Harbaughffense 2023: How did the offense do this season?
Sources: Sports-Reference, ESPN, Pro-Football-Reference, bcftoys.com
Part 1 (Yards), Part 2a (Points), Part 2b (Points, but slightly fancier)
So, about this year…
Tl;dr me?
By your normal counting stats, this was a step back from last year…
Rabble!
…and you can partially blame the blame the clock rules, which suppressed the number of drives…
Less rabble!
…and Michigan was good by slightly fancier stats…
Ok, your life will be spared
…except for a one or two where we fell off a cliff…
Sharpening my guillotine…
…but overall, I’m going to stand by my assertion that “there’s a material deficit in the Harbaughffense’s ability to put up points.” 12th in SP+ is the lowest rated offense of the playoff teams.
OFF WITH HIS HEAD!
We won our Championship with defense. Hot take, I know…
The Counting Stats
I hate only paying attention to counting stats when trying to measure whether an offense is “good” or not, but I want to start here, because our offense took a small step backwards in both yards and points. While passing yardage went up to…uhh…Patterson/McNamara levels…the Harbaughffense really felt the lack of Jake Moody. No slight intended to James Turner, who did a great job, but it wasn’t an NFL level kicking game. Check Harbaugh’s NFL years: his offense really utilizes the kicker.
2022 was a special, special year for rushing - we were kidding ourselves if we thought that we’d equal it in 2023. And we didn’t. But Yards-to-TD got way more efficient: 800ish fewer rushing yards, but only one fewer rushing TD? I’m guessing we’re going to see a higher points per drive from 2023, especially for longer drives.
And now this is the part where I tell you “the Harbaugh passing game is the Harbaugh passing game, year in and year out”.
Receiving TDs
Look at that consistency.
We’ve been waiting and waiting for Harbaugh to have an NFL-quality QB, so that he could finally open up the offense like he did with Andrew Luck that one time. Well, we got the QB – JJ McCarthy in his 3rd year in the program – and, for literally half the season, sorta seemed to forget that little fact.
We have to acknowledge that injuries played a huge role in that: I’m all for intellectual honesty, and if I’m going to tell you “McCarthy didn’t improve Michigan’s passing TD totals over any of the QBs we’ve had previously”, I have to also tell you “… it’s undoubtedly because he was walking on a peg leg for like 6 games.” Am I disappointed that the coaching staff didn’t find a way to muster up a functional passing offense even so? Yes. Very disappointed. But. If there’s a single lesson to be taken from 2023, that lesson is: if your starting QB is injured, never, under any circumstances, admit it.
Please don’t tell me that our rushing game picked up the slack. It didn’t. Re-check the stats above: Michigan rushed for 800ish fewer yards than last year, and one fewer rushing TD. The reality is that our defense picked up the slack. Michigan’s coaches were content to just sorta score less, because our opponents were also scoring less.
Sigh.
The Harbaughffense Passing Game is what it is, year in and year out. There’s a pretty hard ceiling; we hit it this year. We also hit it in 2018, 2019, and 2022. This isn’t just a Harbaugh issue, it’s a Michigan issue: Chad Henne and Elvis Grbac also lived in this zone.
I started calling it the “Patterson Plateau” last year to really bring home the point that the Harbaughffense passing game tops out at what Shea Patterson was able to accomplish. The McCarthy-era passing game was approximately as productive as the Patterson-era passing game, and if you struggle to accept that…it’s probably around the number of wins that those seasons produced.
It’s also about the eye test: both the eyes and the advanced stats show McCarthy a clear step above Patterson, so I want to make it absolutely clear that I’m NOT saying that McCarthy = Patterson. I’m saying that Harbaugh = Harbaugh, and that Harbaugh will find a way to turn everything into Harbaugh.
QB Rushing Yards
Ok, so I have this gripe that Harbaugh used to like a QB that can run. You might not remember this, but Andrew Luck had some wheels, and Harbaugh wasn’t afraid to use them. Since coming to Michigan…what’s the phrase that Brian and Seth use?...”slider set all the way to ‘give’”? Yeah, that. QB rushing yards took a step back in 2023, but not by a statistically significant amount. I think “it is what it is” also applies to the Harbaugh QB run game at this point.
For funsies, I looked up the season-long (net) QB rushing stats of the other playoff teams:
- Alabama: 642
- Michigan: 329
- Texas: 64
- Washington: 3. [Checked it again. Still 3. That’s 3 net yards rushing from the QB position for the season. 3!]
Ok then. The volume on my gripe is getting slightly lower.
RB Receptions are Moneyball, Dammit
Well well well, my next apology goes out to one Mr. Donovan Edwards, who underperformed both expectations and his own boasting…but exceeded last year’s figures by a smooth 49 receiving yards, a critical part of making the RB receiving game a bigger part of the passing game: 60 combined additional receiving yards on 4 additional receptions over last year. Progress!
Scientific Study Conclusion™: teams that make the RB receiving game a larger part of their offense win the National Championship (n=1).
FancyPantsStats
You know, I was expecting to come into this section and find out that “you need a Top 5 offense and a Top 5 defense in order to earn the National Championship.” But that’s just not true:
Michigan (2023) and Georgia (2021, 2022) are the only National Champions (since 2014) that satisfy those criteria if you’re looking at Points Per Drive…and only Georgia (2021, 2022) if you’re looking at SP+. You can color me surprised.
Now, Harbaugh famously pooh-poohs “every [stat] except points”, and he’s made comments about evaluating his offense on a Points Per Drive basis. So let’s dive a little deeper on that.
The above charts are not kind to Harbaugh’s prior reputation as an offense-first coach. San Francisco fans warned us thusly, they so warned us thusly:
Your Harbaugh has been designed for offense and will require many high-end parts to run said offense. Yet his defense will be better than his offense. This paradox has not been explained.
The fun thing about statistics is that you can improve…but still fall behind relative to the pack. Everyone who got a 2% raise last year but ended up worse off because of unchecked corporate greed – I mean, inflation - understands this concept. The Harbaughffense took a small step forward…but other top offenses took a larger step forward, so on the whole the Harbaughffense continues to hover between “ok” and “good but not great” in any given year. Except for the Andrew Luck era, which I previously Schrodinger’d as either “once-in-a-career magic” or “hopefully-repeatable magic given OL development and QB recruiting.”
Well, that box is open, and now that Harbaugh is back in the NFL, likely for good, we can sadly, but confidently, say that Stanford’s offense in 2010 was indeed “once-in-a-career magic.”
It’s worth noting again that Michigan’s 2023 offense was Top 5 in points per drive (only 12th in SP+, so not as good there), so I’m not saying that this was BAD in any way. But the 4 offenses that were better than ours were a solid step better; we were #5 by some distance. For those wondering, Washington’s turgid Penix-led sledgehammer of an O…was a solid step behind ours. They DID score approximately a billion points last year, which is part of the reason why SP+ liked them much better, but they needed a billon drives to do it.
The Philosophy of Harbaugh, grossly oversimplified, is to go on long, deliberate drives, pay them off with points, and make the other team take risks.
It’s a good philosophy if you can make it work. Harbaugh doesn’t often make it work. Last year, I ran the numbers and proved that the Harbaughffense has been absolutely awful at long, deliberate drives (except for the Luck years), mediocre at medium length drives (except for the Luck years), and it turns out that last year was the first time ever that the Harbaughffense was any good at short drives. So let’s see how that all held up in 2023:
A lot to take in, so let’s talk takeaways:
- HUGE improvement on prior years’ performance for Long and Medium drives. But still a pretty big step behind the top teams in each category.
- Surprising DROPOFF in Michigan’s ability to cash in on Short drives. “Elite” teams have averaged 5+ PPD on Short drives for a long long time, and this year we didn’t even get close. 5th best in the Harbaugh era at Michigan.
This also means that 2023’s Michigan team was doing offense differently than prior Michigan teams. Last year’s team, which overall was Harbaugh’s most successful Michigan offense until this year, was getting their work done via a lot of short drives. Same for 2021. In 2023 the mix tended toward those long and medium drives. We really were paying off drives with points for the first time.
What Does it All Mean?
First of all, it means I’ve kept my promise I made to myself, and avoided shitting all over the 2017 Michigan offense (again). It’s not an exaggeration to call that offense worse than the 2014 Hoke offense that is probably our shared definition of “rock bottom.” But my god; I’m honestly surprised that Harbaugh got out of the 2017 season only having to ‘soft-fire’ Tim Drevno. Pep fucking Hamilton kept his job another year…and then somehow landed on his feet in the NFL as a QB coach and OC (at least until DeMeco Ryans took one look at Pep and thought “nah”). The mind boggles. Stop giving Pep Hamilton jobs, people.
I’m not going to try to put a bow on how Harbaugh put together an offense here at Michigan; we won the National Championship…but the Harbaughffense, even in its ideal form, which we saw this year (or close enough to ‘ideal’), leans so heavily on the defense. And that’s the bigger picture here, because you don’t need the best offense in the nation if you have a defense you can lean on. Just ask USC, who tried to Inverse Iowa their way to success this year: it doesn’t work out any better for an Inverse Iowa than it does for an Iowa. Gotta play both phases of the game.
And so the Harbaughffense heads back to the NFL as a system which can best be characterized as “a step or two behind the leaders” …and the defense will decide if that’s good enough. I’m curious to see how Harbaugh approaches offense in his second pro stint.
Ooof those graphics are tough on mobile. Sorry all. 20 years of coaching is tough to represent in a bar chart. I wish we could edit Diaries so I could fix my damned grammar/spelling mistakes...
Oh, and I didn’t get a chance to adequately praise Khalid “Hammering Panda” Hill in this Diary, so I need to remind everyone:
The 10 rushing TDs that Khalid Hill scored in 2016 are worthy of celebration. As far as I can tell (fullback stats are hard to track), only one FB in FBS has exceeded 10 TDs since, at Northern Illinois. And that dude was a Mr. Versatility QB/RB/FB hybrid who went to the NFL. Between 2016 and 2017, Khalid Hill scored 13 rushing touchdowns as a designated fullback (and 3 more receiving touchdowns). He was responsible for 78 points in 2016, which was 16% of our offense. He could have been the entire Rutgering by himself.
If I find out that he’s paid for his own beer in Ann Arbor since graduating, I’m going to be very disappointed. All hail the Hammering Panda!
My take, Harbaugh loves Michigan. He's spent 2X longer here than anywhere else, and it will almost certainly be the longest job of his career. He meticulously built us back from the abyss to a unique, sustainable position of prestige and power. We owe him tremendously.
Well done - and I agree with the sentiment that the 2023 offense was not as explosive as the 2022 offense. As you pointed out the defense and the offense both contribute to a winning game plan. Perhaps that affected the numbers.
After the first half in most of the games (excepting of course PSU, OSU, Alabama) the defense had shown it could largely contain the opponent, and so the offense had only two basic goals: score points when it could (obvious) BUT important not turn the ball over or create easy scoring opportunities for the opponent - that maybe why we don't see more offense, more throws to RBs, etc.
Yes, do not turn the ball over or create easy points for the opponent. We lost the TCU game because we did those things.
Still want to see an offense UFR from Brian on the Iowa game. That was ugly.
Since I’m the guy who did Iowatch all season, I’d like to point out that Iowa had an all-time-great defense all season, and the only way we lose that game is by throwing the ball.
It was an insanely frustrating gameplan…that was absolutely the correct gameplan.
The kinds of things that a normal defense considers complex, that’s Iowa’s bread and butter
Looking at the box score, JJ threw more than he did against Iowa than he did in all but two other games (30 against Iowa and ECU, 37 against Purdue).
They just didn't have him throw anything remotely dangerous. He didn't have a completion over 14 yards, although he might have tried one or two longer-passes, and he ended up with his lowest yards per pass of the season.
(You should get combat pay for watching all those Iowa games.)
And PTSD funding.
In Iowa's last regular season game (Nebraska?). With the score tied with two minutes to go, Iowa throws an interception. Game analyst suspect Iowa threw the interception intentionally as the defense was more like to score than the offense. Ferentz call a medium distance pass play which would almost certainly lead to an interception. I believe Nebraska had a turnover and Iowa won with their running game. Strange football strategy. Ferentz counts on a last quarter turnover to win the game.
That was what I wrote in Iowatch that week: I posited that it was absolutely an intentional INT from Deacon Hill, because they knew that Nebraska’s passing offense with Chubba Purdy was almost sure to give them the ball right back.
Sure enough, Purdy threw the ball straight to an Iowa LB. One run later, they kicked the game winning field goal to win the Corn Rows Trophy (a trophy I just made up but should absolutely be real)
First, YAY WE WON A NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP!!
Now that's out of the way, I REALLY appreciate this analysis. Some people like to pretend that complaints about the offense (and play calling) is unwarranted, but that is clearly false. We didn't run 30+ times against Penn State because they simply couldn't stop it - we did so because our tackles couldn't pass block, and merely testing that theory got JJ injured during said game. We ended up winning a game that was a war of attrition, but it was way too close and extremely uncomfortable.
And that's how almost all of the big game wins played out with the Harbaughffense. We got better at winning em in 2021-24 thanks to an all-time great era of Michigan defense. But it's hard to ignore how much meat we left on the bone thanks to this offense.
All that said, I'm actually pretty excited (hopeful) to see Campbell create a more complementary dynamic between the run-game and pass-game.
Most people look at RESULTS and stop thinking: ‘we won the championship, so everything we did is unassailable’.
I don’t think that way. Ever since 2011 - when I fell hook, line, and sinker for the Brady Hoke mirage - I’ve promised myself that I’d examine PROCESS just as much as results.
We ended up winning a game that was a war of attrition, but it was way too close and extremely uncomfortable.
Against a top ten Penn State in a sold out Beaver Stadium! Are you freaking kidding me? Close wins are not allowed anymore??
Did they control the clock and were opponent opportunities lessened as a stubborn result? Did huddling and being under center give opponents more or less to think about? Did what our defense and offense have to prepare against in practices prove more difficult than what they encountered generally in games? Was the service academy approach so brutally learned of using all 4 downs a defense wearing and time sapping effective approach?
Did it help to have a QB whose skills could be fluidly adapted in game situations ala PSU and beyond in change of pace end of season games? Limiting injury risk in the delayed running usage until necessary?
With the nature of this defense in your back pocket all signs pointed to an eccentric that haughtily took 6 weekends off in season and still delivered through curated surrogates. Guess he'll never get another job of significance given the veracity of allegations and their impact on team culture. Hmmnnn?
head hurt
I have two degrees from Michigan: one in history, one in economics. 🤣
While it doesn't look like you need a top 5 squad on both sides, it does look like you need one best-in-class squad. Every champion on your list ranked #1/#2 in SP+ on offense or defense except 2018 Clemson ... which was #3 on offense *and* #1 in PPD on defense.
Those 2021-2022 Georgia teams were utterly loaded and these rankings (and their performance on the field) reflect that.
Turnovers is an important offensive statistic as well. In 2023 Michigan had 8 turnovers in the regular season according to foxsports.com - 5 interceptions and 3 fumbles. Two teams had 7 (Ole Miss and Oregon), three had 8, and the rest had 9 or more.
I think a big part of winning with defense is having an offense that allows the defense to rest and rarely puts them in bad position. Yes, the offense certainly could have been more efficient and productive, and hopefully it will be going forward with Sherrone Moore running the show. But all three phases of the game need to work together, and that was clearly part of a masterfully executed plan last year.
Thank you for doing these deep dives. I was happy to think that Michigan was able to get their QB unharmed to the Game. But your analysis and the reality was different. It shows how lucky Michigan was to not aggravate his injury down the road. How does one prevent it though? Any way to protect the QB from injuries? :)
Different pictures paint different stories.
From the NCAA champions SP+/PPD ranks graph, only three teams (Bama 15, 17; Michigan 23) had offenses outside the top 5 in SP+. And they had to pair SP+ 1 or 2 defenses to win it all. OTOH, a top 5 offense is a virtual guranty to win the championship even with a > 20 ranked defense.
Offense wins more often?
It is also curious how Michigan offenses spanning generations hit the same ceiling! May be it's the Schembechler Hall. Sherrone Moore is leading a mostly post-Bo coaching team. Let's see if that ceiling can be breached.
It also seems very difficult to be good at all three distances, in terms of drive lengths. Not a single team in the 13 years counted here was good in all three distances. More often than not three different teams dominated (of course longer lists can show a different picture) in each distance class. It was even difficult for a single team to sustain their success in the same distance class one year to the next. I am surprised to see OSU lead the < 60 yds to go drives in 21 and 22. And those are the only times they led in these 13 years. May be quick strike? May be small sample size?
Once again, thank you for the deep dive. Informative, and stimulating.
Ohio State’s offense since Ryan Day became HC has been incredible. Especially with Stroud as QB; they could basically pick up 60 yards at any point, meaning that a drive which starts 60 yards or fewer from the end zone is already in scoring position.
My bias is that a great offense gives you more chances to win than a great defense. But you can’t be BAD at either aspect. The way that Michigan won the Championship was relatively unique IMO.
I’m VERY excited to see the Mooreffense. Will it be Moore offense? Or Moore offensive??
Keeping my fingers crossed and hopes high.
Thank you for doing this - a lot of excellent work here. None of this surprises me. For 2023, I think Harbaugh was on the way to getting closer to at least 60/40 run/pass, but so many things happened. 3 games of turmoil to start the season, an apparent injury to McCarthy somewhere along the line, and 3 more games of turmoil at the end of the regular season.
That all being said, I am not going to crap on the Harbaughffense, because we won the National Championship. If we hadn't, I would have a lot to say.
But I'll just say the following: Thank you, Jim, for bringing us the title. And also, I really, really hope that -- when we have the talent at QB to execute -- Campbell calls the games like he did in the first game of 2023. In that game, the plays flowed well, and the mix of run and pass made sense. Now, that could have been the opponent, but I think a lot of it was opponent invariant. Campbell called a great game.
Hopefully we will have a functional, passing QB this season so that Campbell CAN call the game like game #1 of 2023. That, to this casual observer anyway, seemed to be the most dynamic offense for Michigan in quite a while.
Crap. There's no WAY we can win a championship with these kind of numbers...
oh, wait...
:)
These numbers basically show how unique this championship team was. There is no comparison of this team with any other championship team.
A HUGE part of the Harbaughffense is keeping the defense off the field. Obviously scoring points is important, but holding the football and having a fresh D is very important too.
This is a GREAT point that I didn’t think to include above. Here’s the average number of plays our defense faced by year
2023: 57.7
2022: 62.8
2021: 67.1
2020: 77.7
2019: 64.7
2018: 60
2017: 59.9
2016: 62.2
2015: 62.9
The 2023 Michigan defense saw the fewest snaps per game in the conference (the total snaps faced was greater…because we played 3 extra games!!!!) There’s a lot to be said about keeping your defense fresh
Not only fresh, it also reduces the exposure to potential injury. That's the sugar on top, that last bit of "luck".
Additionally, Michigan rotated several of the defensive linemen, so their number of plays was even lower, hence they were fresher late in games.
The 2023 offense only looks limited because that is all it had to be. Let's talk about McCarthy's counting stats. Between the defense allowing bupkis in scoring, and the rushing attack delivering early leads (because, truth be told, we really didn't play anyone decent until Penn State), McCarthy rarely played at all in the 4th quarter, and he didn't need to make that many spectacular throws. Why is the NFL slobbering over his potential now? Because they look at process and mechanics independent of final scores. Go back and watch the game tying drive (when we really had to have it) in the Rose Bowl again.
Similarly, the rushing offense only appeared to have lost a gear because it was depth chart time late in many games.
I cannot emphasize enough how unusual, and impressive, was the fact Michigan trailed so rarely over the course of the season. It changed the games. Bad news: our boys didn't get as many chances to show they were as good as any of the great teams in CFB history by making very many spectacular plays; they didn't have to. This team was never pushed the way Iowa pushed the 1997 team. Good news: even with all the personnel lost after the season, they may have a much higher floor than any of us suspect for the upcoming season.
Prior to this season, I expected a big ole' regression to the mean, and a probable loss to OSU. I figured 10-2, no B1G Championship Game, and a middling NY6 Bowl. Instead, we got the optimum Harbaugh team we waited to see all these years. I still think we are due for regression this coming season, but I'm not writing that in ink.
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Great analysis! This is why we don't recruit 5* WRs. We need extra TE/H-backs and DLs instead.
March 15th, 2024 at 10:35 PM ^
Thank you for your dedication and analysis. I’m so glad we put things together enough to finally win a national title.
Thank you for doing a lot of good work (hopefully, most of fun/rewarding.)
From my memory, I don't think Jim Harbaugh ever took even a small risk to score against a solid opponent once he had the lead. Heavy and early rotation of personnel was part of this year's story and now that I say that were we not concerned last year about playing Corum and others too much and too late into the game?
Yes. Entire halves of football were more about ending the game quicker than scoring points. But considering that our best PPD and SP+ year was the year we won the national championship, I’d say that it demonstrates how important it is to, you know, score.
Also, there’s an enduring gripe that I have with Harbaugh: if you don’t practice scoring a lot when you CAN, you won’t be able to score a lot when you MUST. There’s been at least one game every single year where I was screaming at the TV “you don’t have all day to make up this deficit!”
I swear to god, sometimes it seemed like Harbaugh thought games were 8 quarters long, that we ALWAYS had the #1 defense in the nation, and that ANY scoring gap could be made up in the final 30 seconds of the game.
Great work as always, PopeLando.
Like you have shown, the Harbaughffence (have you trademarked that yet?) is what it is. Now I'm shifting gears and am really curious to see this year's offense. I was encouraged when Campbell said they're going live with the QBs in spring practice. Hopefully that means they're going to take the bubble wrap off the QB (whoever it is) and actually let him run the ball this year. That was one of the most frustrating things about this offense under Harbaugh.
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