[LOCKED] You are entitled to....NOTHING!

His teams collapse at the first sign of adversity, his clock management is bottom of the barrel bad, his offenses are unimaginative and have been left behind by the CFB and NFL alike, but hey, keep fighting the good fight.

Pretty much sums it up. There are numerous areas to debate about how situations or schemes are handled, but the lunacy fringes on both sides just wear out the meaningful dialog.

Harbaugh has turned around the program. The culture of entitlement and complacency is gone. Harbaugh is winning at a clip (75%) consistent with UM’s long history. He has surpassed MSU (38-14 v 32-20) and handled PSU (3-1) & UW (2-1). He has differentiated UM with the spring trips, clean program, upstanding guys and fantastic APR.

Now the program needs to get past OSU. Harbaugh himself said that UM has reached the hump but has to find a way to get over the hump. He didn’t prepare the team well enough for OSU - he can read a scoreboard. He is far too ambitious and competitive to settle for just reaching the hump or letting OSU beat his alma mater.

The guy bleeds Blue and works tirelessly to make UM an elite program. His persistence and resilience have already made a huge difference. He is our best path forward.

You lost me at the first sentence.  Beating OSU and winning the division is not an absurd and unrealistic expectation.  Certainly not by the fourth season of a coach who's being paid 7 million a year.  We're not even talking about winning the conference, let alone going undefeated or winning the NC.  

Harbaugh has been here four years and has won nothing.  He has no championships, and not even any signature wins.  He's a good coach, but he has topped out at 10-2.  To answer your question, Swinney was 11-2 by his 4th year and has never looked back.  

There are many legitimate concerns on both sides of this issue, but rather too many criticisms that are just angry and unfair. Probably a reflection of the poster's disappointment.

As one example, the complaint that the team does not play well on the road and fades towards the end of the season. Not only is winning on the road in the Big Ten usually a challenge for all teams (OSU-Purdue?), but we managed an impressive comeback against NW and dominated MSU. As for the late-season fades, I think we under-estimate the effects of injuries to key players: last year the QB; this year Gary and Winovich. Without their pressure, Haskins had too much time and he is an accurate QB. We needed to be at our best to win that game. We were not. The situation was even worse in the bowl game where the absence of Higdon and JBB was a serious blow to the run game. And, of course, Bush on Defense.

As I have argued on another thread, the injuries and absences among such key players are bound to have an impact, especially against good teams. We have made significant progress, but we have been unlucky with injuries this past couple of years. How would the 1997 championship team have done had Woodson and maybe one or two others been limited by injury?

I would suggest too that the tone of many comments is unnecessarily abusive, and provokes angry responses. More thought and civility, less emotion would be nice. But of course such expectations are unrealistic in this day and age. Quaintly archaic, even? Doubtless some enjoy letting off steam, maybe even need it as an aid to cope with life's stresses? 

Still, if we can hope to improve on a 10-win season, why not on anger issues?

Happy New Year, everybody, and Go Blue.

What about the players - what are they entitled to?

I think the team collapses at the first sign of adversity, because they don't feel like they have a chance to win with the clock management & piss poor conservative play calling. We never switch momentum back in our favor on offense. Then add in a horrible defense scheme against good teams & it's a recipe for disaster ...ie in Columbus.

Ok cool.

Hook ‘em ?

JPC ...we for sure missed Bush out there. The other players we should be able to do fine without imo.

One thing is imo - we don't get 2nd & 3rd guys valuable playing experience. Bush was in the end of games many times when we were waaay ahead. Why not get the other guys playing time so they can be coached up.? 

New Carr same as the Old Carr.

Yeah, reminds me of another failed coach we had, could not win the last game of the season.

After 11 full years, his last game record was 0-10-1.  If he beat Ohio State, he lost the bowl game.

That was the days of the Big Two and the Little 8, so beating all those crappy big ten teams was easy.  Non-conference was usually a cakewalk, with Notre Dame not coming on the schedule until 1978.

Q: Why doesn't Millie serve Bo his cereal in a bowl?

A:  Because he would just lose it.

Patience.

:)

WillyWonka.Gif

Yeah this take for the 5th time or so didn’t need to be posted. Some want to be an apologist for everything he does, others want him fired. You got a thought like this several days after the bowl, it didn’t need it’s own thread. 

I agree with the OP. The level of butthhurt around here serves no purpose but to destabilize the program.

It is almost like MSU, OSU and the SEC have hired the Russians to troll social media with over the top discontent to achieve this effect. If it weren't for some long time contributors adding to the fire, all the out of nowhere negative posters would confirm my opinion.

And I am exhausted by the absurdity and unrealistict strawman arguments saying Michigan fans "want to be Bama".  How about we beat our main rival more than once every 20 years?

To be fair we've been 2 games away from the playoffs in 2016 and 2018.  If we had beat OSU both those years we would still have to beat Wisconsin in 2016 and Northwestern in 2018 in the championship game.

Got to "Unrealistic expectations" and gave the rest of your post a hard pass.  Look, I love Harbaugh-I was in school when he was and have great memories of those games in the student section.

However...I think given his past successes at many levels, it was absolutely realistic to expect more than what we've gotten over the past four seasons.  Not every season, but certainly a couple of them. 

2015 was a huge success in my eyes because he had to turn the program around.  No issue with a freakish MSU loss and getting blown out by a really good OSU team.

2017 was disappointing, but losing so many starters and having massive QB issues mitigates that somewhat for me.

2016 we should have been in the playoff.  We had stars everywhere, a functional but not great QB, and an OSU team that was young and somewhat down.  The spot shouldn't have mattered, we pissed away chance after chance to put the game away, not to mention whatever THAT was in Iowa two weeks earlier.  Now, we would have gotten Notre Dame'd in the CFP, but that's beside the point.

2018...no excuse for the last two games.  You have to do a better job of preparing your team-and that offense was tough to watch.  

Appreciate the lecture

It doesn't really seem that this staff is trying to compete at the national level. It seems like they're aiming to be regional champs, the best of the midwest non-Ohio State division. They've been pretty successful at that. 

Thank goodness for this post! And to think we all fell for “those who stay will be champions” line and had the audacity to believe we should be competitive with Ohio State.

Thanks to New Carr, we now know that Brady Hoke established the Michigan standard, and any coach that exceeds the Hoke standard deserves the unflattering devotion of the fan base.