If you didn’t know, I’m relatively new to the Ann Arbor area.

I moved moved here in 2013. Before then, as a resident of Austin and an alumni of the University of Texas, I mostly knew Michigan as a pretty good team who helped Vince Young look like a hero in the 2005 Rose Bowl and had a rivalry with Ohio State which didn’t seem to be going great.

Naturally after moving to the area and covering football more nationally with SB Nation, I began to dive deeper into Michigan football history. Beyond my surveys into the past, I’ve been here for the “wait, I dunno about this” turn in the Brady Hoke era (maybe at MGoBlog the suspicion came earlier), the part where everyone wanted Hoke and Dave Brandon out, the elation for the Jim Harbaugh hire, and the entirety of the Harbaugh tenure.

In my view, the Harbaugh era nearly collapsed in 2018 and my confidence in the program tanked. Yes, ostensibly they had the “Revenge tour” and a 10-win season, but to my eyes the games against Ohio State and Florida revealed Harbaugh’s attempted upgrades had failed to keep up with their rivals or modern football. They handed the offense to Shea Patterson, who proved entirely unworthy of the trust, and the adjustment to hire Josh Gattis to bring an RPO system in 2019 did nothing to make him more effective.

Meanwhile the Don Brown defense was exposed as a mirage. Brown had an aggressive approach heavy on spitfire and low on nuance. What’s worse, they didn’t recruit for it, and as the roster dried of press-man cornerbacks with NFL athleticism, everything got worse and worse.

Normally serious football programs in today’s age don’t give coaches a chance to rebuild a collapse which took place on their own watch. You’re done, out and away. Jim Harbaugh is pretty unique though. He’s the favorite son of the program, had a big contract which was renegotiated, and has been working under a president we now know isn’t long for leadership at the University. So Harbaugh got a chance to retool the program and make a case for retention and a sturdier contract.

Midway through the year and the Wolverines are 6-0 with all the major Big 10 East battles looming. What has Harbaugh done to remake Michigan and how does it look heading into the gauntlet?

[AFTER THE JUMP, JIM HARBAUGH'S ADJUSTMENTS FOR 2021]

The adjustment

Michigan made some pretty serious changes after the 2020 debacle. The defensive coordinator change is an obvious one, I’d argue some of the offensive changes have been pretty substantial and interesting as well.

When Michigan hired Ed Warriner to coach the offensive line in 2018, it was part of an overall shift toward a more typical spread system. Warriner has been an inside zone and spread offensive guy for a long time, dating back to the late 2000’s with Mark Mangino at Kansas before the stint with Urban Meyer at Ohio State. To emphasize the physical yet zone oriented scheme was a big change for Harbaugh and Michigan, who’d been about the true power game previously.

Then for 2021 Jim seems to have said, “if I’m doing down it’s not gonna be because we didn’t run the power properly at Michigan.”

Tight ends coach Sherrone Moore was entrusted with the offensive line, a position he played but had never been directly over before, and Michigan has run “God’s play” a dozen different ways this season and done it very well. While Gattis is up in the booth directing the action, the design of the offense has Harbaugh written all over it. It’s very heavy on power runs, tight end-heavy sets, and hunting matchups from empty dropback sets on passing downs.

It’s a more realized version of the 2016 Wolverines, who had a similar style of play with Wilton Speight at the helm and a “thunder and lightning” combination at tailback with De’Veon Smith and Chris Evans. Everything is more precise with this unit though and there's a different feel overall.

Check out the 2016 Michigan offensive line compared with the current group, we’ll start from after the catastrophic injury which robbed Grant Newsome of a promising career.

This group is bigger, heavier, and was less heralded in recruiting but still well regarded and ultimately more physical and skilled in the run game. The composite pieces of the offense also fit together more cleanly.

The 2016 Wolverines did some of their best work THROWING to the tight end (Jake Butt) and fullback (Khalid Hill) and weren’t particularly explosive running or throwing the ball unless Chris Evans was breaking free against weaker opponents.

The 2021 Wolverines have a clear identity and the pieces fit together quite nicely. They have several good blocking tight ends and a pair of backs who bring power (Hassan Haskins) and explosiveness (Blake Corum), on a more consistent basis.

They also have a quarterback in Cade McNamara with some knowhow and ability to execute Jim Harbaugh’s dropback spread passing game. Some of the same formational tricks and concepts which helped Jake Rudock or Wilton Speight move the chains are now on display with McNamara. Had this team been able to field Ronnie Bell all year they’d be on another level here and in the play-action/RPO game but Harbaugh is still capable of scheming open receivers at the chains if the quarterback can be trusted to hit them in rhythm. Thus far McNamara has been able to get the job done.

On defense, Harbaugh made the necessary adjustment to replace “Dr. Blitz” Don Brown with a less stubborn coordinator. Interestingly enough, he went very young and unproven with this hire.

The story Jim has told has essentially been of older brother John offering him a chance to poach one of his best assistants with the Baltimore Ravens out of love for little brother and Michigan football. This was really a bold choice by Jim, hiring a coach who did some grad assistant/quality control work for Georgia (four years) before moving up to work for the Ravens where he’s been ever since. Mike MacDonald had never been a defensive coordinator at any level and wasn’t coming in with experience of the college game.

John must really like Jim though because MacDonald really seems to get it, regardless of the lack of experience.

The way the Wolverines often stack their two best defenders to the wide side of the field, consequently denying space to college spread offenses, reveals an easy understanding by MacDonald of the task at hand.

Schematically, he brought a 3-4 defensive philosophy taken from the Ravens’ own playbook. He learned under Dean Pees (who worked under Bill Belichik for many years) and then Don Martindale (more of a Rob Ryan disciple). Between Belichik and Ryan you have a wealth of knowledge on 3-4 defensive schemes and you can see some of each influence on this scheme.

The 2021 Wolverines know how to attack protections and will use chaotic looking fronts on passing downs to set up four and five man pressures which often get a favorable 1-on-1 matchup or even a free-hitter into the backfield.

On standard downs the Wolverines have an abundance of two-high AND one-high coverages, as opposed to the simpler days of mostly running press-man with a single deep safety under Brown, or else Cover 2.

Having the ability to confuse quarterbacks with disguised coverages and to shade help over different receivers or routes will be invaluable for this upcoming run against Michigan State, Penn State, and Ohio State.

The prognosis

The main priority for Harbaugh in 2021 was to save his job, which I believe he's probably already done. They're already bowl eligible, currently undefeated, and pretty darn likely to win 8-9 games even if they lose all three of the big matchups remaining on the schedule.

An 8-4 Michigan isn't particularly exciting right now, yet it would be much better than many expected before the season and rich with potential for the future.

Mike MacDonald is only 34 years old and likely to stick for at least a little before moving on. He has very little coordinator experience, very little experience in recruiting, and as a defensive coach it's harder to get a promotion to "head coach" if he even wanted one yet.

On offense, as effective as Cade McNamara has been at driving the bus, J.J. McCarthy has oozed athletic potential in his limited action, and Michigan's supporting cast on offense is likely to include all of the main characters of 2021 and likely Ronnie Bell as well. The upcoming contests will either cement McNamara as a worthy starter for a team with bigger aspirations or else make it easier to make a change to McCarthy once he's ready.

The offensive line may need to be reworked some for 2021 but will at least return Trevor Keegan, Zac Zinter, and Karsen Barnhart with Ryan Hayes likely back at left tackle as well.

While you never want to throw away a year, the 2022 season sets up very nicely for Michigan and the program appears to be in much stronger overall shape than a year ago.

As for the rest of this season. At this point Michigan fans can't help but begin to wonder if maybe, just maybe, this could be the year where it finally stops. Decent chance of it from what I've seen, but it's probably worth looking at further after they've cleared hurdles like Michigan State and Penn State.

We'll talk more about the specific matchup with the Spartans next week. In the meantime, halfway through 2021 and it appears Harbaugh may be the man for the job after all.