Looking at the first season for various elite coaches and what to expect for Jim Harbaugh

Submitted by ThadMattasagoblin on

1999 Oklahoma Bob Stoops 7-5: Lost to a bunch of mediocre teams and beat a bunch of mediocre teams. They absolutely destroyed # 13 Texas A&M who turned out to be pretty overrated. Losses included Texas, Notre Dame, Texas Tech, and Colorado who were all pretty meh. Destroyed Oklahoma Stateand then lost a close one to Ole Miss in the Cotton Bowl.

2000 Louisiana State Nick Saban 8-4: Had a dramatic turnaround from Gerry Dianrdo's 3-8 season the year prior. Beat 8-4 Tennessee, 8-4 Mississippi State, and 9-3 Georgia Tech. This was a huge turnaround as Saban's team held their own after getting pushed around the year prior. Their losses were largely to good teams such as 9-4 auburn and 10-3 Florida. They did lose to UAB early on and 6-6 Arkansas.

2001 Ohio State Jim Tressel 7-5: Had an up and down year without many big wins except for Michigan guh. Beat who he was supposed to beat and lost to who he was supposed to lose to outside of bad losses to Penn State and Wisconsin but one of those was in Happy Valley. The team got better as the year went on as they lost by 3 to # 14 South Carolina in the Outback Bowl.

2001: USC Pete Carroll 6-6: Had a rough year with a lot of losses to good teams. Lost to # 7 Oregon, # 11 Washington, and # 12 Kansas State, and a 5-6 Notre Dame team. Did beat # 20 UCLA 27-0 on their own field so there's that.

2005 Florida Urban Meyer 9-3: Beat who they were supposed to beat and lost to who they were supposed to lose to. Beat # 23 Florida state, # 4 Georgia, and # 25 Iowa with losses to a 11-2 LSU team, and 10-2 Alabama team. They already started to win some games they weren't supposed to.

2007 Alabama Nick saban 7-6: They beat a 8-5 Arkansas team, crushed a 10-4 Tennessee team, lost to # 3 LSU, # 25 Auburn, and an 11-2 Georgia team. They did have a bad loss to Louisiana Monroe to end the season.

From these coaches, I think we can expect a 8-4/9-3 year for Harbaugh since the big ten isn't very difficult and we have most of our big games at home. We'll lose some games but win a big one like MSU or Ohio. Most of these guys ended up beating a rival in their first year who was usually pretty good.The biggest improvement to these teams occured in the 2nd year as they usually went from being mediocre to really good/elite. 3 of the forementioned won national championships in their 2nd year with the rest winning one in their 3rd and 4th years. Recruiting is another big thing to maintain consistency as basically all of these guys had a top 5 class when they got there.

 

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uminks

April 19th, 2015 at 5:22 PM ^

Road games at MSU and OSU in 2016. I just don't think a NC will be possible. My guess is that it will take three more good JH recruiting seasons to get us in NC contention.  But in due time, Jim will have a NC team here at Michigan. I just hope he stays and doesn't jump to the NFL so that we get several more NC with JH.

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Brandon_L

April 19th, 2015 at 3:37 PM ^

We are a lot closer to 6-6 than 7-5, or 8-4 according to what I seen in the spring. Add Jake Ruddock, a 5th year transfer wideout who can possibly take the top off of a defense, get Jabril some decoy opportunities on the offensive side of the ball, I think a few ball bounces that go our way we will be 8-4 at best. But as of today I'm still going with 6-6 and early losses to Utah and BYU. This team must find a running game if we are going to do any better. Hopefully the offensive line gels like they did late last year, and drake Johnson comes back looking as good as his did against the Buckeyes.

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ThadMattasagoblin

April 19th, 2015 at 3:41 PM ^

Don't think the spring game means anything really with regards to how good we are. If we had our starting lineup against starting defense and got demolished then ther's cause for worry but we already knew that we were deeper at DL than OL. Our starters gashed Ohio State for 28 points in the shoe last year so there's potential there. It comes down to whether Rudock can throw enough to loosen the defense.

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BigBlue02

April 19th, 2015 at 7:01 PM ^

They were 4-0 against UConn, Texas, Houston, and Virginia. Of those teams, Houston was the only team that ended up .500. Hill is talented, but our defense will probably face 4 QBs better than him.

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funkywolve

April 20th, 2015 at 10:25 AM ^

Granted FEI rankings aren't the end all be all but those 4 teams BYU played finished the year ranked:

Virginia - 35

Houston - 59

Texas - 73

UConn - 106

Michigan was 2-2 after 4 games and the FEI rankings for those 4 teams were:

Utah - 16

ND - 38

Miami, OH - 107

App St - 111

Joined: 10/08/2008

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Chadhenne123

April 19th, 2015 at 8:19 PM ^

We had two non conference losses last year and mostly everyone has penciled us in for 2 more this year. With harbaugh can we safely agree we'll likely cut that that down to one non conference loss(likely Utah) and we flip close games around such as the Maryland and butgers game based onnot going into games with a bound to fail gameplan and a qb physically and mentally butchered. You add that up and that's 8 wins. On the contrary I don't see any teams making that flip with us unless we beat sparty or osu. Nw won't beat us in the big house although happy valley could give us revenge, but we could still gain another win with revenge at Minnesota and I assure you harbaugh won't let us get out muscled and that's all minny has. If we could hit the nose at 8 regular season wins I think harbaugh and staff are on pace.

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Danwillhor

April 19th, 2015 at 6:35 PM ^

and have said so since we hired Harbaugh. This program needs to be truly rebuilt. I'm taking great recruiting AND development. As for the games, I think we start 1-3 or maybe 2-2. Utah crushed us last year & the changes on our team isn't the whole reason. IIRC, they return a ton of starters. Utah was/is the better program right now - period. BYU is always tough. Ore St is a push so I hope scheme/coaching can pull that out but I wouldn't bet on it. I want to win immediately as much as anyone. This team just isn't prepared for that, IMO. I think 6-8 wins in year one & were closer to 6 than 8, IMO. I don't think the majority of our players will be much different than last year. People need to be realistic. Stop being homers that will freak out if we aren't in playoff contention year one lol. We won't be. That said, I'd LOVE to be wrong. La'hov to be wrong! Logic just doesn't support the chances of being wrong. It's not like Hoke was let go after building/developing a juggernaut program because he cheated & Jim is taking over an oiled machine. This isn't Meyer to osu. This team doesn't know how to win yet & it's not 1969. Other teams get good players now, too. Many develop them. We haven't for most.

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JonnyHintz

April 20th, 2015 at 12:55 AM ^

I don't agree with one key part. I think everyone will be drastically different next year. Whether that translates to wins, remains to be seen. But I think this team will be clearly more physical and will compete with everyone. You simply cannot underestimate the coaching staff we currently have. Simply compare the coaches this year to their counterparts under Hoke. Harbaugh-Hoke Nussmeier-Drevno Hecklinski- Fisch Nuss (QB)- Harbaugh/Fisch Jackson- Wheatley Manning- Zordich Mallory- Jackson There's just no real comparison on there. This staff is far and away a better coaching staff. Now you can't tell me that with better coaching of this caliber, that the players won't be different than they were last year. I'm not saying we are competing for a playoff spot, but I don't know how you can say this won't be a better team in just about every area.

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jabberwock

April 20th, 2015 at 12:34 PM ^

How can you not see that Greg Mattison is a huge upgrade over Greg Mattison.

Sure, maybe in some ways Greg Mattison is a bit better than Greg Mattison, but I'd say as a whole, we're pretty lucky to have Greg Mattison on this staff as opposed to you know . . . Greg Mattison.

The difference between the two is as clear as twilight & dusk.

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alum96

April 19th, 2015 at 4:13 PM ^

Would rank the opponents like this accounting for WHEN they are being played and WHERE.  (Assuming UM is going to start quite slow on offense).

  • Tier 1:  OSU, MSU (2 best teams on the schedule - home game emotion gives hopes to pull 1 out)
  • Tier 2; @Utah, @PSU (solid not great teams, tough atmospheres travel out west, Utah first game of year for new staff, NFL QB for PSU, etc)
  • Tier 3: BYU (very dangerous QB who can carry team on back), @Minn (solid coach, on the road, physical)
  • Tier 4: Northwestern, @Indiana, @Maryland (quite average teams - UM has more talent but has played close or lost to such teams in the past - these are games Harbaugh needs to stop Michigan from losing.  Also UM needs to relearn how to win on road vs average teams.  Maryland lost QB too)
  • Tier 5: Rutgers (Nova is gone, home gamee vs middling talent, expecting Rutgers to be run oriented which is supposed to be UM strength), Oregon State (very low end Pac 12 team who lost its NFL QB and coach)
  • Tier 6: UNLV

So if you want to find "reasonable losses" I'd work down from Tier 1 to Tier 3.  I see 6 potential losses and losing all of those would be severly disappointing.  Hoping to go 2-4 in that group and then win everything in tier 4 and 5.   Gets you to 8-4.

Another scenario is probably dropping one game out of tier 4 and then finding a way to win an unexpected game in tier 1/2,  Also gets you to 8-4.  

Just one way to reverse engineer it.

 

 

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Harlick

April 19th, 2015 at 6:56 PM ^

I agree this team will be 8-4, 9-3 at best. As the OP noted the first year for a new coach is not often great. Plus with the schedule they have and the lack of offensive talent this team is going to start the year looking poor and it will finish strong. Utah, Minnesota, PSU, MSU, OSU, and BYU, it is going to be tough for this offense to win games early with poor play at QB, RB, and WR.

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dragonchild

April 19th, 2015 at 4:16 PM ^

That's kind of. . . yeah.  I mean, NO!  I mean, I agree, but this is the engineer's hedge here.  That's the result I get only by refusing to guess how much each group will improve due to coaching, default to "none", and essentially project their output based on last year minus the guys we lost (Beyer, Funchess, Gardner, JMFR, etc.) plus the guys we get (Rudock, Peppers, Morgan, etc.) with some token progression due to added experience.

6-6 is an acceptable floor only due to massive uncertainty, but as an actual result it would be a complete disaster, because that implies our new coaching staff got nowhere across the board.  Now yes I do expect there to be growing pains, especially on offense, but this means the new guys like Wheatley, Jackson and Baxter didn't pan out and that would be a complete shock to me.

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