8/27/2018 football Edit

Michigan Football: Harbaugh — A Tarik Black Return Is 'Very Much Possible'

Austin Fox • Maize&BlueReview

Staff Writer

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Jim Harbaugh has a 28-11 record at Michigan. (Brandon Brown)

The talk surrounding Michigan football over the last two days has been about wide receiver Tarik Black’s foot injury.

Not much is known about it yet, other than the fact that head coach Jim Harbaugh said he will miss ‘some weeks’ this afternoon at his weekly press conference.

The U-M head man appeared on the Inside Michigan Football radio show in Ann Arbor this evening and expanded a bit on Black’s injury and status.

“Tarik is a strong guy,” he said. “When the moment happens, things flash in your mind of what you’ve been through before — he fractured his left foot last year, and now it’s the right.

“You think about everything it took to get back, and that’s rehab. He’s picking up marbles with his toes, and that’s some grueling stuff. Tarik also came a long way once he came back — he improved by leaps and bounds and got himself in position to start going into this Notre Dame game.

“He’s been through it before and can do it again, knowing he’ll come back stronger and faster. Tarik will have both feet surgically repaired, and the best is yet to come for him.

“A return is very much possible for this season — I’m not closing the door on that at all.”

The Wolverine offense will miss Black tremendously, but fortunately, it still has another play maker in junior quarterback Shea Patterson.

Ever since Harbaugh named him the starter, he has raved about the veteran’s abilities.

“He has a ‘win factor,’” Harbaugh noted. “He’s been focused and intense, and I love to see that in a quarterback. Shea has played in big games before where a lot has been at stake.

“We have a lot of confidence in him taking snaps for our football team. He does a lot of things well — dropping back under center or in the shotgun — and we have opened up the playbook even more.”

Patterson has been described by some as a risk taker, but has an elite defense behind him that should allow him to take some chances.

Harbaugh cautioned that U-M isn’t the only team who will have a great defense on Saturday night in South Bend though.

“Whenever you play a road game, you want to pack the defense,” he explained. “Notre Dame has a great unit too — they’ve been very impressive on tape.

“How dynamic our defense will be, along with theirs, should be answered on Saturday. They’ve got experienced guys along the front line and at linebacker, and an experienced secondary — they’re pretty darned similar to us.”

The U-M head coach expressed this afternoon that he thinks the two storied programs should face each other every year in college football, because ‘it just makes sense.’

“Start with the fact that we’re only two and a half hours away from each other,” he observed. “It’s two teams we’ve all grown up watching, who have great traditions and tremendous academics, along with great athletics throughout all their sports programs.

“They’re two of the winningest football programs of all time — they rank No. 1 and No. 2, or close to it. Does it make any more sense than that?”

Notes

• The offensive line's progress throughout fall camp has been talked about in depth by the players, and Harbaugh finally chimed in on the unit as a whole this evening.

“I feel good about them," he admitted. "They’ve improved. They want to change the narrative, and Sept. 1 will give them the opportunity to do so."

• Harbaugh has gained a reputation for being a relentless worker in the college football coaching ranks, but even he admitted he took a short vacation and spent some time with the family in June.

“I had a little time after we finished our summer camps," he recalled. "I got away with the family — the highlight was a day with my five-year old son, Jack, who is into baseball right now.

"He had me pitch to him one day and he he took 1,000 swings, and got a blister on his finger. I took a picture of it and after we put a band-aid on it, he took about 75 more.

"We made our own wiffle ball field in the backyard — if it landed in the tree, it was out and a foul ball over the fence was also out — we had all kinds of rules.

"After July 4, vacation is over in my mind and it's back to football.”