Michigan head football coach Jim Harbaugh came back to Ann Arbor in December of 2014, much to the delight of Wolverines' fans across the globe. The program's former All-America quarterback from the 1980s had seen success at every level as both a player and coach, having just turned around San Diego, Stanford and the San Francisco 49ers in the latter role.
He led a resurgence at Michigan, too. The Wolverines, who won five games in 2014, came out on top in 10 contests in 2015, Harbaugh's first year back. The Maize and Blue were then on the brink of the College Football Playoff in 2016, when a controversial call in Columbus didn't go their way and eliminated their chances. Injuries plagued the 2017 squad, which wound up with a 8-5 record, before Michigan bounced back to go 10-3 in 2018 and 9-4 in 2019.
Harbaugh has yet to win the Big Ten championship, beat Ohio State or make the playoff, but he's won 69 percent of his games, and has made the Wolverines nationally relevant once again, "on the verge of championships," as he's put it in the past.
If he were to depart the program today, he'd leave it in a better spot than he found it.
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The Wolverines posting a 2-4 record in 2020, for now, is an outlier. Opt-outs, injuries and cancellations derailed the squad, though there's still no excuse for the product to have been so far away from the talent level that was still on the roster.
Last year, Michigan lost to a Michigan State team that finished dead last in the Big Ten East, Indiana for the first time since 1987, in a blowout to Wisconsin for the second straight year and to a Penn State group that was winless at the time.
Michigan has only won one game as an underdog under Harbaugh (2019 versus Notre Dame when the Fighting Irish were favored by one point at kickoff).
That stat was once a source of frustration for Michigan fans who said Harbaugh and Co. couldn't win big games or rise to the occasion in consequential moments.
"Winning 10 games but losing to Ohio State isn't good enough," they said.
This season, though, the Michigan faithful, knowing this is a rebuild of sorts, just wants to win the games they should and see improvement throughout the course of the year. They'll cross the College Football Playoff bridge when they get there. First, they've got to get back to ...
"Winning the winnable games," college football expert Phil Steele said when we asked him how Michigan can get back to what the Wolverines came to expect under Harbaugh in his first few seasons.
That, of course, is easier said than done, especially considering the Maize and Blue are set to play the nation's 12th-toughest slate according to Steele, and that it's a young team without the kind of proven talent they've had in years past. But if they can beat the teams they're supposed to — Western Michigan, Northern Illinois, Rutgers, Michigan State and Maryland — and steal at least four out of Washington, at Wisconsin, at Nebraska, Northwestern, Indiana, at Penn State or Ohio State, it would show that the program is back on the right track.
"There are numerous games on the schedule which you’d label as toss-ups," Steele cautioned.
"The second game of the season against Washington — right now Michigan is a slight favorite, but I think they might end up a slight underdog by the time that one rolls around — that’s going to be a heck of a game. Washington is my No. 1 surprise team in the country.
