What They're Saying: Michigan Wolverines Football Heading Into Rutgers Game
Head coach Jim Harbaugh is the man in the spotlight following last week's disappointing loss in Madison.
Here's a look around the internet and what the local and national media are saying about Harbaugh and his team heading into Saturday's noon tilt with Rutgers:
Stewart Mandel, The Athletic: Five Theories About What Has Happened To Michigan
• Maybe this is as good as it gets. This is the one no Michigan fan will entertain, it’s been 15 years since the program’s last Big Ten championship, a drought unlikely to end in 2019. Since Lloyd Carr’s 2007 retirement, the school has tried the innovative outsider, Rich Rodriguez, and it failed spectacularly. It tried the former Carr assistant, Brady Hoke, and it failed spectacularly. On paper, Harbaugh, the former star QB and highly accomplished head coach, was about as ideal a fit as one could possibly imagine. And though he’s been an improvement from his two predecessors, he, too, is falling well short of where Michigan believes its rightful place in the sport should be.
And that’s what must be so vexing for Wolverines fans today. You want to fire Harbaugh? Who are you going to get instead that’s an obvious upgrade? Urban Meyer’s not likely to switch sides to The Team Up North. Jeff Monken? Matt Campbell? Luke Fickell? None have anything close to Harbaugh’s résumé at the time of his hire.
Could it be that perhaps Michigan as a program has a lower ceiling today than it did back when Bo was battling Woody? The city of Detroit, ostensibly its main recruiting pipeline, has seen its population nearly cut in half over the past five decades. Its archrival, Ohio State, is one of the sport’s premier juggernauts.
And yet … there was only a few inches’ separation between the two as recently as 2016. Michigan State has managed to win three Big Ten titles more recently than Michigan without the recruiting stars. Ditto the Wisconsin program that hammered the Wolverines on Saturday.
Maybe Michigan will never be Alabama or Clemson, but the Wolverines certainly could have it better than this.
Adam Rittenberg, ESPN.com: Can Jim Harbaugh fix what's wrong with Michigan?
When I texted two coaches who face Michigan this season about the Wisconsin loss, they responded similarly.
Coach 1: "Not surprised."
Coach 2: "This did not surprise me."
While both noted that the result also showed truths about Wisconsin -- a comically underrated team (No. 19 in AP preseason poll) coming off its first non-10-win season since 2013 -- some of the preseason concerns about Michigan clearly have been validated. Chief among them was a new offense under first-time playcaller Josh Gattis, a departure from what Harbaugh used for most of his coaching career. Behind the slogan #SpeedInSpace, Gattis has tried to boost Michigan's big-play numbers through run-pass options, attacking with tempo and other elements. Other than a few stretches against Middle Tennessee in the opener, the results haven't been there.
Turnovers are the main culprit: Michigan has nine in three games, including seven lost fumbles, four more than it had all of last season. But Michigan's run game is stagnant (3.5 yards per carry), and the quarterback run threat -- integral to Gattis' system -- never surfaced against Army or Wisconsin. Michigan hasn't established pace, either on possessions or within plays -- a passing scheme designed to get the ball out quickly has looked sluggish.
"There's no tempo in the offense," a Big Ten assistant told me. "There's no hurry-up ... and there's no get-the-ball-out-quick on the perimeter."
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The lack of competitive juice [Michigan showed against Wisconsin] is why so many former players took to social media over the weekend or texted one another in can-you-believe-this group chats. They don’t expect perfect seasons. But they do expect hustle.
Another word, by the way, that Harbaugh used Monday during his mea culpa. As in: his team didn’t hustle. Not enough, anyway. And when he spoke of the lack of hustle, he promised he’d find players on his roster who will.
That we are here three games into the fifth year of his U-M tenure, is astonishing. You could hear that in his voice Monday.
If it wasn’t quite the sound of shock, it was certainly the sound of a coach who is searching. For an identity. For a way to boost his players. For answers.
Finding them won’t be easy. The quest for intangibles never is.
This is what’s so disheartening for the fan base, because the compete-level of a team reflects its coach.
Again, Harbaugh admits the (relative) lack of hustle is on him. Good for him for saying it. It’s a start.
Whether he can fix this is another matter. This season is the first time Harbaugh has coached a team more than four years. He arrives like a tsunami. He rebuilds quickly. He moves on.
He doesn’t have an out in Ann Arbor. He’s got to rediscover the tenets that gave U-M a jolt as soon as he got to town.
It starts with physicality. Harbaugh said Monday he aims to emphasize it as often as he can.
Bob Wojnowski, The Detroit News: It's time for Jim Harbaugh to prove his worth
At times, Harbaugh seems trapped between the business side of the pro game and the rah-rah rush of college football. He changes assistants regularly. In his “meritocracy,” players appear more inclined to transfer at the first hint of discomfort. I guarantee, Michigan could use more big bodies like James Hudson (now at Cincinnati) and Aubrey Solomon (Tennessee).
Passion can’t be manufactured, and at 55, with the third-highest salary in college football, with a large family living in Ann Arbor near where he grew up, what drives Harbaugh now? Can he still stir an enthusiasm unknown to mankind? More important, can he stir it in players?
I don’t doubt Harbaugh’s desire to win, and when changes needed to be made, he wasn’t stubborn or arrogant. He brought in Gattis to tailor a new offense around Shea Patterson and the quarterbacks, and he said he would retreat from play-calling.
It seemed like the smart thing to do. And over time, it may prove to be.
But in a way it also was the easiest thing to do, abdicating some responsibility to a 35-year-old assistant who had never called plays. The issues were laid bare at Wisconsin — a staggering 359-40 rushing yardage differential — and Harbaugh isn’t skirting them. He was as forthright as he’s ever been after a loss, talking about the lack of toughness and physical play.
“Not acceptable,” Harbaugh said Monday. “It starts, really, with not acceptable for me. You start by being self-critical and determined to get it fixed.”
Bill Bender, Sporting News: If Jim Harbaugh can't coach Michigan, then who can?
It's difficult to coach at Michigan, and if you're going to fire a coach then you better have the right guy lined up behind him.
Ask Tennessee how that goes. Butch Jones had back-to-back nine-win seasons and even broke the losing streak to Florida, but he was fired during a messy 2017 season where the program bottomed out. That started in earnest with a 41-0 loss to Georgia at Neyland Stadium in 2017.
The problem is Tennessee didn't have its next coach lined up, and the messiest coaching search of the social media era followed — about 1,000 times worse than Michigan's ill-fated pursuit of Les Miles in 2007. The resulting hire of that search, Jeremy Pruitt, faces hot-seat talk four games into his second season.
Michigan could learn from its past mistakes and its SEC cousin here. After all, those programs are so similar in terms of stadium, traditions, fight songs and program expectations.
Harbaugh has put Michigan in a newfound state of limbo. It's not the same as Rodriguez, who lasted three seasons, or Hoke, who lasted four. Those coaches were easily disposable. Harbaugh was brought in as messianic coach, but those who listened closely heard him say “no promises” at his introductory news conference.
That's why the more-likely scenario at play here is that Harbaugh will decide his own future at Michigan over the next few seasons. Perhaps Harbaugh creates his own exit strategy to the NFL. After all, Harbaugh was 44-19-1 and has the fifth-highest winning percentage of all time. He beat Bill Belichick in Foxborough. A handful of jobs come open every season, and his name still comes up. Former Michigan men’s basketball coach John Beilein left for Cleveland. Could Harbaugh follow him?
That’s admitted hyperbole, but that far-fetched scenario is about as realistic as Harbaugh getting fired after this season.
John U. Bacon, Michigan Radio: A tale of two Michigan football teams
Instead of brandishing their status as a potential national contender, the Wolverines took themselves out of the national title race in just one game. They looked disorganized, and often disinterested. The game was basically over when Michigan fell behind 21-0 in the first half, before falling 35-14. And the score wasn’t the worst statistic Michigan compiled that weekend.
This naturally sent the national critics howling and Michigan fans into the fetal position, convinced their team would fail to win the Big Ten for a school-record 15th year in a row. It also prompted a sizeable chunk of the Michigan fan base to wonder if coach Jim Harbaugh, in his fifth year leading the team, would be able to return his alma mater to the promised land, as everyone had expected him to do when he came back five years ago.
Immediately after the dispiriting loss, Harbaugh said they had been, “Out-prepared, out-worked, and out-coached.” That all looked about right.
So, what next?
Can Harbaugh pull his team together in time to save the season? This weekend’s game against lowly Rutgers shouldn’t be much of a test, but Michigan then faces a ranked Iowa team, followed by four more ranked teams this season – including Michigan State.
Harbaugh’s back is against the wall, but if you study his history, you’ll see that’s when he typically does his best work: when the chips are down, the critics are loud, and he has to rely on fundamentals to get out of the jam.
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