Michigan State Snowflakes: The Coaching

Honestly, you can't mean trust the coaches, I mean seriously, please don't say that. This is a coaching thread: are you really saying the coaches we have are the right ones? If you are, you either do not care about winning games against our rivals or are blind to the actual results of M football. 

Cade was stellar most of the game, that's a positive, as is the yards we gained. Our inability to score TD's in the red zone, a failing of ours every single year of the last seven, is a negative, and on the coaches. As is the consistent losing of our most important games, again every year of the last seven (and previous to that with two other coaches). Blind hatred of the coaches and scheme is worth criticism, as is "trust the coaches" which is equally as insane.

Trust the coaches. haha

Where has that gotten us so far?

O.k. so I will explain it to you.  Michigan gained 552 yards.  And you might think that rules out complaining about the offense or arguing that the offense is the reason Michigan lost.

But Michigan only scored 33 points.  CFB has changed.  A lot.  In the past that would actually be a very impressive offensive performance.  But netting just 33 points out of 552 yards...that is just an o.k. result in modern CFB.  Teams score.  Teams erase 16 point deficits a lot more commonly these days than back in other eras.   But Jim's idea of football and of offense really is stuck in the mindset of those earlier eras.   And it keeps costing Michigan games.  

And yes, the playcalling and Harbaugh's overall approach on offense are the main reasons for netting just 33 points on 553 yards.  Jim thinks a 50 yard drive that nets a 25 yard FG is a big win.  It was in the lower scoring past.  But it really isn't in today's CFB, at least not against quality opponents, and in a world where 10 point or even three score leads commonly do get erased. 

Look, it is not that Harbaugh is a bad HC.  He is in fact a good CFB head coach (certainly better than Hoke and RRod).  But he is merely good.  And the same issues on offense--all of which trace directly back to Harbaugh--have Michigan underachieving almost every year of Harbaugh era.

And finally, not to try to refute every point you make, but...it really is true that Michigan's 7-0 start was against mediocre teams.

I will take 395 touchdown yards vs 550 field goal yards any day.

First off, most people are not saying that and those that are saying that are likely just venting. But you can’t ignore the obvious and the common thread that runs through every Michigan season, which are painful losses that are due to either poor culture, philosophy, or in-game situation management and execution. To say otherwise is to blindly follow. And I too am an alum. But you must call a spade a spade. Anything else is delusional. 
 

I am not in favor of firing Harbaugh and his staff because contrary to the emotional outbursts here, we are more likely to turn into Tennessee or one of the other revolving door coaching stops of former-blue-bloods-turned-tire-fire-programs than ascend to back to elite status. I think it is better to reckon with what we have and make sure when the next transition happens that we move towards the future and not the past. Everything could stand a refresh because what we have is holding us back as much as it is stabilizing us. We can keep the good parts of the culture and the tradition and discard some of the outdated nonsense about Schembechler-style X’s and O’s game-planning, philosophy, and identity. What we really need is a culture and philosophy of take-no-prisoners winning and opportunism, instead of smashmouth physicality. We’d be better off with Larry David’s philosophy of “whatever works”.

It's a fade in the end zone, one of the tougher throws a QB can make, and McNamara--who had a great game!--was and has been inaccurate on deep throws. It's just too low percentage for a 3rd and 3 endgame call.

No but he did let go of the ball before he crossed the goal line on one of his touchdowns that should have been reversed

Did the refs let a hold on 4th and 1 go on our second to last drive? Yes.

I was in favor of firing Harbaugh after last year. But it was a COVID year and Michigan, as an institution, does not pull the trigger in that way as a general rule, and they brought him back. They brought him back with a reduced buyout and a new staff strategy: Go young.

Well, Michigan has called the play, and they need to play it out. If the standard for keeping Harbaugh is a perfect season, well, he should have been fired. Because Harbaugh was never going to have a perfect season this year. Nobody, absolutely nobody, expected Michigan to finish undefeated, win the conference, and make the playoff. Frankly, very few people even expected Michigan to get as far as this game undefeated.

It was never reasonable for anyone to expect Michigan to finish 11-1 this year. That's just the reality. I don't like that this is where we're at, but no other coach besides *maybe* Nick Saban would be expected to finish 11-1 with this roster, either. The target this year is progress, growth, signs of improvement in areas of weakness.

And, to this point, we've seen them. Even in this game, we saw them--Cade slinging it all over the field, a new star receiver emerging, over 500 total yards against a decent defense. 

And the problems we've seen are basically problems we *knew* that we had. The defense has been decent to this point, but they have given up some big plays, and given the roster Macdonald inherited nobody could reasonably have expected it to be a world-beating unit. 

We knew that Red Zone scoring was a challenge, and we knew that big plays were a strength of MSU. I literally suggested that this would be the basic challenge of the game (albeit not as high-scoring). Yes, the defense was disappointing. But then, Harbaugh's weaknesses as most of us (including, loudly, me) have identified them have not been with the defense, because the defense is the one area where we are confident that Harbaugh has fully delegated responsibility and trust to his staff.

So the way the game played out is not really that surprising. Offense a bit better than we expected, defense a bit worse. People are acting like Michigan State was a scrub team; they're not. They're really good.

People are trying to either attach a narrative to this or identify a specific issue that's Harbaugh's fault. It's just fans upset about a loss looking for a reason to be mad; nothing presented is actually rational. 

For example: JJ's fumble. A gut punch. Why was he in? ...Turns out Cade was in the injury tent. Now, I've seen some people say "well he should just hand the ball off." I guarantee you that every single person who has said that wanted JJ to run read options and keep the ball; in fact, everyone upset that he was in wanted more JJ. Even pro-Cade guys like me wanted more JJ. So to turn around and say "see, JJ was a mistake" isn't just inaccurate, it's intellectually bankrupt. 

The issues with Harbaugh have been real. But given the choice to go young, to rebuild with this staff, to rebuild with these players... this loss is not a significant factor in the larger picture. And that larger picture is to answer the question, can Michigan grow to elite status again with a young and hungry staff and a core of this roster of players?

And the answer to that question is not yet decided. There's a real chance that Michigan can go 10-2 this year, which 98% of us would have signed up for in a second if we were given the option early in the year. And if that's 10-2 with losses in the rivalry games, well, that's not great... but Michigan brings back almost all of the important offensive pieces next year. Defense is a work in progress, but we're getting better performances out of guys like DJ Turner and Ojabo and the DTs. 

If Michigan had been unprepared/got embarrassed, that would be one thing. But they weren't. They were beaten.

This is a gut punch. Not a referendum.