Note: This is my last post here for the summer. Many thanks to Brian and Seth for the opportunity to write here this summer, and to everyone who read my nonsense. If you liked that nonsense, you can catch more of my coverage at the Daily this fall. Readers in Ann Arbor can pick up a print copy on campus (they’re free, and our SportsMonday covers are really sick), and everyone else can go to michigandaily.com. You can also follow me on Twitter @BrendanRoose for the worst takes on the worst website. 

For my first post here, I wrote about what I called the “Harbaugh Experiment.” I argued that, generally speaking, nothing about Jim Harbaugh’s tenure at Michigan has been experimental to this point — at his hiring, he was as close to a sure thing as was humanly possible — but the events of 2020 have forced him to radically rethink his assistant coaching staff and the culture around his program. The Harbaugh Experiment features a new emphasis on youth and recruiting that indicates a desire from Harbaugh to stay in Ann Arbor for the long haul. He knows that the results thus far haven’t been good enough, and he wants to try and fix that. 

Since that first post was forward-looking, I want to make my last one more retrospective. Even if it was more extreme, 2020 wasn’t the first time that a part of the football program suddenly fell off in the Harbaugh era. Problem is, it wasn’t just one part. So, we’re gonna look at the trends of Jim Harbaugh’s tenure to examine those other valleys and the response to them. Beyond just being convenient for an easy narrative, what do these events tell us about Harbaugh’s approach to problems within his program, and what lessons can we apply from them? 

[After THE JUMP: Let's calibrate the otters]

Offense

More than anything, the ups and downs of the Harbaugh offense are a story of shifting talent coinciding with the use (or misuse) of that talent. Nowhere is that effect more visible than in the passing game:

For the most part, the varied success in Michigan’s passing game can be attributed to the quarterback each season. In 2015, Jake Rudock put up respectable numbers as Harbaugh’s most consistent quarterback to date; Wilton Speight performed well enough in 2016, but an injury took him out of the Indiana game and hampered his production against Ohio State and Florida State; a poor offensive line resulted in injuries and John O’Korn in 2017; Shea Patterson flashed talent in 2018 and found a solid rhythm in 2019. Milton’s 2020 per-game numbers seem to be on par with Patterson’s best season, but that’s easily explained away by the sheer number of reps and the production per attempt:  

Put simply, the Wolverines’ offensive line was tragic in 2020, so they couldn’t run the ball and had to rely more on their below-average passing game. Michigan threw the ball not out of desire, but out of necessity. Even with the relatively strong yards-per-game mark, I think it’s fair to say that the passing offense in 2020 was the second-worst of the Harbaugh era. 

The main lessons, then, from the boost in production after 2017 are to 1) have a good quarterback and 2) have a good offensive line. And considering we know close to nothing about Cade McNamara’s abilities as a QB, or if the o-line will be competent/stay healthy, you wouldn’t be unjustified slipping into a little BPONE. Still, I don’t think you should. 

Here’s why: even without the assurance of bringing a former 5-star transfer into the QB room, there are some compelling parallels between this year and 2018. The first is the receiving corps. Shea Patterson was gifted with a strong WR1 and WR2 (DPJ and Nico) in his first year in Ann Arbor. McNamara enters a similar situation with Ronnie Bell and Cornelius Johnson. I’m not arguing that Ronnie Bell and Cornelius Johnson are as good as Donovan Peoples-Jones and Nico Collins. They are not. They won’t have to be. 

The most crucial part of Patterson having DPJ and Nico to throw to is that it eased the burden of being a first-year quarterback. Learning a new system is a lot less difficult when the targets are reliable and easy to find. So, even if Bell and Johnson aren’t DPJ and Nico, they can make the passing offense’s bounceback much more manageable — especially with Daylen Baldwin, Mike Sainristil, Roman Wilson, and A.J. Henning comprising the supporting cast. With that level of talent, McNamara doesn’t have to be elite. He just has to be good. 

The second parallel I see is a run game ready to take a big step up. Here are the numbers for the entire Harbaugh era: 

Again, the reasoning for each season is mostly personnel. 2016 featured a strong, experienced offensive line and a dynamic running-backs room with senior De’Veon Smith, pre-suspension Chris Evans, and transfer Ty Isaac. 2018, meanwhile, had a competent line, a workhorse back in Karan Higdon, and a mobile QB in Patterson. Even if it was pre-Gattis, the 2018 run game featured a lot of creative read-option looks that the team could rely on for consistent yardage and the occasional big play. 

The RB corps in 2021 looks to be one of the strongest Harbaugh has had yet, even if two of its key pieces are young. At the very least, that two-year downward trend should reverse, and that should help lift the passing game as well. The question of how big that improvement is lies once again within the offensive line, and that’s probably the hardest position group to project right now (Alex, who is smart and knows a lot about football, had a brief snippet about Michigan’s line in his Enemy Ranked column earlier today, so read that). Will it be as strong as the recovery in 2018? Probably not, but I think that taking the conservative bet of “remarkably average” lifts the run game back toward 2017 levels, which itself takes more weight off McNamara’s shoulders. 

Put simply, the keys to improvement from 2017’s offensive struggles were a solid new quarterback, experience and talent at skill positions, and reliability from the OL. One of those things is certain to be a plus; the others are anyone’s guess. 

Defense

I’ll be honest: the optimism mostly ends here. 

Here are the passing defense’s numbers in the Harbaugh era. Read and weep: 

There is no framework from the past to learn from here. For three years, the passing defense was the best in the country. In 2018, it was fourth, then it slipped to the edge of the top ten, then it plummeted to one of the worst in the conference (oddly enough, Ohio State’s was the worst at 303.6 passing yards per game, though that number is skewed by Alabama’s 464 yards in the national championship). Shockingly, it seems that Jourdan Lewis (4*), David Long (4*), and Lavert Hill (4*) were a bit better than Vincent Gray (3*) and Gemon Green (3*). 

The only fix, then, is to recruit better defensive backs, and Michigan has already gotten started in that regard.  but that doesn’t help much in 2021. Sure, Gemon Green was fine last year and should build off that this year, and one of Vincent Gray or D.J. Turner will be better than 2020 Gray, and Dax Hill should make a greater impact playing more nickel corner this year, but does that lift the Wolverines back to high, or even above-average levels? Probably not. There are players waiting in the wings for the future — at least one of Andre Seldon and Darion Green-Warren should pop, and Will Johnson and Kody Jones should both develop into multi-year starters at least — but for the immediate term, it might stay pretty ugly. 

Are you sufficiently sad yet? Good. Here are the rushing numbers: 

If you want rankings: 16, 13, 15, 22, 22, 79. None are particularly excellent, but one definitely stands out as … less excellent. For a couple years, Michigan plugged the leaks left by a weak interior DL with electric, hard-hitting linebackers. When the supply of Devin Bushes and Devin Bush-adjacent players dried up, those leaks turned into floods. 

The lesson? Don’t plug. Effectively, Don Brown noticed a gap in his foundation and tried to fix it with a plank of wood. Now, the floors are crooked, the basement floods from a light drizzle, and the house is six inches lower than it was two years ago. Now, Mike Macdonald is left with the task of waterproofing the house and shoving some big-ass bodies in those gaps. 

With the secondary, there were guys waiting in the wings. On the interior DL, not so much. The incoming players are of the Don Brown mold: quick, but not big enough to plug the inside. Macdonald brings a 3-4 system that should do better to seal the interior, but without the personnel for it, the Wolverines are a while away from solving the problem. Oddly enough, the short-term possibilities with Mazi Smith and Chris Hinton are actually more positive than the long-run outlook right now — and we can’t even be sure if either of them will pan out. 

Final Lessons

My takeaway from these trends is the same takeaway I had from the staff overhaul: patience. No, you shouldn’t have to worry about patience in year seven of this coaching regime. But you do. Some aspects of the 2021 rebuild could be promising — I think the running backs and receivers are gonna be super fun to watch — but others will be ugly and upsetting. 

Of course, there is a level of ugliness that should be unacceptable, and that might be different for each fan. But on the offensive side of the ball at least, Harbaugh has a model for how he can move the program forward from 2020. At the end of the day, it comes down to if the players can play. 

Temper your expectations. Get mad at maddening things. Enjoy the enjoyable.