The Fans
First of all, I would like to say that this collapse in no way falls on the fans. It is completely on the players and even moreso, the coaches. However, as a fan at the game, I noticed a significant difference in the energy of our fans versus South Carolina's fans.
We had a significantly greater number of fans at the game. When we were up 19-3 they were still much louder. Their fans stood the entire game when our's sat. When we scored the cheers were half hearted, while the South Carolina fans seemed to be falling over each other in a see of crazy people. This is definitely a result of the numbing failures of the RichRod, Brady Hoke, and now beginning of the Jim Harbaugh era.
Hopefully next season can bring back the energy our fans had. Last season, the excitement of the better performance was clear, especially in the Orange Bowl where the fans were unbelievable. IMO, the athletic department should provide the maize pom poms for the whole stadium for the two biggest games EVERY year as those always create an unbelievable sight and I would imagine are great for recruiting. Regardless, we need some new traditions or chants to add that will increase our crowd energy and make the big house intimidating next season. Any thoughts on that would be interesting to hear. Regardless, it all start with winning, and until that happens, few things will improve.
Some extra thoughts: Fire Drevno. Also, find a guy who can punt farther than 25 yards. There has to be someone better on the soccer team for goodness sakes.
EDIT: Absolutely NONE of this is on the fans as I said. I was just saying the sheer difference in noise was shocking and disheartening.
January 1st, 2018 at 7:41 PM ^
Their fans are young people with nothing to lose. Of course they are going to be rowdier
January 1st, 2018 at 8:01 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 7:44 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 7:46 PM ^
You can't see how firing the offensive coordinator and OLine coach would have changes on the offense and offensive line?
January 1st, 2018 at 7:54 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 7:57 PM ^
Harbaugh has previously had success as a head coach, and has also had some great offenses in his career. Drevno has no prior success as an offensive coordinator. Either he needs to accept a demotion to strictly OL coach or he must go, because right now he is adding nothing.
January 1st, 2018 at 8:03 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:04 PM ^
That success at Stanford and the NFL is a little different? I get you're emotional right now but what do you wanna do, fire Jim? Or maybe let him have the opportunity to make the necessary changes and hope for the best.
January 1st, 2018 at 8:08 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:12 PM ^
Jim deserves blame too, it's ultimately his team. But it's pretty obvious (to me at least, maybe not to you) that offensive gameplan and OL play are both huge problems, so why should we keep the guy directly responsible for those two things?
January 1st, 2018 at 8:20 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:24 PM ^
You must not know my posting history if you think I subscribe to the MGoBlog groupthink. I said Harbaugh is to blame, but as far as making changes for next season (because clearly some are needed) if he goes out and hires the best OC available then he'll have taken a major step towards fixing this shitshow.
January 1st, 2018 at 8:45 PM ^
January 2nd, 2018 at 1:10 PM ^
Aaaand that's where you lose everyone. Give consistency a shot? You want to give this consistency a shot? We sit there and watch JT Barrett go down and his replacement, a freshman, comes in and plays like a 5th year senior leading back to back, fluid touchdown drives on a top 5 D. Let me guess, that's all skill and OL play right? Has nothing to do with an OC and HC that know how to simplify an offense for college kids by limiting decisions to 1, 2 Go?
Go a few years back and watch a third string QB with near zero prior experience lead OSU to the national title... Point is, this is not about experience, it's about scheme and coaching.
We just watched a South Carolina Grad Assistant calling plays and outcoaching Drevno and JH. Yeah consistency would work?
We don't need consistency at all man. We need JH to learn from this experience to do two things: 1. Realize he will probably not see another Andrew Luck, so a complex pro style attack is over the head of most college QBs, and thus instead requires a simpler decision making approach. 2. Demote or fire Drevno - a man with ZERO D1 OC experience prior to Michigan - and replace him with a Don Brown counterpoint much as Ped State did last year. In Ped State's case however, their new OC was so damn good he got courted away to an HC role. I'd take that over a guy like Drevno that no one wants.
January 1st, 2018 at 8:22 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:42 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:57 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 9:56 PM ^
January 2nd, 2018 at 1:31 PM ^
Honest question because I don't get one point you (and many other fans) are making: Why do you (and others) care so much about what Jim Harbaugh is making? What difference is it to you? We don't have a coaching salary cap. If he has the program headed in the right direction (and from what it has been since 2008, i feel he does) why does that matter to you and every other MGoFan?
January 1st, 2018 at 8:19 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:26 PM ^
Promote Don Brown to HC, and have him hire an OC whose offenses give him the hardest time.... axe Harbs/Drev/Pep. Keep Frey (if we can)
January 1st, 2018 at 8:43 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 9:13 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 9:33 PM ^
But it's up there.
January 2nd, 2018 at 9:44 AM ^
Here's what I don't get: why do people on this board/Michigan fans in general think that firing Harbaugh is a solution? It's absurd. Also - people on this board were complaining that yesterday's game was the same old same old - the same shit we've been experiencing for the past 10 years. It was ugly and by far the worst performance under Harbaugh. But shit - the last two years they won ten games. Harbaugh took a garbage Brady Hoke team and won 10 games with them. And yesterday was a shit sandwich but that was with a 3rd string (?) QB and a lot of missing pieces. The fact that they were even in position to win the game in the first place is kind of impressive.
They definitely have major things to fix but this is a blip. If they don't get their shit together next year then OK, maybe its time to complain and that seat heats up.
January 1st, 2018 at 8:06 PM ^
Harbaugh has had a good offense right here at Michigan. Just one year ago, our offense averaged 40.3 ppg. So the variable appears to be either his assistants (since we lost Fisch) or players.
January 1st, 2018 at 8:10 PM ^
January 2nd, 2018 at 9:00 AM ^
Ehh... they were the #40 S&P+ Offense.
They scored a lot of points - by running up the score against really bad teams.
They weren't a BAD offense like this year - but they really weren't what I'd call good either.
January 1st, 2018 at 8:44 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:07 PM ^
I don't know if we want him coaching our OL either based on their performance this year.
January 1st, 2018 at 9:17 PM ^
January 2nd, 2018 at 8:26 AM ^
"Drevno has no prior success as an offensive coordinator. "
Not completely true - Drevno was the OC at USD for their I-AA Mid-Major national titles in 2005 and 2006.
2005 USD -
#36 Rushing O
#7 Passing O
#3 Total O
#2 Scoring O
2006 USD -
#14 Rushing O
#1 Passing O
#1 Total O
#1 Scoring O
January 2nd, 2018 at 1:14 PM ^
Dude had no prior experience as a D1 OC
January 1st, 2018 at 8:05 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:01 PM ^
that was 11th in the country in scoring last year?
Why are people zeroing in on him and not the one major change from 2016 to 2017..the replacement of Jedd Fisch with Pep Hamilton.
But the general tone here is kinda dumb..people are so obsessed with their little emotional hot takes they wonder why there's not been major changes within a day or two of a bad game..even if that means changing coaches and QBs mid-season multiple times.
Harbaugh isn't dumb. I'm sure he's aware the offense sucks right now. But the offense with Drevno has been adequate before this year, in spite of no stability or elite quality at QB. Maybe Pep is the issue but why even hire a guy if you're gonna give him one year with a brutally inexperienced team and players he had no say in obtaining?
Let's face it, college football programs aren't a one year deal. It's always a multi-year project and only idiots on message boards - where changing your mind 3 times in a month has no consequences - wheel and deal, hire and fire guys all over the place. (Because frequent staff turnover is so good for overall success..).
January 1st, 2018 at 8:07 PM ^
11th in scoring doesn't account for the points that came via defense and special teams. S&P had our offense at 40th last year, which is a more accurate reflection of the quality of the offense. But let's face it, the offense has not been great in any of the 3 years here and a lot of that falls on predictable playcalling and poor OL play, both of which can be directly attributed to Drevno. Hamilton isn't above blame either, he's a clear downgrade from Fisch.
January 1st, 2018 at 8:16 PM ^
hence I carefully chose the word 'adequate', but considering the circumstances it did well enough.
People here are so quick to forget that we had a reallly good football team last year that came within a whisker of being in the playoffs. That wasn't 5 years ago, that was last year. I always thought I'm fickle but I guess I'm quite patient actually as I need multiple years of failure to get on a coaching staff's back. (And of course 2017's failure is still 8 wins, not going 5-7 or 3-9..).
January 1st, 2018 at 8:34 PM ^
But the reason they weren't in the playoff is ultimately because the offense struggled in games against Iowa and OSU. The defense and special teams were playoff caliber, the offense was not. Some of that is on the personnel but some of that is also on the offensive coaches. Drevno has had 3 years here and has yet to produce an offense or offensive line that is better than adequate. And quite frankly, we need better than adequate if we want to win the Big Ten and get to the playoff.
January 1st, 2018 at 8:49 PM ^
If Rudock had somehow had an extra year of eligibility hidden under the driver seat of his pickup truck, that may have been a very different situation, too.
I think Harbaugh would like a situation where you can bring in a guy as a SO and then have 3 years with the dude. I honestly think the plan was to go with Speight this year and next year to have that. Now Speight got hurt big time this year, so that didn't happen (and that's just bad luck really).
The reality is that this year was gonna be tough for *anyone* at QB and *anyone* coordinating this offense. Hence why it's silly to base your take on this year. For the few stories of teams exceeding expectations with extremely inexperienced teams, there's plenty of stories of teams falling off the face of the earth after losing most of their best players.
January 1st, 2018 at 9:28 PM ^
With the personnel problems at O-Line as a result of Hoke's poor recruiting at the position and various other losses, it shouldn't be a surprise we had a hard time at O-Line this year. The coaches get exactly 2 more years until you can start blaming them for a position like O-Line not being up to snuff. You don't often bring in young O-Linemen who change the composition of your offense.
The play calling is another matter entirely. Today was the first day where I lost faith the coaches know what they are doing on the offensive side of the ball. I really hope it is a situation that resolves itself when the skill players, including QB, become upperclassmen.
January 2nd, 2018 at 12:51 PM ^
Just an honest question since I'm not a coach and have never had to develop a playbook. Could the play calling this year be directly related to the youth of the team? Is it possible that with so many first year players that the plays that were called were what the young players could handle at this point in their careers?
I just remember some pretty awesome plays during Harbaugh's stint at Stanford. If memory serves me, I even remember a deep pass to Andrew Luck in a big game that caught everyone off guard.
January 2nd, 2018 at 1:21 PM ^
This fanbase needs to perform an exorcism upon itself to banish the bullshit spirit of youth as the bi-annual explanation for it's shortcomings. Jake Fromm - True freshman. Dwayne Haskins - RS Freshman. Endless examples of freshmen kicking ass if schemed and coached properly.
January 2nd, 2018 at 3:12 PM ^
While I agree with your statement, isn't it true that the examples that you gave are surrounded by (mostly) upper classmen in the other starting roles on their respective teams? I wasn't just talking about the QB position. does youth on the O-line, youth in the receiving corp, youth under center, etc play a roll in the calls that can be run in a game?
Again, I'm not a coach, and I don't dive too deep deep into the strategies involved in the game, I am blown away by the response to this season, a season that many if not most agreed would be a rebuildning year prior to the first game.
January 1st, 2018 at 8:51 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 8:11 PM ^
Regarding Drevno, our offense was ranked 40 last year in S&P+ (and we also had Fisch helping).
Harbaugh's only previous experience with Pep Hamilton was one year as WR coach, I believe. It seems like Hamilton didn't inform Harbaugh of the possibility/likelihood of Speight transferring. The QB/WR coaching and passing game coordination this year might be bad enough for Harbaugh to pull the plug after an expensive, failed one-year experiment.
January 1st, 2018 at 8:22 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 7:42 PM ^
January 1st, 2018 at 7:48 PM ^
No, they will not. But you must admit they make the games cooler. Most of us can remember how awesome that Notre Dame game and the atmosphere was a few years ago
January 1st, 2018 at 8:46 PM ^
