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Michigan Football, Team 140, 2019 Season

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  • Michigan Football, Team 140, 2019 Season

    Welp, 2018 is almost over and M's 2018 season is definitely over ending in a big pile of stink so, here you have the 2019 Michigan football thread.

    But I'm still interested - for now and until there are some signs that Harbaugh has recognized he is not going to win championships with his brand of football and makes some changes based on that reality. But I'm looking at M football differently than I did say 5-10 years ago. It's a journey to be appreciated for what it is not some unrealistic expectation of what it should be.

    A look ahead at 2019 suggest M has the talent on both sides of the ball to win football games. I think both JH and DB have to take a good look in the mirror and decide that they need to change ..... adapt to the current CFB landscape. They can not force their current schemes on offense and defense upon players ill-equipped to make them work well. The offensive line, despite Warriner's coaching that has improved it, isn't an NFL level OL that can pass protect and run block like Jim's offense requires. Don Brown's defense has a glaring "talent threshold" (talent's term, not mine). There has to be a dominant first round NFL level Mike on the roster as well as the same level of talent on the back end - both Ss and CBs. He didn't have the completeness or the depth needed to make his defense work yet he continued to deploy it giving up over 100 points in his last two games stubbornly trying to make it work instead of adapting to what his players could make work. No telling if the 2019 defensive roster is complete enough for Brown to continue doing what he does. I don't think it is and I think he needs to adapt to that reality until it is shown his players can do his thing. And it's not just that. My view, after watching most of the top teams play in 2018, is that even if they could make those schemes work, they are not the best schemes available to them in CFB today and it's not even close.

    Adapt is the bye word then. I had a discussion following the M loss to UF involving this concept. I made the poorly informed comment that Harbaugh cannot expect to win games running Bo-Ball. It was quickly pointed out to me that Bo was a great adapter to the trends in CFB of his day. He was certainly not running the same offensive schemes he ran in his first several years at M. He ran the wishbone and innovative variants to it during a 7 year time frame where he had Dennis Franklin and Rick Leach at QB. Later in his career, he moved on to what we call a pro-style offense with John Wangler and both he, Gary Moeller and Lloyd Carr were successful with that (Harbaugh, Taylor, Grbac, Brady, etc).

    But those days of a pro-style offense are gone. Harbaugh, IMO, has clearly been by-passed as an innovative offensive mind at the CFB level. He's probably 2-3 years behind even though he has shown some hybridization in his offense but, IMO, not nearly enough of it. He's still too run-centric with an OL that can't produce. From a character standpoint, he's a terrific human being but, having failed to adapt as he woefully demonstrated in 2018, despite the prodigious talent he has assembled, he's not going to leave much of a legacy at Michigan unless he does adapt.
    Last edited by Jeff Buchanan; December 30, 2018, 07:55 AM.
    There is such a thing as redemption. Jim Harbaugh is redeemed at the expense of a fading Ryan Day and OSU. M wins back to back games v. OSU first time since 1999-2000​ - John Cooper was fired in 2000!!!

  • #2
    We'll be 9-3 or maybe 8-4. 100% guaranteed losses to anyone with more than just a pulse on the road and we're overdue for a barnburner against a shitty team like Indiana to go against us. I like OSU to win the B1G next year but it could be PSU or Wisky. Maybe beat ND at home? I have never loved Brian Kelly even though he has somehow gotten to two undefeated regular seasons. Even Hoke beat him twice so I like our chances for a one-game "revenge tour" LOL.

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    • #3
      The home schedule is tantalizing from the prospect of getting season tickets. M's second game is Army - right now, that's a loss. Army is good. Iowa, ND, MSU and osu come to Ann Arbor. M might not be able to beat any of those teams with the offense and defense they are running now. A good run of those home games would be 2-2, 1-3 is more likely.

      M has Wisconsin on the road in their third game of the season, at Illinois, at PSU at Maryland and at Indiana. There are at least two loses, more likely three in that group.

      I can see a 6-6 season for M worst case - 8-4 best case. That my picks are worse than Hanni's are something. If M loses to Army - a good bet at this point - we'll have the same set up for the season that Carr lost to Appy State and Oregon when M goes on the road and then loses to Wisconsin. My thinking is Harbaugh goes back to the NFL if he has a season like Lloyd had when he lost to Appy State and Oregon B2B and was unimpressive (soft) the rest of the season.

      I think M's biggest problem long term and without some significant changes that produce 10-11 wins in 2019 is that HS talent isn't going to want to come to play for Harbaugh or Brown. The gap between M in conference between osu, probably PSU and maybe Nebraska is going to increase and nationally M won't even be competing for the kind of elite HS talent they need to win consistently.
      There is such a thing as redemption. Jim Harbaugh is redeemed at the expense of a fading Ryan Day and OSU. M wins back to back games v. OSU first time since 1999-2000​ - John Cooper was fired in 2000!!!

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      • #4
        AAL 2023 - Alim McNeill

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        • #5
          Schedule is similar to this season with the home/away flipped... I see 10 regular season wins with 9 far more likely than 11.

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          • #6
            I expect Black to transfer in the off season.

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            • #7
              Dan Patrick: What was your reaction to [Urban Meyer being hired]?
              Brady Hoke: You know.....not....good.

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              • #8
                What is the stuff being said? I don't see why any dynamic offensive player, especially receiver, would want to stay. Under and incompetently used.

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                • #9
                  I'm probably speaking out of turn. I don't know any of these "sources" or "insiders" so I can't really speak to it. But, it was playing time and promises thereof and guys losing their spots permanently because they got hurt or something like that.
                  Dan Patrick: What was your reaction to [Urban Meyer being hired]?
                  Brady Hoke: You know.....not....good.

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                  • #10
                    Interesting. That seems to match up with why Solomon left. If true, that is an idiotic position by the staff.

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                    • #11
                      Yeah, 2019 could be good - in the 9-11 wins range - IF (big IF) Harbaugh adapts on both O and D.

                      Betting on that he does adapt is a coin flip right now.

                      Reality check #1 ...... the OL could be better but I think they are at their ceiling in Jim's run-centric offense. Right now, none of the OL, who are mostly in their 3rd or 4th years in the system are early or or even late round NFL draftees. Do you adapt your offense to things they do well, skills they have down? Do you implement more spread concepts that might require learning different blocking schemes and different line calls? I think there is a better chance Harbaugh believes in keeping schemes and the play-book on offense the way they are; pretty sure he believes the OL will learn how to optimize that scheme. I would disagree with that position if Harbaugh takes it.

                      Realty check #2 .......The offensive scheme, at least what we think it appears to be, isn't dynamic enough for it to run efficiently and to compete at a high level. While the run game during the regular season was good v. average opponents with depleted rosters, it wasn't against good ones that were more or less healthy. That the passing game was mostly invisible on standard downs, predictable when it was needed to move the chains on passing downs and mostly abused and rendered ineffective by opponent's defenses when it was used is a significant indictment of how Harbaugh approaches the game from an offensive standpoint. That the OTs are not great at pass-protections is a contributing factor that Harbaugh unfortunately had to deal with.

                      Reality check #3 ...... I'm not confident the 2019 DL can get the pressure on the opponent's QB necessary to mitigate what will be average LB play. Brown's D doesn't function well when that doesn't happen. Dax is going to be a plus 8 or better for the Ss but it remains to be seen if Long and Hill return. If they don't are you going to run a defense that constantly puts new CB guys one on one/on islands? Brown has demonstrated a tendency to do just that and has failed to adapt his signature D to the level of talent on the field on any particular day/game given possible injureis (I don't think Bush was 100% for osu before he went down for good).

                      I'll say it again. Lamichal Perine's 53 yard TD burst yesterday in the Peach encapsulated the season long weakness in Don Brown's defense when he fails to adapt his aggressive schemes to the playable talent on his roster. There are plenty of other examples of that. Will he adapt? I'm not confident that he will for the same reason that the likelihood of Harbaugh changing his offensive approach is a coin-flip bet right now. Both guys are peas in a pod when it comes to change in the face of things appearing to not be working. They'd rather make it work than change and there's a long historical track record of that in Both Harbaugh and Brown it seems to me.

                      Those of you who are, you'all can go on thinking positively about wins that the Michigan 2019 team with HC Jim Harbaguh in charge will get. I'm not in that boat anymore and I'll stop harping on it.

                      There is such a thing as redemption. Jim Harbaugh is redeemed at the expense of a fading Ryan Day and OSU. M wins back to back games v. OSU first time since 1999-2000​ - John Cooper was fired in 2000!!!

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                      • #12

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                        • #13

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                          • #14
                            No, he'll go back to the NFL where he'll have an OL where he can run pretty much any offense he wants to.
                            There is such a thing as redemption. Jim Harbaugh is redeemed at the expense of a fading Ryan Day and OSU. M wins back to back games v. OSU first time since 1999-2000​ - John Cooper was fired in 2000!!!

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                            • #15
                              Hill announced on twitter this afternoon that he'll be returning in 2019. This is a big deal. That he was probably a mid-second rounder is even a bigger deal. Long has not made his intentions known but Brown could absorb one but not the loss of both corners. Ambry Thomas is waiting and he's going to be good. I think Long goes pro.

                              Josh Metellus is also returning. He was probably not going to get drafted. Maybe signed as a UDFA. Metellus has ended up with a bad rap, IMO. He did have issues early in the season but he developed into a reliable S who could make good reads. He's not as fast as he needs to be when he gets isolated one v. one on good receivers but I fault Brown for that. It was standard practice for opposing offenses to throw the ball when press-man, cover 1 was detected and that, in Brown's scheme, is a post snap read. QBs got good at it and Haskins and Franks B2B at the end of the season capitalized. Metellus was frequently the victim. The more I think about Brown's approach given the fact that Metellus usually needed help, the more pissed off I get about that approach.

                              One thing the defense under Brown does not do well is play zone. It's been obvious on UFRs but I saw it up close and personal v. Florida and Franks. Franks had two shit-ass,wounded duck throws that at worst should have been batted down but on both of them, the D was in zone coverage and there were 4 confused DBs around the targeted receiver, none of them close enough to make a difference. Completion. Fuck!

                              Why is that? It's because Brown doesn't play a lot of zone so, guys aren't comfortable playing it. The mid and deep throws to the middle where there needs to be coverage shifts between CBs and Ss seemed to be a problem v. UF. The short passes, crossing routes and screens, sometimes against zone coverage, were decently covered even though some of them got home. Not nearly as bad as v. osu so, there was that. Anyway, I'm glad he's coming back. He's a solid if not spectacular S.
                              Last edited by Jeff Buchanan; December 31, 2018, 07:34 AM.
                              There is such a thing as redemption. Jim Harbaugh is redeemed at the expense of a fading Ryan Day and OSU. M wins back to back games v. OSU first time since 1999-2000​ - John Cooper was fired in 2000!!!

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