all of the classes. The decommits will start coming soon, starting with that OG that we will be losing to Alabama shortly. The '19 class will get picked apart just like Hoke's final two classes once he started losing. And we'll be back where we were before. Brown is a decent DC, but he can obviously had by a good OC like what Penn State has. An experience that we will never have. You will never -- I repeat never -- see a Harbaugh-coached team rack up over 500 yards against a Top 5 defense like what PSU just did to us or OSU did to us in 2006. The Harbaughffense is shit (yet another game just went by where we did not have a single carry of 15+ yards).

Harbaugh is, at best, the fourth best coach in the East and the fifth best coach in the conference. And I'm pretty sure that, as the coach at Michigan, DJ Durkin or Chris Ash could go out and lose to OSU or Penn State by 29 points. You know who else lost to Penn State in Happy Valley by 29 points? Rich Rodriguez in 2008. James Franklin won the B1G in year 3 with a patchwork collection of young guys and crap left over from the probation years. Meyer won a national title in Year 3. Harbaugh, on the other hand, got beaten at home by a rebuilding MSU team and he just suffered the first of what will be two brutally humiliating assrapes at the hands of B1G East teams. All that we have to show for in Year 3 are rap videos, tweets, and sleepovers. And a 1-5 record against our rivals. That's our program now. It's a clown show. A joke.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Trade ya coaching staffs...

[Hannibal]

WHOO'S GOT IT BETTER THAN US?!

NOOOBODY!!

Penn State, MSU, OSU, Wisconsin, Nebraska

[THE_WIZARD_]

heh

fucker

[WingsFan]

All that we have to show for in Year 3 are rap videos, tweets, and sleepovers.

Don't forget we went to Rome!

[hack]

Talent level isn't where it needs to be, but is good enough and more is on the way. M has recruited well to replace their seniors other than at offensive tackle...


Yeah. This year we have kids like Hudson and Metellus starting. Three-star recruits starting as true sophs. Granted these were players more talented than their ranking, but soon enough talented young players will have to sit for longer to wait their turn. Guys like that are in the lineup and playing positive roles on a great defense, but they're not yet ready to rampage over an elite team on the road just yet. It's a shame we haven't been able to Hoke-UTL our way to a few victories on the way, but, is what it is.