State of the Union - Michigan Football
By: Wayne
Michigan entered the Citrus Bowl against Alabama yesterday as 7.5-point underdogs, and I almost bet on Alabama to cover the spread. I would venture to guess that less than 15% of Michigan fans thought we would win, let alone cover the spread - we were wrong, for a brief moment. At halftime, Michigan was actually winning! Then the second half came around, Nick Saban made the necessary adjustments, and we failed to score for the rest of the game. The final score doesn't do justice to how much of a dicking it was in the second half.
No Michigan fans were particularly surprised by the result - under Jim Harbaugh, we've lost our last 4 bowl games by an average margin of 13 points. We've gone 1-11 against top-ten ranked teams after losses to Wisconsin and Ohio State this year by a combined 50 points. Sure, there have been some positives of the Harbaugh era too. Michigan has gone 47-18 since 2015, Harbaugh's first season, and has had some memorable results including a win at home over Notre Dame this season and wins over Wisconsin, Michigan State, and Penn State in 3 straight weeks last season. We haven't gone worse than 8-5 under Harbaugh, and we are consistently ranked within the top 25 teams.
But our level of contention against the top programs is embarrassing. The fact that Ohio State kicks our ass every year with worse academics and prestige, less funding from alumni donors, and while playing in the mediocre-at-best and the worst-at-worst state of Ohio is alarming and honestly fucking depressing. For some reason, I convinced myself that we could beat them this year - yet again, for the 5th time in as many seasons, we were crushed. We've lost those 5 games by an average margin of 19 points. They're usually over before halftime.
Our team's football struggles start at the quarterback position. After watching John O'Korn, Wilton Speight, and Brandon Peters champion mediocrity under center, Shea Patterson was supposed to be the savior - yesterday, he looked just like the three dudes that came before him. He was once a five-star prospect who led the SEC in passing, but in the biggest two games of the season - yesterday against Alabama and a few weeks ago against Ohio State - Patterson completed 21/61 passes with one touchdown and four interceptions. That equates to a QBR of 27.97 which is absolute shit. He was sailing balls over receivers heads and misdiagnosing plays all afternoon in both matchups. Jim Harbaugh's continued inability to develop quarterbacks is an issue that must be fixed. He has a history of coaching and playing the position, making it all the more troubling that Michigan can't find consistent play at QB.
Michigan is the winningest football team of all time. We play in what is considered possibly the best football conference. We have the largest alumni network in the country and enough financial resources to fund multiple big-time football programs. We play in the biggest stadium in the world and have established an awesome athletic campus complete with every resource a football player could ever need. There is no reason why we shouldn't be able to attract the top talent in the world. And yet, Ohio State out-recruits us every single year. Why? Times have changed in the football world, and Michigan can't rest on its laurels anymore as one of the best programs of all time. We need a major adjustment to modernize our program.
What that adjustment should be is another question entirely. Harbaugh clearly hasn't had the requisite level of success against top opponents to get this program to where it wants to be, especially against Ohio State. I don't see that changing anytime soon, unfortunately. Michigan should be striving to make the playoff and compete for a Big Ten title every season, and we haven't even sniffed either of those in the past 5 years. I have little confidence that's going to change anytime soon. It's becoming painfully obvious that the current formula is good enough to win 9 or 10 games and qualify for a decent bowl game which we will probably lose in. Don Brown needs to go - our defense is underprepared, uninspiring, and never makes the necessary key changes in games. A sense of fatigue is setting in around Michigan football, and yeah what we've been doing is good enough to be consistently entertaining and keep alumni interested - but I want to see this team win a championship more than anything else in the world. Shit needs to change if that's going to happen.
