ScriptOhio
Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
Jim Harbaugh better get ready for offseason of pressure and uncertainty
A new coaching regime? Absolutely not; Harbaugh remains as good of a cultural fit as his alma mater could hope for and has a football mind coveted at every level of the game. So does that mean it’s time for a reality check about Michigan’s ability to compete for championships? That doesn’t seem right, either. The school has the resources, interest and recruiting prowess to remain among the programs that cycle through national championship contention runs.
The uneasiness ahead of Michigan comes from trying to fill in the blank after that “or.” Do or ... what? Insert a giant Joey Bosa sack celebration shrug here. The Wolverines ought to remember what that looks like.
Some of the same issues that existed when the older Bosa helped beat Michigan in Harbaugh’s first season have yet to be solved. None is bigger than the team’s inability to finish.
In the past two years, Michigan has a losing record in games played after Halloween. The Wolverines are 4-6 in November and bowl season during that time, and in all six of those losses they held a second-half lead. The first season of those late-game losses (three of them by a total of five points) may have seemed like a reason to believe that Harbaugh and the Wolverines were ever so close to breaking through. A repeat this year had the opposite effect. So, what’s the problem?
“Yeah, one thing, it's being able to just kind of sustain the momentum,” Harbaugh told reporters immediately after Monday’s loss to South Carolina. “Keep the momentum and then get the knockout punch. That would be what my thought would be right now.”
Entire article: http://www.espn.com/blog/bigten/post/_/id/143697/michigan-enters-offseason-filled-with-uncertainty
A new coaching regime? Absolutely not; Harbaugh remains as good of a cultural fit as his alma mater could hope for and has a football mind coveted at every level of the game. So does that mean it’s time for a reality check about Michigan’s ability to compete for championships? That doesn’t seem right, either. The school has the resources, interest and recruiting prowess to remain among the programs that cycle through national championship contention runs.
The uneasiness ahead of Michigan comes from trying to fill in the blank after that “or.” Do or ... what? Insert a giant Joey Bosa sack celebration shrug here. The Wolverines ought to remember what that looks like.
Some of the same issues that existed when the older Bosa helped beat Michigan in Harbaugh’s first season have yet to be solved. None is bigger than the team’s inability to finish.
In the past two years, Michigan has a losing record in games played after Halloween. The Wolverines are 4-6 in November and bowl season during that time, and in all six of those losses they held a second-half lead. The first season of those late-game losses (three of them by a total of five points) may have seemed like a reason to believe that Harbaugh and the Wolverines were ever so close to breaking through. A repeat this year had the opposite effect. So, what’s the problem?
“Yeah, one thing, it's being able to just kind of sustain the momentum,” Harbaugh told reporters immediately after Monday’s loss to South Carolina. “Keep the momentum and then get the knockout punch. That would be what my thought would be right now.”
Entire article: http://www.espn.com/blog/bigten/post/_/id/143697/michigan-enters-offseason-filled-with-uncertainty
Upvote
0
