'Michigan method' concluded on O-line, continuing at backup QB

My complete wild speculation is that someone was late to practice or something along those lines. Something relatively minor, related to taking preparation for UNLV serious. Cause the quote from Moore is basically Barnhart and Hinton had the better practices. Coaches probably trying to motivate them.

It is not injury related since they got in for a dozen snaps, but I seem to recall a few years ago James Hudson was supposed to start at tackle but he missed practice due to injury and then wanted to play on Saturday and Harbaugh said his policy was if you don't practice that week you can't play.

Yeah this makes no sense to me. Jones is clearly better than Hinton, even if his potential is higher in the future, this is the year we need everything to hit since next year we'll have new starters everywhere. 

Henderson not even really getting a shot is surprising and I'm sure he regrets transferring now. I'm just confused how they think this is their best 5 especially when they haven't even played all that well yet and tackles have been an issue.

I really wish the coaches would just run their decisions by this message board before they are final.  We could correct these mistakes before they happen.

It's puzzling that they walked back the idea of different starters at OT for games 1 and 2, but there may well be reasons for doing so.  It may be as simple as the coaches decided that it would be a better idea to have more game time to work on cohesion, since there were clearly deficits in that area in game 1 especially.  Hard to do that if you swap out 2/5 or 3/5.  Or it may be that (gulp) Barnhart and Hinton have been flat out better as unlikely as that seems.

Regardless, the OL coaching has been so good the last two years it's hard to second guess their decisions.  Er, I mean we probably shouldn't.  A Harbaugh team plays the best players.

It's odd that Anderson also hasn't touched the field after having a great spring. I don't quite know what is going on with the O-Line, but they haven't been blocking all that well either. Odd. 

I mean it would be one thing if both Barnhart and Hinton had played really well but at least in Hinton's case the eyetest and the pff grade from week one said he was the worst of the starting five. He didn't look any better on Saturday and I think the pff will be bad again. Jones was flat out better last year in the eye test and pff than Hinton has been this year. As far as the potential argument he has been in college for a good amount of time now, doubt he has a ton of potential to unlock  at this point.

Obviously we we don't get to see practices, etc so we don't have all the info. Announcing a competition and then not following through is odd though. I don't think it is great for the moral of either Jones or Henderson frankly. Whatever the case I see a team that is good enough to compete for a NC at every other spot so hopefully the oline improves enough regardless of how that gets accomplished.

I share your confusion on the OL rotation. 

Well yikes. Trust the coaches blah blah blah, but the performance from the tackles must be much better by November if we are to replicate our formula against Ohio State. Pretty disappointing to see (early season) regression from what was supposed to be our strongest unit, and outright baffling that Henderson and Jones aren't even being given a shot in the games.

Sherrone Moore and Jim Harbaugh are lying if they say there ISN’T an ongoing metric-based evaluation of every player’s performance. I’ll scratch my head, but I’ll trust their judgment.

I would also be lying if I said that I wasn't worried about the backup Qb spot if JJ gets hurt. With the passing game being the stronger part of the offense so far and a bad looking INT being one of the few throws Warren or Tuttle have got to throw that is concerning.

Overcoming his battle with cancer, I was really rooting for Davis Warren, but he looked pretty lost out there.  As a backup, you just have to capitalize in these opportunities as they don't come too often.  Unfortunately, he's bombed in both games thus far. 

Hope he turn things around, but at this point, I think it's Tuttle's job to lose.

I find the Harbaugh quote below from the article about the backup QB situation to be really interesting.  It makes sense that they want to see more of Denegal and something from Orji, but they've seen only 1 play from Tuttle so far.

The one we’re still evaluating is the backup quarterback and we made a mistake. Coach Hart put in Davis Warren ahead of Denegal. This week you’ll see, it’ll be J.J. and if we go to a backup quarterback, it’ll be Jayden Denegal and Alex Orji.

While I trust the coaches, one thing that does worry me is that with Sherrone Moore getting full OC duties it may take away from the time he gets to devote strictly to the o-line.  It didn't seem to matter last season when he was co-OC, but I guess we'll see how this season goes.

So odd that so many on here think JH and Moore are wrong. 🤷🤷

Prior to 2021, I would have said the following:

We know Harbaugh has a soft spot for "practice warriors", since we have seen this a number of times. Ben Mason at DT, the whole Joe Bolden saga, etc. Perhaps Hinton excels in practice -- because he presumably knows what the defense is likely to do -- and has won over Harbaugh because of this. In an opposite sense, perhaps Henderson has struggled with some things in practice.

After two seasons of winning the Joe Moore award and now still having Coach Moore on staff, Im saying the following:

I trust Coach Moore and any and all OL decisions.

He's earned the benefit of the doubt.

Jones is probably bad at pass pro which is more important at this point 

Perhaps my memory is fuzzy but didn't they tinker with the offensive line a bit last year as well as the year before, before finally settling in? There has to be more going on than we are seeing or being told.

I really don't buy this is the end of the competition, as the line definitely has issues that these two guys aren't fixing.  I guess maybe they're hoping continuity wins out because otherwise they're going to sub some guy in during the year, get better results, and then be surprised

If you watch all of our run plays slowly, and I cant wait for the UFR this week for this reason, you will see that this isnt just a personnel problem. Basically everything is failing. On any given play different guys are making different mistakes and the whole thing is a mess. I am concerned at tackle, but I am more concerned about the fact that Barnhart and Keegan and Zinter are all out of sorts at times and our WRs cant block, on top of Hinton's struggles. Its a mess and I really really need it to be fixed.

Jones was very good at RT last year. I hope he gets his spot back. We had two senior TEs drafted that were good blockers and that may be why Barnhart seems to be having a hard time knowing who to cover at LT.  It's also possible Nugent isn't quite Olu yet.

If we have to rely on any of our backup QBs for anything more than garbage time, we’re in a very bad place—opposing defenses will load up the box and dare us to beat them in the air. That’s not going to happen with any consistency. 1984 redux.

I get the feeling that they see a major upside with Hinton that the others don’t have, and they want to give him as much reps with 1’s as possible in easier games. 
Maybe they are investing into his future for next year. 

I have a feeling though we might be seeing more of Jones or Henderson once we get into BiG10 play, and maybe even a bit more of them come Saturday. 

Maybe Jones was doing well in camp.  When he played last year, he was awful in pass protection.

Remember how everyone was saying the staff had brains full of clam chowder for riding with Runyan after his disastrous start to the season? Now he’s a starter in the NFL and has been for years. I’ll trust the staff on this one. 

Very disappointed we never saw Barnhart/Jones and I wanted to see Henderson/Barnhart as well.

It's not even about "trust the coaches"...these other guys deserve the same opportunity. If Hinton is better, so be it.