Q: Highest Scoring Offense in Michigan Football History?*
A: The 2016 football team, which scored 524 points in 13 games (40.3 ppg) was the highest scoring offense in program history.*
Wait, so you're telling me that the most prolific scoring offense in program history occurred during the tenure of our current head coach?
It's true, look it up!
No way! How can that be? And... what the hell happened?
What happened is that Jedd Fisch left the program after the 2016 season.
And as any Michigan hockey fan can tell you, the impact of one guy leaving (Mel Pearson) can have a massive impact on a program.
So, my advice is for Warde Manual to pick up the damn phone and call Jedd Fisch and tell him he has a blank check waiting for him if he would please return to Ann Arbor.
Is Fisch the guaranteed solution? Hell if I know, but at this point isn't it worth a try?
*This does not include the Yost teams of 1901-04 since the rules were so different back then.
November 19th, 2020 at 4:27 PM ^
Good shit, Jedd !
November 19th, 2020 at 4:29 PM ^
OK U R HIRED
GUDJOB
November 19th, 2020 at 4:31 PM ^
Jedd was fine, but I seriously think people are misremembering his tenure. People weren't singing his praises when he was here. We completely blew our trash opponents out of the water (63 v Hawaii, 51 v UCF, 78 v Rutgers, and 59 v Maryland). We also got utterly stuffed by every good defense on our schedule. We beat Wisconsin 14-7, we lost to Iowa 13-14, and we tied OSU 17-17 in regulation.
November 19th, 2020 at 4:37 PM ^
And who knows what happens against Colorado if not for special teams TDs and their QB getting injured. I don't think a lot of people left that game feeling good about our offense.
November 19th, 2020 at 5:18 PM ^
So you are telling me that Jedds worst results happen to be our best under Harbaugh and that doesnt appeal to you? Close games we won or lost on a single score and 9 fucking blowouts. I dont know man that sounds damn tempting to me.
November 19th, 2020 at 5:54 PM ^
Those close games we won were absolutely not because of Jedd's offense. Come on man, we had the best defense in the country that year. Jedd's offense wasn't the reason we held Wisconsin to 7 points. Every elite team in the United States runs a spread offense. We shouldn't be pining for something that's been abandoned by every major program.
November 19th, 2020 at 7:25 PM ^
Best defense in the country - if only we had that coach still on staff.
November 19th, 2020 at 7:29 PM ^
You may be right but that offense held the ball for a long time too which also gave the opponent fewer chances to score.
November 19th, 2020 at 7:38 PM ^
FWIW Don Brown was the DC in 2016. After having so much success in 2016 it's a total mystery to me why he didn't emphasize defensive tackles going forward.
November 19th, 2020 at 5:37 PM ^
I'd give my left nut to be tied with OSU at the end of regulation again.
November 19th, 2020 at 5:48 PM ^
I'd also give your left nut to be tied with OSU at the end of regulation again.
November 19th, 2020 at 6:29 PM ^
Why would you want your left nut to be tied to OSU?
...sounds painful.
November 19th, 2020 at 6:39 PM ^
Maybe I could see giving up the lil' guy if this was the pre-OT era. But to give him up just for a chance to lose in a more painful way? Love your balls better than that.
November 19th, 2020 at 4:45 PM ^
Not a lot of proof of success for Harbaugh without Fisch or Roman, and both those guys have had success without Harbaugh ...
November 19th, 2020 at 5:23 PM ^
Serious question: how much success has Fisch had outside of Michigan? He sure seems to bounce around enough that it's hard to say by just looking at his resume.
And before anyone brings up the Rams' Super Bowl trip, keep in mind he was only an offensive assistant.
November 19th, 2020 at 7:29 PM ^
He helped get Rosen paid, right?
November 19th, 2020 at 7:29 PM ^
Did Fisch have different players than are out on the field today? Wondering if that matters more than some guy with a playbook.
November 19th, 2020 at 4:51 PM ^
Scoring and yards have also been at extremely high levels nationally in recent years. In fact, at the time, 2016 was the highest scoring year in history. So to say 2016 was our best offense under Harbaugh is of course true.... but to suggest that it’s our best ever is disingenuous.
November 19th, 2020 at 4:52 PM ^
I love the consistency. In perpetuity Michigan has:
- An offensive coaching savant we let get away or who is being held back because reasons
- A backup QB who is secretly better than the starter but they just keep playing the wrong guy because reasons
November 19th, 2020 at 4:56 PM ^
Highest scoring does not equal best, especially considering rule changes. Would you rather have the 03 Michigan Offense or the 16? That's what I thought.
November 20th, 2020 at 6:09 PM ^
The 2003 offense was fine, but it did its traditional swan dive in the Rose Bowl against USC, scoring a whopping 14 points.
November 19th, 2020 at 5:14 PM ^
Hawt take bru.
November 19th, 2020 at 5:17 PM ^
Scoring is up everywhere. When I was a teenager, you could reliably count on your team to win games 20-7. Like, reliably.
Comparing offenses today to teams from previous eras just doesn't work if you don't do some sort of correction. Like, say, taking the average score from all football games played during a year, and divide your team's scoring by that. That would normalize for rules changes, advances in X's and O's, etc.
EDIT: Just found this: https://saturdayblitz.com/2019/09/29/century-scoring-trends-in-college-football/
November 19th, 2020 at 5:21 PM ^
Damn Iowa... Damn JT Barret.
November 19th, 2020 at 5:22 PM ^
While 2016 was the highest scoring offense, it was only 35th in offensive S&P + behind Arkansas, Middle Tennessee and Ga Tech
Other offensive S&P+ rankings Uber Harbaugh:
2015: 34
2017: 49
2018: 25
2019: 21
So advanced stats show 2019 being the best offense under Harbaugh
November 19th, 2020 at 5:56 PM ^
Which makes sense. After a really rough start, that offense was humming by the end of the season.
November 19th, 2020 at 8:14 PM ^
It was humming for 4 games and then it stopped humming against OSU and Bama
November 19th, 2020 at 8:44 PM ^
Our 27 points against Ohio State was the most they gave up the entire year until the playoffs. The only team that scored more was Clemson at 29. Ohio State and Bama had the #2 and #3 defenses in the country last year according to SP+.
November 19th, 2020 at 6:29 PM ^
Note that in 2017, when Fisch served as UCLA's offensive coordinator (Jim Mora's last year), the team was ranked 9th in the country in Offensive S&P+.
November 19th, 2020 at 5:25 PM ^
Reading these responses im starting to see why we are a mess as a fanbase. We crushed teams on a weekly basis, crushed them. Then went toe to toe with the others. But also scoring was up and something something something. Id take him back in a heartbeat. 9 games a year where we put up over 40? Ill take my chances with the other 3 games. Too say he wasnt top quality is crazy. Gattis and Nussmeier Pep and all the other bums are exactly that compared to him. Damn if we cant excuse away a 40 ppg season and after watching this shit. I guess i understand the “Gattis should take over crowd”. Wtf?
November 19th, 2020 at 5:52 PM ^
Have to say my first in-person game of the Harbaugh era was 2015 BYU. I recall we were home dogs in that game to #22 BYU (a rankings darling). Crushed them 31-0. The play calling in that game was fricking awesome. Fisch's play-action pass attack out of the Harbaugh manball run game was dynamite. It was sooooo NFL. Should have kept Jedd and just stayed on that path as it fits Michigan. This spread happy stuff just doesn't seem to work in Ann Arbor.
November 19th, 2020 at 6:10 PM ^
That was an awesome game. Maybe Jedd simply understood how to take what Harbaugh wanted and make it workable. Having an offensive philosophy other than spread can be advantageous if done well since defenses don't see that very often. Splicing Harbaugh's manball/power obsession with spread/RPO/whatever by anyone else has just been a maddening exercise of wild inconsistency.
I seem to recall an anonymous Wisconsin defensive coach praising Harbaugh's offense around that time, saying it was hard to predict what M would run out of a given formation. Contrast that to the 2018 Outback Bowl where the SC defense knew where the ball was going nearly every play. People have floated a lot worse ideas than the thought of bringing Jedd back. We've done worse.
November 20th, 2020 at 9:14 PM ^
I was always puzzled that Fisch was allowed to get away, but maybe he was going to get far more money in the NFL than was available for assistants here.
November 19th, 2020 at 6:13 PM ^
Fielding Yost might have a bone to pick here. Point a minute, baby. And they did it with leather helmets.
November 19th, 2020 at 7:33 PM ^
November 19th, 2020 at 8:57 PM ^
I wonder if all teams saw an increase in offensive output in the last 10 years....that would explain a lot.
November 19th, 2020 at 9:48 PM ^
Waitaminute, you're knocking the Point-a-Minute because the RULES were different back then? The rules which...
- Outlawed forward passing
- Counted a touchdown as 5 points
- Made you kick the extra point from wherever on the goal line you scored the touchdown
- Didn't have 2 point conversions
- Didn't stop the clock for anything but halftime.
- Didn't penalize a team that ended the game early (most teams they played, including Stanford in the first Rose Bowl, called it quits after 3 quarters).
- Made you spot the ball on the sideline if you ran out of bounds last play.
Buddy, let me tell you, if Harbaugh coached under the 1901-1905 ruleset he'd score 0 or 2 points most games. Like most teams did. The Point-a-Minute teams are more like 3 points a minute if they got as many plays and stoppages and points as they do today.
November 20th, 2020 at 10:48 AM ^
They must have lowered the mound in 2016.