With the start of the Michigan Wolverines’ fall camp just days away, here’s a look around the Internet to see what’s being written about Michigan:
Nick Baumgardner, Detroit Free Press: Michigan football's new offense: 'We were made for this'
To suggest Jim Harbaugh is incapable of evolution within his coaching philosophy is to ignore most of his journey in the game itself. There is, of course, a common thread.
When Harbaugh got to San Diego in 2004, he had a 6-foot-4, 225-pound pro-style pocket passer with an NFL arm named Todd Mortensen. So, the offense revolved around his arm. Two years later, he had another NFL arm in Josh Johnson — a player who could also run. So, the offense revolved around Johnson's ability to do both.
At Stanford, he rode Toby Gerhart to an astounding number of carries, 343 his senior year. Then, suddenly, it was Andrew Luck's time. So the offense evolved. In San Francisco, he worked around Alex Smith until Colin Kaepernick emerged and the offense began to integrate a type of quarterback run game the NFL really hadn't seen.
In short: He let his best players be his best players. And he tailored his approach around their strengths.
"This just fits," Michigan senior offensive lineman Ben Bredeson said last week with regard to the Wolverines' new-look offense. "I think we were made for this."
Stylistically, most of those aforementioned Harbaugh offenses had a familiar look and feel. There were exceptions and tweaks, but a center remained. A downhill run game generally centered around gap blocking. An intricate timing-based pass offense that relied heavily on tight end play and was designed to minimize risk, keep the offense on schedule, support the run game and sustain methodical ball control.
In 2019, Michigan's best game-changing weapons on offense are its quarterback and wide receivers. So, it simply makes sense to center everything this offense does from here on out around those positions. Anything else is a step backward.
• In a Phil Steele article on ESPN.com, Steele says Michigan has the ninth-hardest schedule in college football.
“The pressure is on Jim Harbaugh and the Wolverines this season, and to make the challenge even tougher, they face my ninth-toughest schedule in 2019,” Steele writes. “After taking on Middle Tennessee in the opener, Michigan's other two nonconference foes are Army and Notre Dame, both of which won double-digit games last season. The Wolverines have to travel to Wisconsin and Penn State in Big Ten play but get Iowa, Michigan State and rival Ohio State at home. Michigan has the talent (13 starters return) to win the Big Ten and make the College Football Playoff, but it will have to navigate a challenging slate of tilts to get there.”
Aaron McMann, MLive.com: With expectations high, Michigan football keeps to itself
Jim Harbaugh and his trio of players who traveled to Chicago last week were met with some good, if not surprising, news.
Michigan, for the first time under Harbaugh, seemed like the consensus favorite to win the Big Ten championship in December.
A near-majority of the media voted the Wolverines to win the East Division and claim their first title-game victory in the annual Cleveland.com preseason poll. Preseason publications Phil Steele and Athlon Sports have Michigan doing the same.
And in a moment of supreme confidence, last week during Big Ten media days in Chicago, Harbaugh doubled down on the prediction when he said, “That’s where I’d pick us, too.”
Later that day, however, in a lengthy interview session with reporters, Harbaugh’s humility returned.
“Well, we really just -- what I was talking about last year -- that focus on things we have been working on, things we have been training on,” Harbaugh said. "That moment-to-moment, day-to-day choices that you make that put you in a position.
“When you’re 18-22 years old, there’s going to be a lot of choices. A thousand choices, at least, that they’re going to make before the season even starts. What to eat. What time to go to sleep. Only so many different things."
Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh is all for football players receiving a one-time pass to transfer without having to sit a year. It was a bold stance he voiced last Friday during Big Ten media days while many of the other coaches who were asked about transfers said there needed to be more exploration and conversation.
Later, however, during an ESPNU radio interview, Harbaugh triggered outrage when he took the conversation a different direction. While discussing his take on how the transfer rule should be reformed, which would mean a departure from having athletes petition the NCAA for a waiver to ensure immediate eligibility, he suggested some athletes could simply say to the NCAA they suffer from depression or mental health issues to get the waiver.
Many in the media connected the dots. Former Wolverine James Hudson transferred to Cincinnati but had his waiver denied. Hudson had shared on Twitter that the NCAA didn’t grant him eligibility because he “never spoke up about my mental struggles” to administrators while at Michigan because as a football player he was “afraid to speak up about my depression not looking to look weak,” he wrote on Twitter two months ago. Harbaugh, who never mentioned Hudson, concluded by saying he cares deeply about mental health and wasn’t suggesting every player was lying to the NCAA for immediate eligibility. In an effort to tie a bow on his point, he said every player should be able to transfer once, eliminating the need to provide any explanation.
That he used mental health as a means to illustrate his point, however, set the media and social media outrage in motion.
Former Michigan players responded in his defense, as did new offensive coordinator Josh Gattis, who wrote that “mental health is a disturbing disease” that has affected his family and said he stood by Harbaugh. So have those at Michigan’s Athletes Connected, a joint venture between Athletics, the UM Depression Center, and School of Public Health, to improve student-athlete mental health and well-being.
“If I know Jim Harbaugh and I know Michigan, I can’t take it like that, because I know he’s been one of the soldiers in the army of fighting this battle,” Greg Harden, Michigan executive associate director and director of athlete counseling, said Tuesday. "He is absolutely in tune and in touch with and utilizes the resources for his players.”
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