Lol at comparing this turd to Mahomes.

He just isn't very bright, guys.

We just don't have the TE talent to run certain plays. Gotta upgrade that position group big time. The best TE Harbaugh has had at Michigan was that California guy who quickly transferred to UCLA (Asani?) ****ing sad.

Absolutely brain dead yet again. Never stops with this dumbass.

I really want to support Jim Harbaugh. He makes it impossible.

HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAH

loooooooooooooooool sweet coaching jimbo

I miss the Lloyd Carr era so much.

After that series to end the half I told ILP I’m done watching this and went and played OOTP 19. Looks like a good choice in retrospect.

Whatever. Basketball time.

Didn’t care about this game going in and I’m not going to start now. The recruiting class is already signed and this game has zero bearing on next season.

I've always been pro-delusion when it comes to sports but I just can't insulate myself from the depressing fact that we can indeed infer some pretty damning things about next year's team and the general future of this program just from watching this game.

Right

We have two minutes. With timeouts.

****** coach runs it multiple times to set it up for a 50 yard FG with a college kicker

It’s so f dumb

Then you watch Clemson trying to score with 40 seconds and 1 time out

And succeed.

And if he's ****ing that up - every time and repeatedly - he's a lock to be ****ing up other stuff that requires more than a 70 IQ.

To clarify

Yes he’s the best coach we can have right now. No I don’t want him fired

Yes he’s ******ed.

Yep this is still the only tenable position to hold. Excluding real work, being the head coach at Michigan is one of the toughest jobs there is for institutional/demographic/divisional reasons laid out many times before. I have zero faith we could find another coach that can recruit at Harbaugh's level. Outside of his unconscionably bad in game strategy and his creepy/strange interviews/press conferences, Harbaugh may be the best coach in the country.

The downside of excepting this Faustian wager is even with hypothetically equal recruits we will still never be able to compete with the true heavyweights because Harbaugh's in game idiocy will take us down virtually every time. But as far as having the coach that will bring the most wins to the table, it's still Harbaugh in spades.

This should be the only position on Harbaugh: he is a very good but imperfect coach who is by far the best coach Michigan could have. End of story. Until proven otherwise Michigan football must live and die with Harbaugh.

When Harbaugh was first hired, I was convinced a national championship would follow. Now I think that is unlikely. What I can't figure out is how, during the Lloyd Carr era, we were so good against top 10 teams and under Harbaugh we have been so awful in that regard. When Carr was the head coach I was very frustrated because his hyper conservatism against mediocre teams resulted in too many inexplicable close losses only to see him open things up against top teams resulting in a great record against top 10 teams.Other than two monster seasons, I felt Carr's teams consistently underachieved because they would piss away what could have been epic seasons because of playing things too close to the vest and absorbing head scratching defeats. I was not a huge fan of Carr's results for the most part. I think Harbaugh is a better coach than Carr so I can't comprehend how terrible his results are against top 10 teams.

The only thing I can cling to is the fact that I don't think we have seen the ceiling yet of the Harbaugh era. The offensive line, for starters, is going to eventually get better. Probably much better. The new OL coach made a difference this year, although much improvement is still needed. The problem is in the Harbaugh era we have had guys better suited for guard or center starting at the OT spots. The Grant Newsome career ending injury was absolutely devastating. Also, there was an elite OT recruit that we had verbally committed to us that late in the recruiting cycle decommited and chose Georgia instead. We absolutely need to sign elite OT talent. I also think that the QB play will continue to get better. We finally are at a point where the QB room is loaded with top talent. I think we are about to reach the point where we have a quality starter at QB every year. Patterson will get better next season, and after that I think McCaffrey will be a big upgrade from Patterson.

Other concerns are whether Harbaugh will finally start to utilize the immense talent we have at wide receiver. Collins, Peoples-Jones and Black should be absolutely dynamic, but they need to be a bigger part of the offensive game plan next year. Lastly, Harbaugh has not brought in elite talent at running back. It's been a bunch of decent but not elite running backs, due greatly to coming in second place repeatedly for elite backs who chose other elite programs (Alabama, Ohio State) instead. The incoming freshman from California sounds like he might be elite.

Defensively, I'm not sure what to think. Statistically we have been great under Don Brown, but the defense keeps getting exposed against elite offenses. Look at the Penn State game two seasons ago and the Ohio State game this season. Plus, there are too many games where the defense is awful for a half and then shuts down the opponent the second half (Notre Dame and Northwestern this season for example). Statistically the defense is elite, but there are too many lapses. Until proven otherwise it is a great defense for the most part against below average and average opponents, but has significant problems against elite opponents.

The other problem that I can't really figure out is how below expectations Michigan's five star recruits have performed the last decade. A number of five star running backs have really been mediocre (Grady, Green, Isaac). Mallett transferred rather than play QB for Richrod. Shane Morris just missed getting a fifth star and turned out to be terrible. DT Aubrey Solomon just transferred after two seasons without having accomplished much. WR Donovan Peoples Jones has been solid so far but has not really looked like a five star. DE Rashan Gary was very, very good but he was way less productive than Chase Winovich. Simply put, as the #1 recruit in the nation Gary was never the game wrecker that you'd expect from such an elite talent. DT Ondre Pipkins never amounted to much. OG Kyle Kalis started a bunch but was bad. S Jabrill Peppers lived up to the hype.

Trying not to score seems to have had a negative effect on results.

Regarding your first paragraph, Carrs OL were probably 2-3x the OL Harbaugh has fielded. Carr also had Brian Griese(10 year NFL career), Tom Brady(HoFer), Henson(most talented and would be #1 overal pick), Navarre(we saw how the team did before his Sr. year), Henne(10 year NFL career), also much better WR's. Harbaugh has had Rudock, Speight, JoK, now Patterson. 2 of those guys are among the worst QB's Mcihigan has had in a long time. The WR's should be somewhat like Carr's next year. Carr always seemed to have a really good upperclassman at WR.

That top 10 games stat is so stupid. It’s just the latest context-free garbage cooked up by talking heads and hot takists to try and illustrate a point that they think makes sense.

In how many of those games has Michigan actually had the better team? I’ll go 2016 Wisconsin (decisive win, notwithstanding the score—I think UM had like a 99% postgame win expectancy), 2015 MSU (a decisive W overturned by the dumbest most fluky play in Michigan history that is completely unrelated to Harbaugh), and fine I’ll even go 2018 OSU (although the OSU of the past 3 games is probably the best non-Alabama or Clemson team in the country). The remaining games:

2018 ND. A game where UM still manages to have 54% postgame win expectancy
2017 PSU. Clear L. Whatever.
2017 UW—O’Korn
2017 OSU—see above, Harbaugh ties Meyer in knots and gets undone by the worst QB play in UM history
2016 OSU—needs no explanation
2015 OSU—clear L

And then two dumbass bowl games where Michigan loses on a coin flip and then mails it in because who gives a ****. Whatever.

So at this point what are we mad about? That Jim Harbaugh isn’t beating teams that are more talented and better than his? Even in those games he’s more often than not getting you right there and then getting spectacularly unlucky.

Yeah that’s kinda the point

What’s Urbana’s record as an underdog


It’s not 0 and x

Okay. But that’s a dumb thing to get mad about when Harbaugh is a few literal coin flips away from that stat being 4-6 (which is pretty good considering Michigan’s true talent level). How many times has Urban been at a clear talent disadvantage even if he’s an underdog? Even that 2014 team that beat Alabama was ridiculously stacked.

You brought up the “flukiest of fluke” MSU game

We were up double digits in the second half
And pissed it away

Same vs OSU a few years back


Sure he had some run bad. But he’s also ******ed

If you need proof. Watch the last three minutes of the first half of the peach bowl.

That’s a fireable Offense right there.

The first DUI, maybe it was a one time thing.

The 4th? You’ve got a problem.

Harbaugh is a ****ing moron. It isn’t variance.

Harbaugh is very dumb. That is true. As the saying goes, you can't fix stupid. That said, personnel-wise the biggest fix we need is at OL. Upgrade that position group to actually being good and then we got something, and the trend looks very promising in that direction. The next big fix comes at OC, Harbaugh somehow needs to be smart enough to get out of the way and let a real OC run the show. I realize this part is a stretch given the apparent contradiction with the above, but it's possible. Harbaugh has made changes before, so I'm not giving up on this hope.

A real OL + a real OC = we can actually be good enough to beat tOSU 1 out of 3 years and maybe make the playoffs 1 out of 5 years. I'll take that with enthusiasm and live with the reality that Harbaugh's in game decision making will sink our ship most of the time vs the big boys.

He was actually pretty good at most everything with the 49ers. Perhaps he has early onset CTE. He’s getting worse.