Predictions for Football Season?
I'm not optimistic. Even the Wolverine, which constantly hypes the football team, prints ridiculous analogies (i.e., Donovan Jeter could be the next Aaron Donald) and serves as primary apologist for the athletic department, says that the team has looked pitiful in spring practice and "lacks talent". I say 4-8 or 5-7, at best. What say others?
In a number of threads, I'll stick with 7-5. Losses to Washington, @ WI, @ PSU and OSU. One more loss to either Indiana, @ Maryland, @ Nebraska or @ MSU. The team I fear most is IU at home. I could see 5-7 or 6-6. Possible we could have a surprise wins against WA and win the the rest of our games to finish 9-3? I just feel like this will be a 6-6 or 7-5 type season.
If that happens any program with a pulse would fire said head coach. But that’s not us. That’s not the way we do things. That’s the Michigan difference.
Too me, I thought Harbaugh kind of lost interest in our program after the 2017 season. He never looked that happy, like he did his first 2 seasons he was here. I thought he would jump to the NFL but probably a surprise to Harbaugh no teams were interested. Now he had to sign a contract that is performance based and I think he's going to do a better coaching job. Looks like he knew recruiting was not going well, so he fired and hired younger assistant coaches who love to hit the trail and recruit. It will be interesting to see how the new staff does this season. But this year is like Harbaugh part 2. The team needs rebuilding on defense but I think the offense will be good once one our QB emerge as the real deal, may be by the end of the year. But if things collapse this season, then our AD needs to get a new coach. I'm pulling for Harbaugh and hope he does well on his new restart.
Goddamn. Can't we enjoy the off-season for a week without this nonsense?
Preseason predictions are nonsense? Funny how when we were good they were fun. Do you even remember what that’s like?
I remember what it was like when we were good - it was a warm fall day as we got ready to take on Appalachian State for good ol cupcake warm up game. Been a bit rocky since then...
Not really. Going into the 97 season I was predicting another 8-4 season for Carr and wanted a new coach. I remember making such predictions on the old Detroit News and Ann Arbor News sites back then. Then I was surprised with an undefeated season. I knew we had a good defense heading into '97 but thought our offense would suck. It was a great surprise to be so wrong. However after '97 and the great recruiting classes in '98 and '99, I thought we were going to win another National Championship in '99 through '03 but we always seem to lose a few games we should have won. Then OSU got Tressel and beside Carrs last good season in '96 it has bee a disaster. Hoke was lucky OSU has their one down year. But overall we've had a bad stretch of football for quite a while. Harbaugh one good season was fun in 2016 but we blew games against Iowa and OSU we should have won. That would have propelled Harbaugh to rival OSU in the elite level, if we would have made the playoffs that year. Now we had to watch the downward spiral of Harbaugh, which has been depressing. May be he will be the comeback kid as Michigan's coach?
3-9 is probably the floor, 4-8 in reach. 5-7 is the ceiling.
the team will be disorganized. They cannot begin to comprehend tempo and NFL coaches won’t change that.
Michigan’s QB play will be very subpar. the offensive line will struggle with the adjustments defenses throw at them.
They will look unprepared for even the most predictable things MSU does and many on here will wonder if their preparation couldn’t be improved by just reading Seth’s analysis.
Indiana will be anxious to make it two in a row and no team will be intimidated by anything Michigan does.
I get predicting 5-7, but 5-7 as a ceiling? Come on. The team will have more talent than every other team it plays with the exception of Ohio State. In 6 years at Michigan, Harbaugh has had fewer than 8 wins one time.
The talent narrative is so tiring. they have a roster of higher ranked recruits. Too often those rankings don’t translate from high school/7 on 7 to what shows up for Michigan. It’s not “more talent” if it never actually materializes in a game.
Michigan had so much more talent than MSU last year. Did it matter? At all? Michigan’s lost, out of position, slow secondary was all higher ranked than the receiver (and probably QB) who were punishing them relentlessly at will.
Michigan had so much more talent than Army and were very lucky to win at home.
Michigan has had more talent in almost every game they’ve lost outside of OSU, Alabama, Florida State etc. but it sure doesn’t look like that when the game starts.
College juniors and seniors getting assessed based on their high school scouting always seems so funny. Like, if a dude was highly-rated out of high school but has been mostly riding the bench and hasn't been so good in limited play after two years then how much should we really value the scouting of him when he was 16 years old?
Kurpit,
Exactly right. We can stop caring about their rankings the moment they show up on campus.
Chris Hinton’s 5 star rating meant he was likely to be a significant contributor early. K, well, he wasn’t. can he turn into an All-Big Ten or better player? We hope. We hope for much better than that. But has he given us indication of any of that? No. Not at all.
Michigan football has sucked since Carr left.
We lose a minimum 5 games.
We are Minnesota, Iowa.
OSU will crush us and be in playoffs again.
Harbaugh will be safe for another season if he finish at or above .500. I think he will need 8 or 9 wins in 2022 and 10 wins in 2023 and will have to beat OSU one of those years. Of course if he finish blow .500, I doubt he is back next season.
I think he should be shown the door at anything less than 7 wins. But 5 wins plus a win over OSU should allow him to stay.
IMO, he should've been shown the door after last season but here we are.
Wisconsin is probably an 80-90% probable loss, Penn State is probably at least 50% because their team is still recovering from its own awful season, but it’s in State College and probably the white out game, so barring Franklin shitting himself that game is a Michigan loss. OSU is a 100% guaranteed loss. I don’t believe there is anything that can be done between now and November 27th that will change that. I would probably feel safe putting down at least a grand of my own money in saying that Michigan will lose that game by at least two touchdowns.
Absolute best we can hope for, in my opinion, is 9-3. And that’s if everything breaks right. We’ll be begging for basketball after probably losing to MSU for the second year in a row.
I don't think it's going to be as mind-bendingly awful as 4-8 or 5-7 as the OP suggests, but I am also not expecting it to land us a spot in the playoff either, so something between inexcusably mediocre and the normal existential crisis that is Michigan football most years.
If Washington blows out Michigan at home, this team could implode. I'm hoping for a close win and may be finishing close to our 9 win average per season, with 8 wins. But I know this team is going to blow a lead and lose to one of the middling B1G teams.
Least talented roster + hard schedule + new coaches + new starters = bad
Below 0.500 seems inevitable to me
Least talented roster? What roster are you looking at and compared to what?
Are there any first round picks on this team? Maybe Hutchinson, but he had to come back after getting hurt. This team is the same as last year minus Kwity, Evans, and Mayfield. Every team under Harbaugh had at least one high caliber NFL draft prospect. Who is it this year? I would be curious to know what team you think was less talented than this one?
I guess I'm confused what you mean by talent. If we just look at the recruiting profiles and class rankings, there's certainly not a lack of talent on the team. If you are going to change the goalposts to only include first-round picks, like you seem to be doing, that's a different story. There's not a whole lot of experience on this team and we need to see how some of the young players work out. Apart from Hutchinson on defense, I think Mazi, Hinton, and Dax can take big steps forward.
Personally I'm excited to see how they pan out. But if you want to write them off as untalented before the season starts, that's your prerogative. You do you, brother.
The only less talented team than this would maybe be 2017, thats not an opinion, that's reality. Sorry if you don't like it.
Someone is forgetting Rich Rod 2008.
We lose to Western in the season opener on a blocked field goal at the buzzer. Washington hangs 39 on us.
But then things start to click. JJ is named the starter for week 3, and the team rips off eight consecutive wins. Them suddenly a head-scratching loss at Maryland. A slough of despond descends on Ann Arbor. OSU holds us to a field goal. The writing is on the wall.
Word leaks before Christmas that a splashy hire of a Big 12 coach is in the offing. Old fire breathing Harbaugh rises like a Phoenix to defeat Dan Mullen's Florida Gators in a second tier bowl then rides off into the sunset, having lined up his next job as coach of the Chicago Bears, led by an emerging second-year superstar named Justin Fields. Super Bowl Shuffle Redux...
I think that: Western, Northern Illinois, Rutgers and Northwestern and Indiana at home and Nebraska away should give them 5 to 6 wins.
Michigan State, Penn State and Maryland could give them 1 to 3 wins. I also don’t see them winning all 9 games, so that means 6 to 8 wins.
At best, I think they win 1 of 3 against Washington, Wisconsin and Ohio State. So overall that puts me at 6 to 9 wins, with my best guess being 8 wins.
Not good bob
The team will look confused and not ready at times. Terrible clock management. Below average qb play. Some fans will yell JH should have been canned last year, and he should have been, most fans will make excuses for JH. 6-6 at best
JH should have been shown the door. 7-5, but could be worse. The roster does not have playmakers on either side of the ball. QB's have struggled in practice, OL is avg, WR's are small, LB's are slow, CB's lack coverage, Safety play has been iffy, DL is weak. Yes, I will take 7-5 in year 7....
CB's lack coverage
Do they know they can stay on their parents' plans until age 26?
Thanks for the update. I think ??
Gotta be honest, UMBig11. I used to really enjoy your contributions to the site. Your posts lately have been incredibly negative and vague. I’m sure you have some type of access to the program but not nearly as much as you let on.
I’m getting a Brandon Brown feel from you. Negative, negative, negative.
To say this team does not have playmakers on either side of the ball is a guess based on what you saw on the field last year. It’s funny, guys are allowed to improve year over year. They are allowed to get bigger, stronger, faster, and more positionally sound.
How do you know the defense and its new coaches will not bring the absolute best out of some of these guys? Maybe a fresh start is exactly what some of these guys needed?
again, I appreciate what you bring to this site, but come on man. Let me guess, more transfers coming?? Yes, we know this as they are currently above the 85 scholarship limit. But hey, keep doing your thing.
i've been following umbig for past 6 years and he's spot on most of the time. His view that michigan is bad is alarming and no reason to think differently. The main coaches on offense are inept and it's sad. What I don't understand is how there are no playmakers? What about Daxton Hill, AJ Henning, Donovan Edwards, Corum, Haskins, michael barrett, makari paige? so nobody is doing well in practices? so sad
Before Spring practice, I said somewhere between 5-7 and 7-5, with 6-6 most likely.
If anything, the talk out of the submarine is dampening even those expectations. I definitely could see wins only over WMU, NIU, Nebraska, Northwestern, and one of Rutgers or Maryland. If the defensive staff is trying to install an NFL-style multiple system with this lack of talent (Dax excepted of course), the D could approach RR levels.
I'm guessing 8-4. COVID was such a wildcard, the opt outs, etc. part of me wants to throw 2020 out. And then you remember the entire QB fiasco and the guy in charge of that is still running things.
That being said, he's won at least 8 regular season games in each full season here. But I think it's going to be a grind to get there. Not a lot of easy, walkover games. The losses are blowouts. A win or two that is surprising giving hope followed by an OT game against the likes of NIU, etc.
The only thing I feel real confident about predicting is that the fanbase will be miserable.
"what say others?"
Not a big fan of that shortened and word switched question. Reminds me of Bill O'Reilly.
To your question, I say we are a 7-5 team this year. Strikingly mediocre because the defense is not going to be any kind of good. And the offense won't be good enough to carry the team to glory because it never is, ever ever ever. Michigan football and prolific offense don't fit together in the same sentence.
4-7. Program is to soft and embarrassing from a Bo/Loyd era guy like me. I watched the 97 Mich vs PSU game the other night just to remember the good times as a Michigan fan. Harbaugh runs the program like a youth program like each player gets to play 20 plays per game regardless of skill. I live in SEC country and fans here are in disbelief how soft and arrogant the program has became and especially the arrogance of many in the fan base. Harbaugh embodies the environment of the university. Elitist, out of touch with the rest of the country and down right delusional. I feel for Charles Woodson to have to be on TV and talk about Michigan and you can see how embarrassed he is. 4-7 in 2021 and Harbaugh SHOULD have been fired in December last year but the university is a SNOWFLAKE environment. I mean losing to South Carolina a few years back-come on man!
4-7 -- are you projecting a cancelled game? Also, you make it sound like losing to South Carolina was some horrifically shameful event. It sucks they blew a 19-3 third quarter lead but it wasn't like they lost to South Carolina State.
Very shameful as they are a third tier SEC program and stop making excuses because it’s pathetic and weak
I'm basically at the point where I'm like "Welp, I just hope the kids have fun out there and nobody gets hurt." Like it's my son's little league team or something. Whose week is it to bring the orange slices again?
Rice Krispies treats and Capri Suns for everyone after a hard day?
3-8 ceiling. Wins against NIU and...? Complete and total ineptitude. Development will be poor or non-existent. Harbaugh will continue to drive away the most important players on the team. Redshirts will be burnt for no reason, but that won't matter because not many players will stick around for 5 years of ineptitude.
Dysfunctional offense with inconsistent play calling and QBs unable to throw the ball with any accuracy or even a basic understanding of when to run or throw. RBs may have talent but OL will be unable to pass or run block. WRs unable to get any separation but that won't matter a whole lot because the ball will be barely close to them anyway.
Defense that is totally lost and unable to slow down anyone. DT unable to get any penetration or push. LBs too slow and lost, losing contain and chasing from behind. Safeties lost and wondering what's going on. CBs unable to cover receivers. Development will be questionable or non-existent.
Other than those few minor points I think we'll kill it!
I bet the punting game will be not too bad.
And maybe the DEs. But that won't matter because the whole thing will be a tire fire
8-4. We are still more talented than 80% of the teams we will play. Give the talent a full spring, summer, and fall camp and hopefully we will see the improvement on the field. Worst case, the team struggles and the young guys like JJ, Edwards, and Worthy get some valuable experience and build towards ‘22 and beyond.
Based on Harbaugh’s hires, I’m guessing he’s guaranteed at least two more years. Even if they only win 5 games, he’s not going anywhere.
FiF!!!
National Title until proven otherwise
If you make this prediction every year over the next 50 years, your probably bound to get it right one of those seasons.
Pain. Complete and utter pain. Just like every year.