Black Pit of Negative Expectations.  This is a fantastic article.  That's exactly how I feel watching Michigan football now.  It's just not fun.

Great write up. I was tempted to do a diary that statistically points out:

1. A close loss in a night road game to a quality non-conference team is not that big of a deal. 
2. Notre Dame is basically 2017 PSU with a much better defense but no Saquon Barkley. They are likely a 10 win team and this loss will not ruin UM’s playoff hopes. 
3. Despite the BPONE, the QB, WR, and even the RB and play has improved. 
4. Lots of coaching transitions and adjustments on offense means we will need a bit of time to calibrate the offense. 

OTOH:

• Wimbush faces similar pressure all night and still got deep throws off by arm punting. We have Nico and DPJ and Gentry. Not arm punting feels like we are avoiding it because JH feels like it’s not honorable. 
• Did we practice jump balls at all? On offense (Gentry) and defense (Hill, Hawkins) we simply got outworked.  That is an easy drill to practice (and fun). Do it. 
• The offense still feels stiff and predictable. 
• I would like to see Collins/Perry, DPJ, Gentry/McKeon, Evans (H slot) and Higdon OR DPJ/Collins/Perry, Gentry, McKeon, Evans (H slot) and Higdon more. Evans and Higdon are two of our best 11. While it’s fun to see Oliver Martin catch some passes and Nico and DPJ do some damage on bubble screens, I have to wonder what Evans could have done with some of those passes. 

BPONE. Has a nice ring to it.

Well, things have got to get better, and probably will. In the meantime, I hope there's a decent menu at the BPONE as I'll be there awhile and will get hungry. 

I have a terminal case of BPONE....stage 4.

I think the reason it's hardest to be a Michigan fan is because we are the "winningest program of all time" (TM).  Take that away, and my personal emotional investment into each and every game wouldn't nearly be so high.  Like a weight lifted off one's shoulders, I would probably enjoy Michigan football more.

Let me give a few different takes than the O-line one that's been discussed already.  I'm not a football X's and O's junkie by any means, so these are just layman opinions...

> Harbaugh should absolutely stay until he's ready to retire.  He's not the best coach in America.  He's not even the right coach for Michigan IMO.  But he's the best fit for what Michigan wants to be.

> I'll get right to it:  I believe the best coach for Michigan would be one that runs a full spread offense like Ohio State's.  Rich Rod had the right idea, but was just the wrong person with an unfortunate defense.  Pair someone with RR's offensive philosophy with Don Brown's defenses and now you're cooking.

> Harbaugh just seems to me like someone who's stuck playing 1980s football.  The game has evolved since that time but Michigan just hasn't evolved with it.  (Or when they tried, with RR, they just get unlucky with defense, abandoned it, and reverted back to Neanderthal Ball.)  Heck, even the likes of Alabama and Notre Dame have incorporated major spread components into their offenses.  Michigan just dabbles with pseudo-mobile QBs and tries to win championships with outdated power formations - without the talent gap it enjoyed in the 80s and 90s no less.

> Spread offenses go for chunks of yards or TDs on every play.  When they fail, the next play tries the same.  Power offenses (at least the variety Michigan seems to employ) seem to rely on getting 4 yards a play to move the chains.  So when you miss one, the whole machine breaks down and you're forced to punt.  This goes along with Brian's notion of "very large percentages" he mentioned last week.  Rely on 80% success enough times, and it's just doomed to failure unless you happen to get lucky.

> Ending on a lighter note, I find it ironic that a team with the motto "The Team. The Team. The Team." is one of the few in college football that wear helmet stickers to highlight individual accomplishments.  I'd rather the clean look of the best helmet in college football.  :-)

TL/DR - I think Michigan's want to be a power football team has been the single biggest problem for the larger part of the past 10 years.  We need to evolve to the spread n' shred.  Also, get rid of helmet stickers.

Runyan was bad but most of the pressure was Patterson's fault not the line . He drifted into pressure instead of stepping up into the pocket.

The OL needs to master the art of holding without getting a penalty.  The rest of the BIG has seemingly practiced this for years.

My thoughts:

1) This game should have never been scheduled. At least not in the same year we have Wisconsin, PSU, MSU, and OSU on tap, and I would say the same thing if we had won. Until the CFP committee starts valuing strength of schedule there is simply no incentive to play these types of games.  Go look at the OOC schedule at schools like PSU, Wisconsin, MSU, and Georgia. Ohio State learned the hard way last year when they scheduled Oklahoma and got snubbed because they had two losses. When Jim Harbaugh was hired the goal immediately became CFP or bust, and future scheduling needs to take that into account. Instead of sitting here at 1-0 after playing Arkansas we are one loss away from the season being a bust. You’d think we would have learned from all the early OOC losses in the Lloyd Carr era to stop doing this to ourselves but, nope.​​​​​​​

2) That we are starting two tackles Brady Hoke recruited in year 4 of the Harbaugh era is almost unfathomable, but that’s the price you pay when you don’t recruit a single offensive tackle in your 2016 recruiting class and whiff on all your top targets in 2017. To a larger point, outside of Chase Winovich, the Brady Hoke recruited players still on the roster provide this team nothing. Mone, Marshall, Furbush, Kinnel, JBB, and Runyan are all liabilities and should not be playing let alone starting. I’m not trying to be mean but JBB and Runyan is the worst starting tackle combo I’ve seen in my lifetime of watching UM football.

3) The play calling was head scratching at times and the clock management was abhorrent. PA pass on 2nd and goal from the 2 yard line when you can’t pass pro? I don’t care if spider 2 is the easiest pass protection play in the playbook run the damn ball. And don’t get me started on why we were huddling at the end of that game. Do we not have hot routes in the offense? Where is our screen game? Where is the motion and misdirection in the offense? The route tree is garbage. We miss Jedd Fisch. We have no identity on offense. I don’t think it’s a coincidence the creativity and downfield passing game on offense went away the second Jedd Fisch left and Pep Hamilton came on board. Speaking of Pep, when has he ever had a good offense? He was fired in Indy. He was bad in Cleveland. He’s been bad here.  The offense feels like him and Harbaugh’s lovechild. Instead of hiring an up and comer like Urban did with Tom Herman and Ryan Day, Jim went out and hired guys who were fired for bad offenses in Pep and McElwain.  Yes, it’s hard to play offense when your tackles are continually getting blown back or blown by, but many teams with worse personnel than Michigan do more with less.

4) This defense will still be elite. On rewatch the defense played much better than I thought they did live. ND twice converted 3rd downs on pick plays that should have been called but weren’t. The roughing the passer that led to their third TD was bad but even worse was the no holding call on Lavert Hill where he literally got tackled. They were dominant in the 2nd half in only ceding 69 yards and 3 points. It’s disappointing to lose to a team whose entire offense is huck, chuck, and pray and broken QB runs. That said safety play has got to get better. Tyree Kinnel is not a power 5 caliber safety. Might be time to roll with Hawkins who showed good range and speed after Kinnel got burned for their 2nd TD but he has to come up with that pick in the end zone and on the screen pass. Once again plays were there to be made and we didn’t make them. Becoming a familiar theme. I also thought Uche> Furbush and Ross>Gil. And lets please find a way to get Ambry Thomas on the field more.

5) Recruiting rankings matter. All the strengths and liabilities on this team should prove that by now. The three stars we are taking save one or two aren’t outperforming their rankings. The coaching staff made a huge mistake at running back with AJ Dillion and Omaury Samuels. They made another with Higdon and Mike Weber. Higdon runs hard but has no vision or patience, can’t break a tackle, and his pass protection is atrocious. He would never see the field under Fred Jackson. In this offense you need a bell cow. I think enough has already been said about JBB and Runyan but it can’t be overstated how bad they were Saturday. Both of ND's starting DE's were from Michigan and Harbaugh didn't even recruit Daelin Hayes and could have had Kareem after he decommitted from Bama but passed for Ron Johnson. Are Tyrece Woods and Gabe Newburg going to come in here and be players? Doubtful. I bet Hinton and Mazi Smith are though. On the flip side you’re seeing the talent flash in guys like Nico and Ambry. Shea is a huge upgrade at QB. I think the interior of the OL did a decent job for the most part, although there were mistakes there too. Long and Hill are still shutdown corners. I don’t want to hear anything more about trusting the coaches when it comes to this. Recruiting rankings matter and that’s that.

6) Our TE’s are soft. Gentry and McKeon can’t block for crap and neither is making plays in the pass game. Huge disappointment on Saturday. We missed TJ Wheatley in pass pro.

7) In 2014 OSU won the national championship after starting the year giving up 300 rushing yards to Navy and losing by two TD’s at home to Virigina Tech in a game where the OSU offense averaged 2.7 YPC, gave up 7 sacks, and threw 3 INT’s. Bottom line there is still a whole season left and a lot of time to get better. After watching PSU and MSU this weekend no reason we can’t beat those teams.  OSU’s defense has major problems. Taking care of business against Wisconsin at home is more than doable. But they need to figure out offensive tackle and find a RB willing to pass pro. The margin for error is gone, but there is too much talent on this team to throw in the towel now.

What I keep coming back to is that this was another game that felt like one of those USC Rose Bowls (I think '04 was the best example) where Michigan was behind by a surmountable gap, had the time, maybe crawled back a little bit, got a few big plays here and there. But at no time did I feel in any way confident that they'd pull it off.

There's a complacency to anticipated failure in the BPONE, I think. You've surrendered to the void. It's warm in there, and there's beer and maybe some pizza or something. Just ride it out.

The offensive line issues, dumb penalties, and clock management all just baffle me. Why didn’t Harbaugh have these problems at Stanford? How did he beat #1 USC at the Coliseum in his first year, while here we are in year 4 with no clear signature win?

I was deep in the BPONE during the 2008 season.  That was a killer.

I’m not there with this team at this time.  It’s one game.  ND had some good things happen for them.  We didn’t play well, especially the D in the first half.  Give Warinner time to coach up the line.  First game, road game at night may have forced some line up choices.  Let’s see how the younger guys play over the next 2 games.  Let’s see if adjustments are made.  

Lots of talent which is something I couldn’t say about the 2008 team.  There is hope.

"Michigan's fourth quarter in this game was mostly spent down two touchdowns and mostly spent without any urgency whatsoever. The inability to get plays off with more than ten seconds on the playclock with under eight minutes left in the game is extremely disturbing and, yes, Hoke-ish. It speaks to a lack of organization."

Considering that Jim Harbaugh acquired the name "Captain Comeback" in the NFL—which undoubtedly meant he was in hurry-up mode constantly—this inability to fashion a decent hurry-up regimen at Michigan is particularly mysterious.

Regardless of the reason, that falls squarely in Harbaugh's own lap.