If we were to make a change, whose offensive system in college football would you like to see us emulate? 

Don't mind Harbaugh's system at all but I think it needs to be less predictable with more WR use.  We are missing some pieces to grind out wins using physicality vs better teams

Clemson....love their balance and it feels like they attack.

2018 Purdue

or

2017 Iowa

or

2016 Clemson

The exact opposite of whatever MSU has.

Anything where we don't run into a stacked box every other play.

Also one that doesn't burn 35 seconds of clock every play, when down multiple scores late in the 3rd/ 4th Qtr .... ie ND, OSU & Fla.

So, let's invoke the man who inspires more dumb opinions than anyone else on this board: Rich Rodriguez. 

(If you are the type of person whose first response to this is "no point agin good taem, player 2 small", just move along)

In his three years here, Rodriguez had different QBs every season, each with a different skill set. And each year he adjusted how he used them to that skill set within his offense. Denard ran the ball more than Forcier, who ran the ball more than Threet. He had his offense, but he attempted to fit the personnel to the offense. The emphasis of attack was based on what would work best. RBs got a lot more touches prior to Denard for example, because Forcier and Threet weren't going to run 25 times a game. Its not a surprise that the following staff, upon inheriting Denard and a team no longer riddled with inexperience, had their best success when they used him more closely to how Rodriguez did than what they would have preferred. 

To some extent, Harbaugh did this with Patterson, who had far more designed QB runs than any other QB whose played at Michigan. However, this ignores the rest of the offense. Where does the strength of the team lie? In the receivers and TEs. So why, why, did this year's team throw the ball less than the 2015 team? Why did they throw the ball less than the 2016 team? Why, with a 5-star QB who came here after throwing the ball 35-45 times a game at Ole Miss and 4 top-200 WRs and an NFL draft pick TE did Michigan throw the ball less than they did with Jake Rudock and Wilton Speight? If Michigan isn't throwing the ball 30-35 times a game next year (unless Charbonnet is an absolute monster who dictates running the ball like he's at Wisconsin), then the season will likely end in disappointment. If Harbaugh adjusts his offense (he doesn't have to abandon it!) to his personnel's strengths, he'll be fine. 

If Michigan wants to be a QB factory again and take advantage of Jim's NFL pedigree in recruiting, they should be emulating the offenses that are taking over the NFL. That means looking a hell of a lot more like Oklahoma than Lloyd Carr. That's what the NFL is now, not inside zone in the 3rd quarter down by a billion.

If being a running team means more to Harbaugh than being pro style, then emulate what Alabama was with Jalen Hurts: lots of pistol, quarterback a threat to run every down if the defense doesn't respect him enough. I don't think Alabama has gone under center in non-goal line/short yardage situations in 4 years.

Clemson. They have a high scoring offense AND an elite defense.

They have a fairly balanced attack too.. (YPG pass/run, pass:run ratio).

2016: 334/170  65:35

2017: 235/195  55:45

2018: 274/257  52:48

And on top of all that they had the #1 scoring D this year, #2 last year and #10 in 2016. They avg. about 3 less points per game, since 2016, than we do, but they average almost a full TD MORE per game on offense..

Meanwhile, they average about the same yards surrendered per game over that time period too (269 for M, 287 for Clemson, but last two years have been just about equal).. save for 2016 when they gave up 311, but they won the national title that year so I doubt any Clemson fan gives a shit.

So yeah, I think Clemson would be a good team to emulate, that and the similarities in how long it's taking Harbaugh to build Michigan play well with how long it took Dabo to go from good to great to elite (spoiler alert: took about 6 years to get really going and another 2 before they took home the national title and were perennial contenders). 

They can keep the same ‘offense’ provided they stop with the predictability, reduce the number of times they trot out 2 TE sets, mix in in some quick-hitters, and speed things up a bit. 

It's Oklahoma. It's not just that they score a lot of points. It's that, as an opponent, you're not only scared of what they can do, but also how quickly they can do it. You never feel comfortable when they have the ball, and they know it. If they're down 14 points in the second or third quarter, you can just tell that an offensive explosion is coming.

The most frustrating thing when you're an opponent playing Oklahoma is not only do they typically have superior athletes (which Michigan has), but in order to maximize their advantage, they speed things up. And this makes sense. They think they're better, so more plays in a game is a statistical advantage.

I just don't understand the slow-it-down offensive philosophy Michigan uses. If you have better players/athletes, you want more plays in a game.  

Alabama

So many of these high powered offenses are mostly throw it short to my quick skill guys and see what they can do, counting on missed tackles.  I like a bit more downfield throwing, 10 yards plus.  As others have noted, we did a lot of that in Harbaugh's first year with Fisch.  I think we have all the right plays, and Jimmy knows what to do as evidenced with Rudock, but for whatever reason he plays so passive sometimes, only opening it up when we get down.  how about running out to a lead sometime?  Maybe he just got so convinced the defense was impenetrable, I don't know. I just know we have the plays, we have seen them, they just need called better.  It seems Fisch was such a key part of the offense.  Also how underrated was Rudock.  by the end of the season he was killing it.  Very smart guy who suffered in Iowa for 4 years.

Honestly?  Harbaughll.  The 2015-6 edition, featuring Jake Rudock (final form) or weaponized Speight (non-broken form).  I'm fine with that.  The 2016 offense looked bored en route to 59, 63, 78 points against overmatched defenses, and had more than enough firepower to hang with CFP-caliber opponents until guard play, QB injuries, crooked refs and D.J. Derpin' derailed the ride.  When the going was good, though, it didn't even know how to stop itself against inferior opponents and had the firepower to burn even good defenses crispy.  From the last half of 2015 through the first half of 2106, offense was usually not what fell short.  We've been there, man.

I don't know how much of the past was on Fisch or how much our current problems are on Pep, but the current offense isn't that despite better talent.  It's meandering, plodding, predictable, and gets its "blowouts" against overmatched opponents by playing all-out, leaving nothing to spare against elite teams.  It's functional enough but often seems to take the path of most resistance.  Part of this is serious deficiencies in O-line recruiting & development that I've long maintained will take years to fix, but I'm happy they're being addressed.  However, the offense as a whole moves like a sports car with a seriously misfiring engine -- it's a rhythm, but it's a bad rhythm.  The coaches seem to tighten up and manball when they should spread things out, and call passes when they can and should punch defenses in the mouth.  They need to go back to taking what the defense gives them and hitting the soft gooey spot with a flame-throwing bulldozer.  The SunTzuball element is missing, is what I'm saying.

With the QB room we have and the receivers we have I think we need to open it up and get players into open space.  We have better athletes than 95% of the teams in D1 football and we don't take advantage of that.  The ground and pound offense we run is built for schools like Wisconsin who can dominate the trenches bc they don't have athletes.  Similar to the spread which was designed for teams that could not recruit/develop a pocket-passer.  We aren't limited like that with our athletes.  We could get alot more out of DPJ, Black, and Collins (which would open up our running game)

I hear Rich Rodriguez has a killer offense.

Clemson, Alabama, Ohio State, Oklahoma. The ones that the good teams run.

Oklahoma- Hire an OC and MANAGE the program. 

Jedd Fisch. Bring back The Train!

I don't really care what flavor, I would just like to see an offense that is willing and able to score quickly at least on occasion. I would like to see this pop up throughout the game but please, please, please at least do it down multiple scores in the 4th quarter. Basically an offense that proves to me the coaches would rather win 42-40 than lose 13-10.

Harbaugh's Stanford teams

What’s crazy about OSU is that they had two of best BIG RBs and they converted their offense to the talent of their new starting  QB, and they did it to the tune of 50 passing TDs. Weber and Dobbins were underutilized but shone when they needed to trade pressure off Haskins (See TCU game, Penn State game). Yet Michigan seldom runs RPO or outside tackles. And never ran an uptempo since ND outside of being down.

Bama's power spread. Given our personnel with a pretty good and developing line, solid RBs, mobile and pretty accurate QB in Shea, and good WR corp, and Harbaugh's philosophical desire to run the ball, I think the power spread would work well for all parties

Even for those people who are the biggest harbaugh fans, everyone here is still saying that the offense needs to change, there is no doubt about that.

what is the point of having harbaugh as our coach? He is one of the most expensive coaches in college football, and have not offencive lots of pee that is stated and probably cannot when you a championship anymore. If the way he likes to coach offense and his mentality about offense is not going to win you a championship, he is useless.

Clemson. They have a vertical passing game that I think would utlitize DPJ, Collins, and Black very well. They have churned out good running backs over the years and this year they had their best offensive line.

Well, you're talking about styles and when you do this, there has to be a point of departure with terminology or we get lost as to what we're talking about.

I've gotten comfortable with personnel packages as the NFL has been defining them - there are other ways to look at this. At the heavy end (21-23 Personnel) you're talking power - run to pass concepts, at the other end (11-00 personnel), spread concepts - pass to run. Here's my point of departure as reference:

http://www.insidethe49.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Offensive-Personnel-Packages.jpg

Now that we've got baseline terminology, we can talk styles. Harbaugh's style is power - run to pass. His base formation would be 21 personnel and he'll vary this between 20 and 22 with an occasional 23 personnel formation. His 20 is what Brian calls Trips (3 WRs - and I'd include TE's in this group), his 21 is Ace (2 WRs). Harbaugh will vary where his 3 receivers line up typically understood as X, Y, Z and H positions. There's plenty of variation in Harbaugh's play book.

As many have commented here Harbaguh is not likely to go to base plays out of the 10, 02, 01, 00 personnel formations. He might adapt a package but I can't recall him ever putting 5 wides (00) on the field with the OL spread out between the hash marks. That is a true spread concept right there. I have seen 3 receivers (11) and even 4 (10) but one or two of these receivers is a TE.

My take is that fans undervalue the complexity of what I think Harbaugh's play-book out of the heavier sets probably looks like. There are plenty of ways to pass out of those formations. That he's about 40/60 pass/run mix puts him behind what I suspect is the national average for pass/run splits for teams like Alabama, Clemson and even OU - they are still balanced and probably closer to 45+/55- pass/run and OU will go 55/45.

osu is an 11 personnel offense and ryan day is going to do a lot more passing than ufm did out of it (his game is power - IZ counter to OZ)  although you can run or pass out of the 11 personnel formations. The passing game is based around the same receiver designations (X, Y, Z, H) I've identified. day will have a TE but his passing game is more reliant on his fast WRs than his slower TEs. God help us if Justin Fileds + a waiver happens for osu!

So, to answer the OP's question, whose offense would you run? I'd run Harbaugh's offense, increase the passing component of it and graft in more RO and RPO plays. Would not mind getting some of these speedy guys that M has recruited of late running out of 11 personnel packages ala. ryan day's osu. Patterson is well suited for those kinds of plays.

I can't explain why there wasn't more RPO and more passing in general in 2018. Was it the OL? Was it not trusting Patterson? Was it the way M calls plays in game and adjusts them? I don't know but for some reason the passing game was limited/ineffective and that limited the overall effectiveness of what Harbaugh was trying to do. It also, IMO, is wrongly causing M fans to throw shade on an otherwise sound offensive scheme that Michigan is now employing.

Bottom line, M doesn't need to become an Air Raid offense out of spready personnel formations and it certainly is highly unlikely that it will or even show packages of, say, 5 receivers. There's a reason for that but it's another discussion.    

Need to throw deep a lot. Make teams fear the deep ball. Open up everything underneath. Use RB dump off in the flat as check down. Add more draws/screens. 

Seems like deep balls to Collins were ~50% completions this year

Alabama.  We more closely match their personnel.