Overreaction from 62-39 OSU has created this chaos
After losing 62-39 as a favorite to OSU last season, Coach Harbaugh and Coach Brown both reassessed, and drastically altered their approach to football. Coach Harbaugh made a decision to not only fire an offensive coordinator whose philosophy was similar and familiar to his, but he chose to bring in an offensive system completely antithetical to his own. I believe that the constant media and fan declarations and harpings that Michigan's offense was outdated had a deleterious effect on Coach Harbaugh. He began to listen to his critics, and changed the way his team has played football for his entire coaching career.
Listening to his critics, Coach Harbaugh sacrificed efficient and effective offense (21st in scoring) for what his critics craved as a potentially exciting offense. From power football to a cutesy spread attack has led to an offense totally lacking in identity, and has created a cognitive dissonance in Coach Harbaugh. He's not coaching football his way, he's not being himself, yet he's still in charge. How does that work?! He didn't need to tear down his offense, he only needed to tweak it. He didn't need to change offensive philosophies or offensive coordinators. He just needed to loosen the reins and pass a bit more.
As for Coach Don Brown, it is apparent that watching OSU completely shred his top 5 defense last year has so harmed his psyche that he, like Coach Harbaugh, has forgotten the basics of his coaching philosophy. Coach Brown is still so shell-shocked from OSU racing up and down the field that he has gone from a base 4-3 defense, with situational fronts, to an odd 3-3-5 defensive base that leaves gaping holes for opposing running backs. Where is the coach who said our first objective on defense is to stop the run? Well, 62-39 caused him to throw that out of the window, when all he really needed to do was play Ambry Thomas over Brandon Watson last year, and then sprinkle in a little more zone this year.
Admittedly, last year's result in Columbus was shocking. Hell, it was worse than shocking, it was demoralizing. But, Coach Harbaugh and Coach Brown have to understand that it was ONE GAME! They cannot let that one game define the future of the program. Last year was a 10-3 season that did not necessitate dramatic change. 3 win seasons require the degree of change that Michigan underwent in the offseason, not 10 win seasons!!! That one horrible loss is turning into many, many more.
Hopefully, the overreactions will cease, and Coach Harbaugh and Coach Brown will get back to their philosophies and get this figured out... before it's too late for us all.
September 22nd, 2019 at 1:38 AM ^
Brown is doing exactly what Brian suggested in light of our lack of dts, which is using a three man line. The people who want Uche on the field all game got what they wanted. Why the fuck we can’t play a freshman I’ll never know, but he’s not running a three man front bc of OSU.
September 22nd, 2019 at 3:35 AM ^
Great theory, and you seem pretty convinced by your arm-chair psychological diagnosis.
But it relies on the assumption that Harbaugh and Brown were competent, in big games, before the OSU game. That assumption has little actual evidence to support it.
September 22nd, 2019 at 3:42 AM ^
I have similar concerns to those of the original poster: that we could have done well with adjustments to our previous way and didn't need to throw it out completely and replace it.
That's not to say that a complete replacement can't be better than adjustments -- if we got the right guy as offensive coordinator. Complete replacement was a potentially higher-reward path, but with higher risk, too.
We have good players on offense, so that's not our problem. Thus, it is coaching.
Gattis may be running the whole offense including practices, developing plays, and play calling. There have been glimpses of greatness on some drives here and there, including in the Wisconsin game -- but overall it is a disaster.
I think that Don Brown can improve the defense.
If Gattis is going to be a good OC, he'll be able to improve quickly. If not, we'll need a different OC for next year.
Overall, like the original poster, I think Harbaugh decided, based on how the end of last year went and people clamoring for a new system, to give the keys completely over to a new guy. That's a gamble that can pay off, or not, depending on the new guy.
September 22nd, 2019 at 12:55 PM ^
MY MY someone sleeps with his thesaurus at night!
EDIT: I had to go back and read this soliloquy again and found something I rarely see in message board guy posts:
An intelligent, if completely accidental, use of IRONY!!!
You begin with a lecture on overreaction and end brilliantly with the ironic, "before it's too late for us all"
Well done! It's almost as if Shakespeare himself was barfing shit he would have written and then trashed all over this blog!