They were as bad as they have been for a while, maybe never. At least Jim Harbaugh. Al less during the first half on Saturday afternoon in Bloomington, Indiana.
And it probably wouldn’t work. It doesn’t matter how young those gluttons are.
For the week in a row, Harbaugh lost in component because his team didn’t seem ready. Five offside penalties? He’s in Harbaugh, even though he said his team had been racing to avoid taking the Indiana bait for the week.
His team also lost, 38-21, because the Hoosiers were more talented. Definitely in the put that mattered. It’s also Harbaugh.
[Michigan football notes: here are those who received an “F” for the moment a week in a row]
Lack of skill is understandable to some extent. Indiana is trained and puts a great program in position. The U-M has lost many players due to the beginning and pandemic.
The challenge is what the Wolverines have proven to be under Harbaugh in the years when their list is complete and experienced, and they still can’t sniff out a convention title, which is what most disturbs Michigan enthusiasts.
Harbaugh did not ask for patience during his post-match press conference, but deserved it when he said he thought his team was close, that the fights of the last two weeks were the result of his players’ inability to truly accept with his talent, intuition and strategy in the game.
“We’re learning to translate (training games) into games,” he said. “What I see to Array . . . is that they’re talented. They’re strong. They play hard. The preparation is good. “
Maybe he’s right.
Chances are you’re just looking to maintain a positive attitude with your young team; anyway, the Wolverines don’t seem close at all.
And while it’s probably the most productive team in Indiana in years, the Hoosiers have produced good professional players for a while. The Wolverines continued to win because they had trench skills.
No more.
The Hoosiers physically compensated him. They U-M on the coach’s surface.
For now. That is, the Wolverines slide again, for the moment in four years Harbaugh.
U-M is now 1-2 for the first time since Rich Rodriguez in Ann Arbor. Think about it for a while. Then think about what happened in Indiana’s last possession, 17 five-minute problems and left-hand replacement in the game, starting deep in its territory after an interception.
All the Hoosiers did was line up and throw the ball three times in a row. There was nothing the Wolverines could do in vain in their last three downtimes.
They submitted on Saturday afternoon. Blown by the ball.
U-M can’t run. Or avoid the race, at least behind in the game. Or put pressure on the Hoosiers’ talented quarterback, Michael Penix Jr. Again, is not Columbus, Ohio, or State College, Pennsylvania.
It’s Bloomington, Indiana.
What now?
Well, Harbaugh has the most talented quarterback of his tenure in Ann Arbor. It’s a start. Three words you probably wouldn’t need to hear in sixth grade.
[After Indiana’s defeat, did Jim Harbaugh lose his welcome to Wolverines?]
Joe Milton has a chance to make a difference. He certainly made some possible choices on Saturday, adding one when he didn’t see a corner under the field that took him to a touchdown.
He also calmed his feet in his pocket, moved well, especially in the part of the moment, and received the kind of pitches we hadn’t noticed at U-M in years.
During a workout that momentarily put the Wolverines back in the game, Milton approached the pressure, slid to his left and turned a deep ball to Ronnie Bell on a cross-route, followed him with a sizzle to Roman Wilson for a touchdown.
In fact, Milton has made a handful of moves that give hope to enthusiasts for the next two seasons, at least there.
Once Milton develops some consistency, he will become a force. The challenge is that the defense isn’t and it probably isn’t for some time.
For the time being, a week in a row, an opponent set the UM corner on fire and when the Hoosiers weren’t running alongside them, they lured interfering calls.
Don Brown tried to combine his blankets and blitz packages more this week. He also leaned a little further into the area. Nothing worked. Your defense may simply not succeed in Penix Jr. or may not work with skills abroad.
This is the story of his tenure in Ann Arbor, in the afterlife has been most commonly exploited across the state of Ohio or in bowling games.
This time it happened against a team that had not defeated the Wolverines since President Ronald Reagan. At the time, U-M led the Big Ten, along with the Buckeyes, accumulating skills and dominating almost everyone in the league.
Those days are over. A long time ago. The same goes for this season’s goals.
Still.
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress. com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.