0-1 Starts: A Historical Perspective

These "season opener" win streaks are impressive... until you look at who the wins are against.

when you open with a good team on the road.

Utah game had the feel of a late 90's west coast road trip loss. Maybe Michigan finishes 10-2 and gets a rematch with the Utes in Arroyo Seco? 

Still have a lot of questions about our team, I think we'll learn more against BYU than we will against Oregon State or UNLV.

Despite losing to Utah, I think Michigan still is on a trajectory to have a 8-4 or even a 9-3 season.  If Week 1 proved anything it's that the Big 10 is still a pretty lousy conference aside from MSU and OSU and we could easily be the 3rd or 4th best team.  That probably means we're not playing in Indianapolis this season, but predicting 6-6 is overly gloomy unless we have some kind of catastrophic injury.

Everyone is taking what I said completely out of context.  I never once said, "don't ever talk about another game on the schedule besides the next game."  I realize my first comment, while read out of context, you could get this idea.  Read the rest of my posts in this thread and you'll understand what I'm trying to say about the stat presented to us.  

I'm just ready to get into the win column as I'm sure everyone else is, as well. 

I'm not interested in debating whether or not what is talked about amongst fans correlates to game outcomes because it doesn't. 

What I would think is more telling (if that's possible) about these first game losses since 1946 is who they were against ...

Because for a few years MICHIGAN opened with Notre Dame but ND would have already played a warm-up cupcake game and worked out the kinks ...

Because for a few years, MICHIGAN opened with Pac-10 road games ...

Because it was not always the case that major programs warmed up the first three weeks against non-Power5 and FCS teams, as is the case now ..

 

So while the loss AT UTAH was a LOSS and disappointing, it's not nearly in the same category as the loss AT HOME to App State or a opening game loss in South Bend in the late-80's or the loss to Alabama at JerryWorld.

(and after a quick review on CFBDataWarehouse it looks like a LOT of those Week 1 losses were against MSU in the 50's and against ND in the aformentioned late-80's ...)

I like historical stats probably more than anyone here, save for WD. But in this case, there's really nothing to discuss. I can name off the top of my head all of those Michigan teams you mention who started 0-1 and went on to win the Big 10 or finish second in conference. But those teams weren't coming off a 7 year era of suck with the program being a train wreck from hell. Those Michigan teams were filled with a ton of future NFL talent. Those late 80's squads who fought #1 ranked Notre Dame to 2, 5 and 4 point losses were still far and away the best teams in the Big Ten. These are luxuries that we're currently fighting to get back.

Especially this one. New coaching staff. New quarterback. New lots of things. Plenty of correctable mistakes. The thing that we should feel most comfortable about is that this coaching staff will know how to make the team better with time. That's what I want to see this year.

Let's start in 1901 with Fielding Yost.

• Yost: won first game vs. Albion 50-0, went 11-0, Big Ten/National Champions. Legendary coach for over 2 decades. 
• George Little: 1924, won 55-0 vs. Miami, 6-2 record, lost last game to Iowa before moving on to Wisconsin after 1 season.
• Elton "Tad" Wieman: 1927, won 33-0 vs. Ohio Wesleyan, 6-2 record, left after 2nd season to go to Princeton
• Harry Kipke: 1929, won 16-6 vs. Mount Union OH, 5-3-1 record, lasted until 1937, but really stunk at the end
• Fritz Crisler: 1938, won 14-0 vs. michigan state, 6-1-1 record. Lost to Minny, tied NW, beat osu. Went on to be a pretty good coach and AD, they say. 
• Bennie Oosterbaan: 1948, won 13-7 @ michigan state, 9-0-0 record, Big Ten and National champions. Fell off a bit at the end of his career, but solid .650 win percentage.
• Chalmers "Bump" Elliott: 1959, lost 15-20 vs. Missouri, 4-5 record. First coach to lose Michigan opener. Average coach, average career record, with a .547 win percentage. 17-19 his first 4 seasons. Not sure he would've lasted in this day and age. 
• Some dude named "Bo": 1969, won 41-14 vs. Vanderbilt, 8-3 record, beat ohio state, lost to msu, Big Ten co-champs.
• Gary Moeller: 1990, lost 24-28 @ notre dame, 9-3 record, won @ ohio state, Big Ten co-champs
• Lloyd Carr: 1995, won 18-17 vs. Virginia in the Pigskin Classic (Scott Dreisbach to Mercury Hayes!), 9-4 record with a win over ohio state. He went on to have some success, I'm told. 
• Rich Rodriguez: 2008, lost 23-25 vs. Utah, 3-9 record, we all know the story on RR.
• Brady Hoke: 2011, won 34-10 vs. Western Michigan, 11-2 record, beat ohio state. But yeah...
• Jim Harbaugh: 2015: lost 24-17 @ Utah. 

So what does this tell us?

Harbaugh is one of 3 coaches to start his career as Michigan coach on the road. The others (Moeller and Oosterbaan) went 1-1. The irish in 1990 were pretty darn good. The spartans in 1948 were good (6-2-2), but not great. 

Moeller had a good, if short, run before, well, unfortunate circumstances which seem to run in the family (too soon?). Oosterbaan was not great. 

Of those that won, it's a mix of success and, um, less success. 

So basically, it tells us nothing. Harbaugh lost. The future is not written in stone. Even if it were, Harbaugh would probably throw a football at it, smash it to pieces, and get back to coaching. 

U-M lost their first game all four of my years there, and we managed to win three Big Ten championships.

to see how the fellas do this Saturday.  OSU is definitley not as good as Utah, but they have a few players.  I am hoping its a nice solid win.  I get to see them a lot over here in Washington and I havent been impressed with them for a couple years, we should win this game...hopefully by 10pts or more, in my opinon.

 

But I have said this statement a lot latley in the past handful of years, so who knows.  Makes Saturdays very interesting. 

But that was 30 years ago.

...Ohio State looked very shaky in their opener against Navy last year (in the Shoe) and then lost to a 6-6 (reg. season) team at home the next week. Not saying we're going to pull off what they did, but it goes to show a lot of improvement can be made.

It's a long season, boys and girls.

Those were the years were when I first started watching football, and Notre Dame fans in northern Indiana were just insufferable.