Let's not take the "had something beautiful in his hands" narrative as gospel.
They had the tsun version of the other B1G schools when they finally have a championship caliber team made up of a bunch of upperclassmen. Just like Iowa/Wisconsin/etc they don't recruit well enough to just plug in the next wave of NFL guys and go 10-2 the year after a championship team.
Jimmy had what remains of the #18, #8, #10, #13 recruiting classes and the #9 class coming in as true freshmen this year in his hand if he didn't pull the NFL stunt.
His greatest season ever was exactly the same as all his other mediocre seasons with two variations: 1) he caught Ohio State at home in the snow with a bad defense and 2) he managed not to fuck up against a lesser team, eking out wins against Rutgers, Nebraska, and Penn State.
They still lost to MSU and were embarrassed in a bowl game. And they lucked out playing a fucking awful Iowa team in the B1G championship.
They are a helluva lot closer to what they’ve always been than taking the next step to the elite tier of teams.
Their recruiting is the same or worse than it’s always been and Macdonald at DC was a huge part of them being more competent last season—replacing him will be a critical task and one that Harbaugh is more likely than not to fail without his brother bailing his ass out again.
Throw in that they are way behind and likely not to catch up in NIL or the transfer portal (credits don’t transfer to UM apparently and they can’t take anyone) and it’s likely that they aren’t just going to return to their usual 9-4 seasons next year, but their trajectory is down even from there unless Harbaugh can absolutely nail his coordinator hires and convince everyone that after whoring himself out for an NFL job two years in a row in humiliating fashion he actually is serious about coaching at Michigan.
That seems like a tall task for someone who struggles to communicate with other human beings in the first place.
I hope that all equals a complete crash and burn next season and Bike Hart as their next HC. Fuck them.
Edit: Oh, and I forgot that he absolutely lit his QB room on fire for no real reason while getting blown out in the bowl game and he is practically guaranteed to have one of McCarthy or McNamara transfer out sooner rather than later as he fucks up those off-season conversations, leaving the QB room practically empty.
And a lot of other players aren’t feeling the love either, apparently…