Text messages were sent and voice messages were left. The phones of former Michigan football players who have played in recent seasons and others who made their mark in a more excellent era stood out when the Wolverines won the convention championships and were in the national contest. Players were asked to assess the status of their alma mater’s football program in the sixth year of Jim Harbaugh’s training period.
The minutes passed. Then for hours. Then days.
Most messages have been returned, leaving the kind of inconvenient silence that persists when a sensitive topic is raised.
As Michigan’s 2020 season approaches, the tradition-rich program faces the uncomfortable truth that it staned under the leadership of a guy who repairs the Wolverines as a leading program.
Since Harbaugh arrived with a wonderful fanfare in December 2014, Michigan has never competed by the name of the Big Ten in Indianapolis. He lost all games to his rival Ohio State, was 1-4 in bowl games, won two of his 14 matches opposed to the most APs. 10 groups and did not finish one season above the tenth in any of the polls.
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Under Harbaugh’s leadership, the Wolverines won 72% of their games, but failed to achieve the kind of advancement that would place them among the sport’s systems.
“It wasn’t the result of a scandal, parole or anything like that, which makes it even harder to understand,” said Glen Mason, a former Minnesota coach who is a Big Ten Network analyst. “But maybe the same thing in Michigan. Michigan we’ve all known. “
When Harbaugh was hired in the last days of 2014, the excitement was palpable. Ann Arbor’s network rejoiced when the former star quarterback returned to lead his school’s team, welcoming his favorite son as a conquering hero. Rodriguez and Brady Hoke, the top vital figures in school football, have been optimistic about the show’s clients in the coming years with Harbaugh at the helm, and Lloyd Carr, the school’s last wonderful coach, gave his approval. Jim Tressel predicted that Harbaugh would even be the rivalry with the Buckeyes who turned away towards the beginning of the new millennium. But Harbaugh’s purpose of stirring up publicity.
“I don’t give any guarantee, ” he said.
Michigan then won 10 games in its first season, something unexpected for some of its most fervent believers who might never have predicted that good fortune would come so soon. The following year, the Wolverines made another leap forward, entering the initial rankings of the playoffs at school. final in Ohio State’s victory before achieving its first New Year’s Six Bowl since 2011.
In the words of Harbaugh, Michigan on the rise.
And then, just like that, it wasn’t. In retrospect, the close loss to Ohio State on November 26, 2016, remembered by a questionable football venue, was a turning point. The Wolverines have never been closer to fulfilling their dreams ever since. That day, moving from a position of strength to a weaker and less impressive position. In the more than three seasons, Michigan has not finished above 14 in the final standings, while stumbling several times in consecutive games that have knocked the Wolverines out of the standings. race for something meaningful.
Over time, the missed opportunity looms in Columbus four years ago, virtually severing the momentum Harbaugh had accumulated to this point and hindered his efforts to turn Michigan into an eternal force again.
“Who knows that, if that’s the big answer?”said former Michigan tight wing Jake Butt, who in the box that fateful day. “Who knows what would have happened? But winning the moments, they matter. “
Time, after all, is everything, especially in high-risk school football worldwide. Of the last five coaches who have taken their groups to the national championships, one, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, has done so after Nick Saban’s fourth full year he won it all in his third season in Alabama. Urban Meyer won first prize in the game this year in Florida and the third year in the state of Ohio.
Swinney, the atypical, gradually turned an average show into a giant with a core of suitable assistants who kept their looks while the Tigers climbed to the top. In Michigan, Harbaugh’s staff has had a remarkable rotation as they pass through 24 coaches in the Settings have reverberated on and off the field, where Michigan has not yet established a transparent identity. Philosophically, the Wolverines have gone from being a floor attack and a pound style to the area speed formula that lately are under the direction of coordinator Josh Gattis.
On the recruiting route, your technique has been all over the map. The Wolverines made an increase in the south at the beginning of Harbaugh’s tenure, then targeted New Jersey and now targeted New England as a source of talent. Between the portfolio of clients they have accumulated during the last round and the existing one, they have attracted a player from Ohio, a state that once provided the Michigan stars of yesteryear, adding Heisman winners. Charles Woodson Trophy and Desmond Howard.
Meanwhile, the program has withstood an avalanche of de-assertions. Since the arrival of the NCAA motion portal in October 2018, Michigan has noticed that 38 team members left the program, adding 11 fellows in the past 12 months. As a result, the Wolverines dropped to 18th in the 247Sports team’s skill ratings, through the lowest rating in Harbaugh’s tenure.
This is the most recent indication that Michigan continues its decline from this peak in November 2016, when the gluttons gave the impression of grandeur.
“It just didn’t happen as I imagined, and I’m sure Michigan enthusiasts,” said Kirk Herbstreit, ESPN analyst. “Are they close? Yes, is that frustrating? Obviously, do you need to win?The state of Ohio? Do you need to make it to the playoffs?Absolutely, however, I still think he’s building a program. I still think you want to have a quarterback game up to the next level. “
So far, that hasn’t happened, much to the dismay of outsiders who think Harbaugh would still have an intermediate star after seeing him stylize Andrew Luck at school and Colin Kaepernick at the pros. Jake Rudock exceeded expectations, Wilton Speight was fit, John O’Korn struggled and Shea Patterson was disappointed by a series of erratic performances. The player’s progression into a position Harbaugh had once occupied and Coaching never actually materialized, delaying the expansion of a program that used to produce professional-style smugglers, not to mention the media and productive recipients.
“You used to say, “Michigan has it all, ” said Mason.
While 31 of the Wolverines’ most sensitive participants were selected during Harbaugh’s tenure, no offensive player decided above the third round.
This is an alarming progression given that the Buckeyes had a quarterback, two midfields and 3 open catchers decided in rounds 1 and 2 of the same period.
Speaking of the scarcity of high-value skills in Michigan for those key positions, Herbstreit said, “They’ve had some here and there, yet I think this is a domain that I know they want to keep developing and keep looking to increase. The bar. I know it’s Harbaugh’s responsibility, ultimately, but man, I’m just, I guess I’m a fan. “
For those who saw Harbaugh resurrect an oppressed Stanford program and take san Francisco’s 49ers to the limit of a Super Bowl title, it’s hard to reconcile their brilliant beyond the truth of the show he oversees. Former coaches and players hesitate to abandon Harbaugh, who is in the penultimate year of his contract that will pay him the fourth highest salary in school football.
Of course, critics will say that Harbaugh did not live up to expectations and that the $ 7. 5 million he is expected to earn this year is not made with the effects he has delivered.
But Mason must counter with his own argument.
“If you can’t do it, ” said Mason, “who will?”
Or as Herbstreit echoed, “If Jim Harbaugh can’t win in Michigan, who can?
Butt, who now plays for the Denver Broncos, also wonders, remains unwavering with his former coach and appreciates Harbaugh’s paintings by elevating the Wolverines well above the station where they resided before their arrival. position at this point in Harbaugh’s regime, opposed to a large blue wall separating the Wolverines from their greatest targets.
“I’m amazed, to be honest, because I’m at Coach Harbaugh and what he does,” he said. “And you think, hey, the dam will break. “
When this happens, there will be a snching roar of Ann Arbor.
People will come together to help Harbaugh, saying they knew he would.
They’ll celebrate the conquering hero as when he arrives.
But for now, there’s an awkward silence wrapping around the show, which is an unspoken acknowledgment that the Harbaugh era wasn’t as great as many ideas when it started.
Contact Rainer Sabin at rsabin@freepress. com. Follow him on Twitter at RainerSabin. Get information about the Michigan Wolverines, Michigan Spartans and sign up for our Big Ten newsletter.