Michigan Football, Team 139, 2018 Season

[froot loops]

I don't see how Patterson was a 5-star. I don't see the raw physical gifts.

My daughter's first impression of him was that he was small and why is his first name Shea. It's early, he might be successful but it's weird that he was rated the top QB in the country. If I am grading a quarterback a 5 star has the be a speed merchant Michael Vick type or a pocket passer with size and a Stafford gun.

I don't get the reason why he needed Patterson. He may be the answer but he's more of a dual threat guy. The whole reason for the Harbaugh hype was he was the guy who knew how to get players to the next level. That was going to come through in his recruiting. That was kind of specific to the QB position. If Harbaugh isn't running a prolific pro style offense with great pocket passers, I'm not sure that is what you signed up for.

[Jeff Buchanan]

.......... If Harbaugh isn't running a prolific pro style offense with great pocket passers, I'm not sure that is what you signed up for.

Froot, I'm not telling you anything you don't know but JH isn't running a typical pro-style offense at M. You could probably describe his offense at Stanford that way but not now. The NFL doesn't really have teams that run a pure pro-style O anymore. They are all hybrids. At SF once Kaepernick replaced Alex Smith, Harbaugh arguably ran the closet thing to a CFB spread in the NFL with Kapernick under center. There was plenty of power but he had a hot dual threat QB running read option and RPO as well as PA schemes.

I really haven't study SF's offense to compare it to M's but I think Harbaugh has an offensive framework in place at M that has some elements of the offense he ran at SF, probably with a lot less layers to it. All of Harbaugh's QB recruits, starting with Brandon Peters, have HS experience with the WCO or operating from the gun in a power oriented spread like meyer runs at osu. Most HS programs are running those types of offenses in varying form.

I think Patterson is your prototypical WCO, RPO QB and I think that's what JH wants to run with a power flavor to it. It's a head scratcher though that he's really not running that or at least what he ran v. ND was a hugely throttled back version of where he wants to get to. I actually find that a bit troubling. Harbaugh had a chance to debut a prolific offense and instead he debuted a play not to screw it up offense in SB.

In the 2018 opener, I thought the coaching staff involved in the offense exhibited a steak of over-simplification to avoid errors and it throttled the offense to a greater extent than was probably necessary. The problem for me in making that assessment is that I really don't know what was going on and we know the key-word for the OL was to simplify what the player needed to do so that they could do one thing well. IMO, they didn't do anything well. Sure, the OT issues drove a reduced passing game but, Harbaugh fucked himself and the team by not building in more plays that made ND pay for all their aggression on defense and repping the shit out of that.

We could see more v. WMU and growth in the complexity of the offense over the next several games I suppose but if we don't I'll be sorely disappointed.

[Detroit Dan]

Well said, Jeff. Harbaugh's got to coach with a little more urgency (although today's blowout of WMU was fine).

[hack]

I signed up for championships.

[Jeff Buchanan]

One game at a time, Hack. It's a process ..... get better everyday.

[hack]

Seriously?

[WM Wolverine]

When is the last time M had a team like the one you expect, hack?

[hack]

'16.

I think, if you are replying to my reply to Jeff, it's pretty clear that ``one step at a time" is a meaningless bromide. You have to ignore what we know about the development progression of major college football programs. It has the potential to be something that could be said with meaning if some of those steps had been made. Like developing a QB by Year 4. Or fielding an OL that isn't near the bottom of the metrics. Stuff like that represent meaningful steps.

[Jeff Buchanan]

'16.

I think, if you are replying to my reply to Jeff, it's pretty clear that ``one step at a time" is a meaningless bromide. You have to ignore what we know about the development progression of major college football programs. It has the potential to be something that could be said with meaning if some of those steps had been made. Like developing a QB by Year 4. Or fielding an OL that isn't near the bottom of the metrics. Stuff like that represent meaningful steps.

OK, then, sure. I can name a number of programs that struggled for years then made a good hire, he did everything right and in year 2 or 3 of this guy's tenure, boom. Championships. I can also name programs where that didn't happen and their struggles continued.

JH is in year four so, obviously, he hasn't won those championships we had all hoped for. I'm not going to list the well documented reasons why - some of them controllable by Harbaugh, some of them not. But what's important for fans to come to grips with is that they happened and nobody can go back and undo the damage that was done by the mistakes JH made that he had control over or the tings that happened that he didn't.

All we can do as fans is look at what happened in the last game, try to make informed observations about singular in-game plays/events and draw reasonable conclusions about the future of M football under the leadership of Harbaugh. That's what these forums are for and I find doing that immensely entertaining. I don't find unsubstantiated hot takes, whining about past events that we can't do anything about and throwing shade at players or the coaching staff enjoyable at all..... but that is also part of a good sports forum so, I'll deal with it.

Besides, if you take the tack that nothing is going right with M football under Harbaugh, what are the alternatives? IMO, none of them involving firing anyone on the staff, including JH, are reasonable. Frankly, we, as fans, are not in any position to call for a player to not be selected to start, get replaced in game or label him as incapable of playing the position he is assigned. I'll leave that up to the coaches.

[Rocky Bleier]

I'd like to know why DPJ is still fielding punts. First, he's not very good at it. Second, we already have one WR on the sidelines.

[hack]

DPJ's decision-making there hasn't improved I agree. Maybe have Ambry Thomas in that role? I want to see more of him out there. It may be time to stop thinking about guys like Peppers and Thomas as defenders who can get out there for a few snaps on offense. Especially with the offense as awful as it is. Thomas isn't going to make the tackles any better, but, coached up, he looks like he has the potential to put more fear in a defense than any of the current skill players.

[Detroit Dan]

So far, M's skill players on offense look really good. The receiving class that came in last year -- Black, DPJ, Collins, and Martin -- are all looking good. The tight ends are are good. The running backs are good. The QBs are good. Ambry Thomas returned one kick for a TD, so now he's the answer on offense? I don't think so. Not unless he can play tackle (c:

In general, as smart as we all are, the coaches have tons more relevant information to work with. So it takes a lot of obvious mistakes, or a clear long term pattern of failure, for me to suggest I know better. Harbaugh has done well in his 3+ years -- much better than Dantonio in that time frame, for example. He's really turned the program around, if not yet getting us a B1G East title.

But look at the alternatives. Big problems with Columbus and East Lansing programs. Harbaugh deserves credit for running a clean program so far, with educational trips to Europe and other fun things. So credit for doing the job with integrity and competence, if not living up to his larger than life reputation.

[WM Wolverine]

McCaffrey has looked very good too.

[hack]

Dan, by your logic, since none of the RBs and WRs have returned a kickoff, Ambry Thomas is better than all of them. Which is of course a stupid point no matter who makes it. If you watch the games, though, including snaps in which Thomas has the ball, you can see why people are talking about the kid in that way.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Encouraging but not worth a lot until we get some more meat into the numbers...... and caveat, while Fancy Stats are fun (when they're going your way) as I found out last season they are no better than a coin flip in determining winners and losers for the purposes of betting real money or even in AAs pick-em contest. There are simply too many variables in the college game.

Michigan is now ranked No. 7 in ESPN's FPI rankings. They were at No. 9 last week.

The other notable change is that FPI has Michigan favored in all games except Ohio State now. Last week, they had them losing to Michigan State. Notable games:

@ Northwestern: 76.7%

Wisconsin: 68.6% (UW is No. 11 in FPI)

@ Michigan State: 55.1% (No. 13 in FPI)

Penn State: 56.4% (No. 12 in FPI)

Ohio State: 24% (No.3 in FPI)

** ESPN's FPI treats M more favorably than Connelys S&P+ because the math is different. I don't think one is better than the other. There's a guy at mgo that does an analysis melding all the Fancy Stats into his own predictive chart. It hasn't come out yet and don't know when it will.