WTKA Roundtable 4/15/2021: They're All Champions
Things discussed:
- Eli’s return and how it affects the rotation.
- Portal guys we might be looking at? Options have to be a cultural fit and be interested in a smaller role because unless it’s a star there isn’t 35 minutes to give away.
- Take a Chaundee if there is one but you can roll with what you’ve got. You’ve got 80 minutes at guard, 30 goes to Eli, which leaves you 50 to get out of Collins, Bufkin, Zeb, and maybe Barnes, or find a transfer.
- Sam: They might wait to see who doesn’t make it in the NBA. Brian: bench shooter.
- Maryland got their center and guard: are they good?
- Change at recruiting coordinator: Dudek to MissSt, Michigan gets Courtney Morgan. “Dudek certainly has a type and it’s weird as f—.”
- Courtney Morgan: great dude, gotta grab him if you can. Seth says Morgan’s like Hart/Bellamy in that he can survive a coaching change at the top.
- Strategy: load on on recruiting because the future’s going to be whatever comes after a rough year.
- Xavier Worthy: best friends on the team were Joe Milton and Giles Jackson, who aren’t saying great things about Michigan right now.
[Hit the JUMP for the player, and video and stuff]
You can catch the entire episode on Michigan Insider's podcast stream.
Segment two is available here. You can also watch the video here:
THE USUAL LINKS
- Helpful iTunes subscribe link
- General podcast feed link
- Direct download link (right-click/save as)
- What's with the theme music?
Where else was he gonna go, prison?t
“Joe Milton and Giles Jackson aren’t great things about Michigan right now”, who is? No one does a better job of negative recruiting Michigan than Michigan.
April 16th, 2021 at 11:10 AM ^
All the garbage takes below this one are the usual tired old garbage, but since yours is pleasantly vague I can agree with it.
Despite all the offseason coaching changes, I’m not convinced Harbaugh has gotten the stink out of the program. Folks here were on board with Brown’s ouster but let’s take a step back and remember that he was handed DTs who folded like paper (if he had DTs at all) and CBs who can’t run. They’d increasingly replaced our best recruiters with old guys who got us nobody and didn’t coach. The linebackers (Brown’s group) were fine until they had to learn zone, and his hit rate out of his NE pipelines was pretty good, overall.
Now, contrary to popular belief, Harbaugh has consistently shown he’s willing to make changes. But the rate at which he adapts these days is beyond amateurish. Who the fuck realizes we need CBs only after the guys who can hack press man are down to Ambry Thomas? No wonder the players are frustrated; MGoBlog has a better grasp of the state of the program than Harbaugh! (They’re smart lads but I’ll bet they’re not happy whenever that’s the case.)
No, we don’t need to be goddamn Alabama to succeed and the NCAA would never let us anyway. But either way that’s a garbage take when right now the team is recruiting badly, coaching badly, scouting badly, and scheming badly, even just compared to itself a few years ago.
The program is severely dysfunctional right now. It’s not in a shape where we can plausibly talk about beating OSU or contending for the CFP when MSU whipped us by just having a guy run go routes past our corners.
April 16th, 2021 at 11:27 AM ^
Folks here were on board with Brown’s ouster but let’s take a step back and remember that he was handed DTs who folded like paper (if he had DTs at all) and CBs who can’t run.
Are you suggesting that Brown wasn't responsible for the state of the roster? Even if you set aside any kind of "the buck stops with the DC" type argument, maybe CB recruiting wasn't as much his fault but isn't it pretty well known that he's directly responsible for the state of the roster when it comes to DTs? That he explicitly kept the rest of the staff from recruiting players they wanted that he didn't like?
April 16th, 2021 at 11:59 AM ^
Are you suggesting that Brown wasn't responsible for the state of the roster?
MGoBlog commenters have an unhealthy obsession with “responsibility” that really just translates to, “Herpadrep I want someone to be angry at.”
Responsible? Sure. But what do you mean by that? Responsibility is not synonymous with blame. What the fuck was he supposed to do after all the recruiters left, recruit everyone by himself? I just said he did what he could with his NE connections. He can’t fire anyone without Harbaugh. And when Harbaugh finally started firing people, he fired Brown. Fans wanted heads to roll, so roll they did. Yay for the Blood God, but did we FIX anything?
I’m skeptical. Anyway you got your sacrifice so why you complaining? My point is more that the program is being run like a trust fund baby’s pet nonprofit — disorganized, political, and completely lacking introspection. And I’m not convinced they’ve stopped doing that.
April 16th, 2021 at 12:09 PM ^
So how do you explain the fact that we basically flipped 2 desperately needed DTs right after Brown was fired and we kept the DL coach?
April 16th, 2021 at 12:59 PM ^
Does being “old” really mean that one can’t be a good recruiter? See Greg Mattison who was ~62 when he joined Hoke’s staff.
and he was ~70 when he joined OSU’s staff.
I'm trying to visualize what is going on in the program that is pissing off so many players. Is Harbaugh trying too hard to "humble" them? Humiliate them? Bench the best players to "send a message"? All the while they are expected to work as hard in class as the general student body who doesn't spend 60 hours a week on football activities, while every other major program makes it as easy as possible for the football players to succeed in school so they can focus on football? Michigan's arrogance is real and it's destroying us now.
...and it's been destroying us for going on two decades.
FIFY
agree
I do think that it's probably harder to be a student-athlete at Michigan compared to other schools but I am confused as which "best players" are being benched to "send a message". Last I checked it felt like Harbaugh has stuck with guys longer than he should out of some weird aversion to change, hence why Milton was kept in games well beyond the time it was clear he wasn't effective due to a number of factors (defensive adjustments, health, etc.) and Hassan Haskins and Blake Corum didn't get the lion's share of the carries until the end of the year despite evidence they were clearly the best options.
The program is in some level of turmoil right now, and I do think the school plays a part in it. But schools like ND, NW, Stanford, etc. are also reasonably successful at football and don't seem to completely crater their standards for athletes. So I do think it's a fixable problem.
April 16th, 2021 at 12:18 PM ^
Jackson, McCaffrey, Hudson, Charbonnet, Solomon. Not to mention guys seem to want to declare for the draft or opt out asap. People may say those guys weren't good, but I'd disagree first of all, and the program wasn't exactly humming without them. Who's better than those players that have stuck around lately. Paye? And? I know you think Jackson left cause he got passed but I don't buy that. Sounds just like McCaffrey supposedly getting passed for Milton. Probably cost us Worthy as well.
April 16th, 2021 at 12:33 PM ^
James Hudson is really the only one in that group who turned out to be a good player who probably was disappointed with his treatment at UM in terms of position. I'm not going to slag on the others but your argument is basically "I don't believe a guy left for a good reason despite evidence he left for a reason", and I'd point out that there are over 1500 guys in the transfer portal so either there are a ton of guys unhappy with coaches or players are seeing that they can get around the depth chart a bit if they are unhappy with it. And honestly, that's cool they have that option and should be able to take advantage of it.
April 16th, 2021 at 10:01 AM ^
Is that arrogance? Do you want a program that's part of a school that basically waves its football players through just so 95%+ of them can NOT make the league and wind up having 50+ years of their life in front of them with nothing but a phony "education" in their back pocket?
April 16th, 2021 at 10:12 AM ^
So your ok with losing more football games to OSU, ND and whoever else we play in a bowl game going forward, so you can brag to your friends about how a few players on your team you root for who you never met graduated with honors?
April 16th, 2021 at 10:26 AM ^
I don't care about bragging. I'm an adult. I'm guessing you haven't gotten there yet.
April 16th, 2021 at 11:04 AM ^
Nice personal attack conveniently behind a keyboard. Who is the kid? 'gotten'?
You should maybe not fuck up apostrophe placement (or lack thereof ... "So your OK ...") when you start picking on someone's grammar.
Speaking of which:
April 16th, 2021 at 11:35 AM ^
My interest in the team is very much tied to my feelings toward the University. And my feelings toward the University are certainly tied to what I see as its ability to carry out its mission as an educational institution, first and foremost (as well as a research institution and a general contributor to the public good). To that end, I absolutely would prefer the school maintain academic integrity when it comes to the education being offered to student athletes, yes.
I don't know that Michigan will ever compete with the likes of Bama or OSU without some pretty seismic changes to the landscape, but I also don't think have high quality athletes and high quality educational experiences for those athletes are mutually exclusive.
We got completely outclassed by the conference last season. Northwestern, Iowa, Wisconsin, those aren't schools that we should be clearly a couple levels below them! We were simply among the worst teams in the country last year, no excuses for that!
Considering GoJ's report about what happened between DM and JH when McCaffrey said he wasn't feeling well, yeah, I think there's something to Harbaugh acting weird in practice. I think there's also a lot to the takes of being a part of Michigan football not being a good experience. Whether that's a combination of academic expectations, practice weirdness, not playing the best players, crappy schemes, bad in-game coaching and rotation decisions, or just crappy results, I don't know. But something definitely exists.
There's too much smoke here for there not to be a fire.
Joe Milton should thank his lucky stars he came here, he is a garbage football player and got a year of starting at UM somehow anyways. Then he throws a hissy fit when he loses the job fair and square? I haven't disliked a player without legal reasons like I have disliked Milton. (As a player, not person. I get he's just an overconfident kid). But also if he committed because he had a friend on the team he was never gonna be staying here.
Wow. That's a lot of venom to be spewing at a kid, who by most, if not all, accounts was a pretty good dude.
This is hot garbage. I think a lot was thrown at Milton and he did an admirable job handling it all, but perhaps too much was expected of him too early. But he seems by all accounts like a good guy who carried himself well. He's transferring because he wants a fresh start, and I don't blame him. Michigan just took a transfer QB who left because he lost his job, and I don't see you calling him a garbage football player.
Also, Milton transferred before Jackson or Worthy, so not quite sure where that complaint comes from unless you're referring to Worthy.
April 16th, 2021 at 10:03 AM ^
None of us knows what went on behind the scenes, but if Milton left on bad terms simply because he felt he was entitled to the starting job, whatever. Again, we don't know nor will we ever know the truth, though.
April 16th, 2021 at 11:20 AM ^
I don't listen to podcasts, but I have a question. A lot of people seem to assume that Worthy was negatively influenced by his friends being unhappy with Michigan. Why not think his friends are unhappy with Michigan because they misled Worthy into thinking he was coming here?
Maybe you guys get to a discussion of which way the causation goes in the podcast, but I can't tell from the bullet point.
April 16th, 2021 at 11:25 AM ^
Idk, a lot of talk about vague things like culture we can't really know much about, but what I do know is that our on field product last season was just outright garbage. We were a very bad football team, and that's just inexcusable. I hope we can turn it around this season.
April 16th, 2021 at 11:46 AM ^
The depth chart is irrelevant. Players pay attention to practice reps. It’s obvious to the players who the best players are. If you are running with them, you are happy. If you are a WR getting reps with the 1s and 2s, that’s fine. If you are watching from the sidelines, your eyes are going to drift to other opportunities.
April 16th, 2021 at 12:30 PM ^
As far as Seth said, it will be interesting to see if any staff members stay if and when Harbaugh leaves. I will be amazed if the team is much better than .500 this year unless the defense really improves. Seems like we will be having the same conversation about Harbaugh's future after this coming season.
The Jackson transfer isn’t the first time under harbaugh you’ve seen injuries play a role in unhappiness with the program. It seems like harbaugh treats it like the pros. If you’re injured, you lose a spot. That’s not smart for college kids. He is really struggling lately to keep players engaged, and we are seeing the impacts is his grind on the team. I really hope the new assistant coaches bring some energy back to the team.
"struggling to keep kids engaged" is a great way to put it.
If you're going to be a hardass and very demanding, you better have some results to point to, and JH just doesn't.
When the topic of discussion revolves around young Black men, the comment "where else was he gonna go, prison?" is at best incredibly tone deaf. This cringworthy line does not meet the standards of this blog. We can do better.
Comments