Saturday was an ugly one for the Michigan Wolverines football team in Madison — and the final score was closer than the reality.
The outcome has many across the nation talking about head coach Jim Harbaugh, offensive coordinator Josh Gattis and more. Here's a sampling:
Saturday's 35-14 defeat is becoming a habit. Michigan was bullied, and not too many eyebrows were raised this time. Maybe that's the saddest part three games into Harbaugh's fifth season.
The program doesn't have an identity except that, lately, it fails on the largest stages. It isn't particularly physical. It isn't disciplined, given the seven fumbles lost to date. (There were only three fumbles lost last season.)
Wisconsin was up 35-0 before Michigan responded with a couple of garbage-time touchdowns.
Look, Harbaugh's job isn't in danger because Harbaugh won't let his job be in danger. If the walls continue to close in, he'll likely leave well before Michigan gets around to firing him.
But that creates an even more frightening prospect. If the ultimate Michigan Man can't turn things around, where do the Wolverines turn?
Michigan hasn't won a Big Ten title since 2004. This year's incoming freshmen were just touching kindergarten back then.
There was a magic wand to be waved here. In Harbaugh's fifth season, no amount of satellite camps, spring trips to Europe or shots at Urban Meyer are going to help.
You know the career summary: Harbaugh has yet to win so much as a division as a major-college head coach. In his ninth year leading a Power Five program, it looks like that streak will continue.
Bill Bender, Sporting News: Ugly reality bites Michigan, Jim Harbaugh in blowout loss at Wisconsin
Yes, Wisconsin and Michigan have split the last four meetings, but this is another indicator that the Wolverines do not belong in college football’s heavyweight class.
Michigan is not in a real conversation with the top five programs in the FBS — that's Clemson, Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State and Oklahoma. LSU is working into that conversation because the offense made the transition with Joe Burrow that Michigan simply has not been able to make under Harbaugh.
That was made clear in a first-half knockout. Wisconsin players danced on the sideline with 6:40 on the clock in the second quarter while the student section belted out "Build Me Up Buttercup." The FOX studio crew of Urban Meyer, Reggie Bush, Brady Quinn and Matt Leinart laughed at Charles Woodson's expense. It's that bad.
Gattis is just three games in at offensive coordinator, and there is a real question at quarterback. That might have been answered in the short term when McCaffrey was knocked out after taking a head-to-head hit, but the concerns about Patterson resurfaced. Michigan needs a quarterback who can grow with a talented group of receivers. Patterson threw a pair of cosmetic TDs in the second half that suggest he will be that guy, but he also threw an interception and lost his fourth fumble of the season in the fourth quarter.
The rest is on Harbaugh. This isn't as dire as the situations at Tennessee or Florida State, but it's also Year 5, and it can get there fast. This is 15 losses under Harbaugh — an average of three per season — and there are nine games left in 2019.
… Michigan looks like a team without an identity, and that's the biggest issue. No, Harbaugh is not going to be fired. At the same token, no, Michigan isn't going to win a Big Ten championship or reach the College Football Playoff if this is the end game when the Wolverines play a ranked team on the road.
You know the statistics by heart by now. Michigan is 1-6 against ranked teams on the road and still hasn't won a game as the underdog under Harbaugh. The Wolverines will be underdogs against Penn State, Notre Dame and Ohio State now, and the spread will be tight against Iowa and Michigan State.
Pete Thamel, Yahoo Sports: Wisconsin's utter embarrassment of Michigan exposes Jim Harbaugh
As Wisconsin orchestrated a clinic in identity, Michigan remains lost in the football wilderness under Jim Harbaugh, good enough to beat directional patsies but consistently face-planting when the talent is comparable. Harbaugh is 0-7 as an underdog as Michigan’s coach, with this loss trumping the hopeless and hapless nature of the blowout defeat at Ohio State to close the regular season last year.
While Wisconsin pitched a shutout well into the third quarter and Jonathan Taylor marched for 203 yards, Michigan emerged from the loss as the most compelling program in college football – the big-game trainwreck we can’t stop watching.
The Wolverines have no juice, no identity and, increasingly, no hope. Harbaugh has won nearly 73 percent of his games in Ann Arbor (40-15), but they enter the throes of the conference season as a clear-cut second-tier team in the Big Ten. “This whole program is at a crossroads,” analyst Joel Klatt said on the Fox broadcast.
Harbaugh’s tenure is amid its fifth year as a $7.5 million dollar tease. There are no wins over Ohio State, three straight bowl losses and, still, zero signature victories. Michigan’s last three games against Power Five opponents have resulted in combined losses of 138-68, on average losing 46-23 to Ohio State, South Carolina and Wisconsin. They also outlasted Army in double-overtime, 24-21, in a game where Army manhandled the Wolverines physically in the trenches.
The tenor of those losses, combined with the flailing of Michigan’s offense, has raised a question once thought unthinkable: Should Michigan move on from Harbaugh? This wouldn’t be as difficult to do as many would think, as Harbaugh’s contract runs out in 2021. It’s rare for a Power Five head coach, especially one with a winning record, to have their contract that close to expiring.
That lifetime contract Michigan was rumored to want to give Harbaugh feels more like a lifetime sentence these days. For years, Harbaugh had all the leverage on Michigan, as Warde Manuel said as recently as May that he wants Harbaugh to retire as Michigan’s head coach. But the more realistic eventuality is Michigan considering paying the nearly $11 million to part ways with Harbaugh, which isn’t untenable considering Big Ten revenues.
Witness the slumped shoulders on the sidelines in the first quarter, after Wisconsin scored its second touchdown to take a 14-0 lead. The Wolverines were a long way from losing at that point, but some 12 minutes into the game they were acting like they’d lost.
Actually, the self-doubt crept in earlier when Ben Mason, who’d carried exactly zero times this season, fumbled the ball inside the 10-yard line as U-M looked to tie the game at seven.
“That kind of killed us,” said tight end Nick Eubanks, who desperately tried to lift the hanging heads after the Badgers’ second touchdown.
Really? Killed them? A few minutes into the game?
Yes, it did. Not that U-M stopped playing. Or competing.
It’s that the team lost its belief too easily. And that, more than anything, more than the offense or the quarterback or the defensive line, is what Harbaugh must fix.
But he needs to rediscover himself first. And unleash the inner coach who rebuilt every team he touched and whose presence immediately gave U-M's program a jolt.
It’s been a while since we’ve felt that jolt. He still talks about work and grinding and the process and enthusiasm, but something isn’t quite the same.
He coaches as if he’s searching, maybe even uncertain, and his team reflects the uncertainty.
Tom VanHaaren, ESPN.com: 'Out-coached' Harbaugh, U-M looking for identity
It isn't just the offense the needs to find that identity, though, as the defense allowed Wisconsin running back Jonathan Taylor to run all over the field, racking up 143 rush yards and two touchdowns in the first quarter alone.
Defensive end Aidan Hutchinson was visibly upset in the postgame news conference after the defense's performance and vowed the team would improve.
"Right now, we're at the point in the season, we had our first Big Ten game, we lose it, so now we got our backs against the wall," Hutchinson said. "We just gotta fight to get out of this position we're in, and we'll do it. I'm confident."
Michigan has a tough slate ahead with Iowa, Michigan State, Penn State, Notre Dame and Ohio State still on the schedule and will have to put up more than a fight to get through that gauntlet.
The Wolverines are now 4-11 against top-15 teams under Harbaugh after this loss, including 0-8 in road and neutral site games. To finish the way this team is hoping, Michigan is going to have to find the answer and find it quickly.
Orion Sang, Detroit Free Press: Michigan football's offense still unable to figure it out
Michigan looked best when the game was out of hand. All the big gains in the passing game came in the fourth quarter; four of Nico Collins' five targets came after the Wolverines were already trailing by 35.
Michigan's offense was supposed to be built for games such as Saturday's, when the team needed a quick touchdown to keep up with the opponent's high-scoring offense.
Instead, it was as if the Wolverines played right into Wisconsin's hands. The offense converted 0-of-10 third downs, couldn't stay on the field and put the defense in an ever-deepening hole against the Badgers' powerful run game.
Wisconsin — which plays a similar brand of football as Harbaugh's previous Michigan teams — made everything look easy on offense. That was in stark contrast to the Wolverines, who made nearly everything look hard. Even the long completion to Bell came on a broken play, where Shea Patterson left the pocket and rolled to his right.
After the game, Eubanks acknowledged that the new offense hasn't been "easy to get accustomed to right away" and isn't where it wants to be.
If Saturday's game was any indication, the Wolverines have a long way to go before they get there.
Anthony Broome, Maize N Brew: The Jim Harbaugh era at Michigan has become indefensible
Through four-plus seasons of the Harbaugh era, the only expectations that have been consistently exceeded is that the Wolverines find new lows to hit in big moments.
Players have to execute, but how are they supposed to do that if they do not have any confidence in what is being called? This does not look like a team willing to fight for its head coach right now, which might be the most damning statement of all.
What Paul Chryst and Wisconsin did to Michigan was show that its brand of football can still work when it is executed and that’s a team that went for the jugular. That is not to say that Michigan’s attempts to update its offense were wrong, but everything right now feels like a half or quarter measure. There’s no speed. There’s not a hell of a lot of space. There’s very little tempo.
It’s disheartening that a team living by the skin of its teeth through its first two football games came out and looked the way it did coming off of a bye week. As frustrating as those first two performances were, this was the worst by far, and despite what the score might look like, is right up there with some of the most embarrassing of the Harbaugh era.
There’s a good chance that they can get somewhat rolling the next three weeks against Rutgers, Iowa and Illinois, but then what? We have not seen anything to suggest this team is ready to go into a hostile environment and win a game.
Michigan on Saturday looked as hopeless as it has in the Harbaugh era and it’s hard to pinpoint where things started to go south these last four-plus years after starting off hotter than anyone expected them to in that first year or two. They will maintain that their goals are still ahead of them, but this was incredibly concerning, and pretty much the breaking point for some of the more reserved fans who were willing to wait and see where things went with Harbaugh.
---
• Talk about this article inside The Fort
• Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes
• Learn more about our print and digital publication, The Wolverine
• Sign up for our newsletter, The Wolverine Now
• Follow us on Twitter: @TheWolverineMag, @Balas_Wolverine, @EJHolland_TW, @AustinFox42, @JB_ Wolverine and @DrewCHallett
• Like us on Facebook
