Indiana 38, Michigan 21

[Jeff Buchanan]

The enthusiasm for and the quality of M football has sunken to new lows.

If you look at program enthusiasm/quality graphically, when LC retired and RichRod showed up, a steep rise in enthusiasm for the program ensued followed by a gradual then steep decline below baseline. Hoke arrives along with new hope that the RR debacle was over. Program enthusiasm rises but not as high as what the Rodriguez hiring generated. The Hoke era had a more subdued decline in program enthusiasm - he was a genuinely nice guy. Al Borges hurt the program though and soon program enthusiasm rapidly declined below baseline but not for long as a Harbaugh hire was on the horizon with signs "it's happening" while Hoke was still on the sidelines. The arrival of Jim Hackett as AD was the cause of that.

At last, the program's savior had arrived. Enthusiasm skyrocketed when Harbaugh was hired rising to unprecedented peaks. Quality, however lagged. By year 3 as the quality of the football Harbaugh was delivering declined, enthusiasm became blunted and by year 6 and the MSU loss both the assessment of the quality of JH's work and program enthusiasm was plummeting. It is now belwo the pre-Don Canham, Bump Elliot era.

So, yeah, to answer your question, no M is not running the football well or doing anything at all well. Thanks for asking.

[iam416]

I should grave dig your MGO thread on the OL w/ my take. But, I'm not that spiteful. Wait, yes, I am. But I'm too lazy to find it.

fucking laziness

[Hannibal]

Ace had this very poignant and meaningful take:

Jim Harbaugh, Josh Gattis, and Don Brown need to turn the season around in a way that's hard to foresee right now to avoid facing some very difficult questions about their ability to run this program.

[Hannibal]

Re: The OL

Not great but I saw a bunch of plays yesterday where Indiana was crashing guys off of the edge to get TFL and Gatti's playcalling didn't do anything whatsoever to punish them. No RPOs, no QB run game, no bubble screens. Nothing. Just vanilla stuff with no misdirection.

And then when we had Ronnie Bell wide open like the first guy out for practice, Milton pulled a fucking Rudock and overthrew him.

[Hannibal]

In a surprising turn of events, Brian Cook is ready for a change:

I can't imagine Jim Harbaugh makes this work any more. Michigan jumped offsides against Michigan State twice. They went back to practice, watched some film, tried to self-correct, and jumped offsides five times in the first half based on nothing more than quarterback hand claps.


A fully operational recruiting setup brought Michigan this bounty of cornerbacks and defensive tackles. After a three-month-long fall camp Michigan still thought that these guys could play press man. It turns out Chris Partridge left for Ole Miss not to be DC, but to be an assistant to DJ Durkin, of all people. Michigan was down three scores in the fourth quarter and still strolling up to the line, content to blow thirty seconds on a running clock.

Michigan has disastrous recruiting at key spots, can't retain coaches, can't run tempo, can't get lined up against tempo, can't hang on to the same running approach for more than half a season. This is systemic and goes back to the head coach. We've seen most of these issues over the last few years. They were covered by a lot of talent. Now they're not. The usual flush-and-reset coordinators that buys you some more time has already happened.

[Hannibal]

It's time to officially start getting your hopes up that we'll be getting a new coach next year.