Perspective on Don Brown Firing

Don't forget, wear your mask at home and in your car

Bill Parcell, Vince Lombardi, or bust.

You're not wrong. But, to continue the metaphor: what do you throw the elite hitters? The off-speed? They foul off the fastball and sit on the change-up or curve....

I read it as the "conservative" nature was on the offensive side of the ball.

There's truth in that.  The offense had some spark in the second half of 2015, and into 2016, but it's not really been much to write home about since.  Had Harbaugh been able to maintain the 2016 offensive pace into 2017 - 2020, we'd be having a totally different conversation right now.

I guess the best way to say it is that we always play like we are walking on eggshells, not that the calls are necessarily conservative. Too much thinking instead of just going hard and playing. Thr defensive play calls were not conservative given the high proportion of blitzes, but, you would think that with such an aggressive scheme our defenders would be bigger ball hawks intent on directly affecting the outcome of the game with a big play at a critical juncture. But mostly it seemed like they were content to dominate downs 1 and 2 while 3rd down looked discombobulated with too much of a rush to keep plays in front of them and not enough of a rush to to cause a momentum-changing havoc play like OSU and the SEC teams frequently exhibit.

You can see it in our net turnover margin ranking and our defensive scores frequency. You can even see it in what our defenders did on the rare occasions that they cause a turnover. Our first impulse is to fall on the ball and secure it. Other teams try to advance it as far as possible. 

I don't think that this is intentional. However, I believe that subconsciously Michigan's guys have that slight hesitance, the impulse to stand on the brakes for fear that something bad is likely to happen and not to get too greedy.

Actually, this isn't so terrible. It's smart. It just is not indicative of a team that really believes in itself and has that intangible swagger that the best programs have that seems to shout that they know deep down that victory is inevitable.

Other great programs seem to have a much deeper-seated sense of confidence. This is why we can't seem to win as underdogs and why every Michigan coach from Bo until now has had pretty abysmal records as underdogs and in bowls. I believe that our less-than-dynamic and mistake-prone offenses over the years feeds that fear-of-failure pathology.