The State of the Michigan Football Program (2020 offseason edition)
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I’m mixing things up a bit this week. I’m putting the mailbag on hold for a week and pivoting to more of a big-picture piece on the state of the Michigan football program. We’ll resume the normal format next week. Questions can still be submitted to bagofbell@gmail.com.
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This “State of the Michigan Football Program” piece was inspired by the complete meltdown anyone with a Twitter account was able to witness over the course of last weekend’s NFL draft. I’m sure some of it is inspired by the fact that we’re all quarantined and super stir crazy and increasingly irritable, but wow, Michigan Twitter is hitting uncharted territory when it comes to insufferability.
It didn’t matter if a Michigan player was drafted in the first round, second round, on the third day or not drafted at all. Any result seemed to cause Michigan fans to lose their minds. Cesar Ruiz going in the first round meant that Michigan squandered a first-round talent by not running the ball better. Josh Uche going in the second round was an opportunity for people to come out of the woodwork and collectively condemn Jim Harbaugh and Don Brown for misusing such a great talent (a talent I’m sure they all complained Michigan even “wasted” a scholarship on a handful of years ago when he was just a three-star recruit). DPJ’s fall to the end of Day 3 gave people the opportunity to either feed into unfounded rumors about the Michigan program tanking his draft stock or use it as proof that Michigan can’t develop its high-end recruits.
I think the great @Bry_Mac summed it up quite succinctly with this 280-character summary:
I realize some people are just going to complain regardless, and that complaining is a way of life for some of y’all — particularly when it comes to sports. So continually trying to talk people off a ledge when they actually want to be on that ledge is a fool’s errand. At the same time, I fully understand it’s also not fair/realistic to just shrug and give “it’s going to be fine” and “trust the coaches” blanket statements to everything. While I think Michigan’s program is in a much healthier place than current narratives/national perceptions would lead you to believe, saying the program is where most thought it would be (fair or not) after five years of Jim Harbaugh is a lie. The program shouldn’t be devoid of criticism and there absolutely are things that need to be improved upon.
So I’ve decided to take a big picture look at the health of the program, something that I’m probably going to make an annual thing. I did this last offseason on Twitter in the form of a couple threads. The first was pretty specific to the program’s needs to change (but not completely blow up) its offensive approach — something that played out quite close to how I suggested it happen. The second was more of a big-picture look at where the program stood at that time.
Here they are, in case you missed them:
Today’s piece is going to be much more like thread 2 was than thread 1. And *spoiler alert* you’re going to see a lot of the same conclusions as the ones I came to last offseason.
Over the course of this breakdown, I’m going to look at the four biggest areas of the Michigan football program — recruiting, development, on-field performance and the overall relevance of the program. Michigan is in a better place now than it was when Harbaugh came in all four areas. But there’s also still room to improve across the board, too.
Let’s dig in.
Recruiting
Where else would we start? Sure, it can get frustrating that so many fans put SO much stock into recruiting and melt down if a coaching staff has a different strategy/opinion than “recruiting experts” would. But there’s a reason so many of these recruiting experts exist: Recruiting is incredibly important. Ever notice why the “stars don’t matter” fans are fans of teams that don’t recruit really well? I wonder why that is.
Just how important is recruiting? Here’s a chart of all of the national champions during the CFP era and what their recruiting classes looked like the four years leading up to their title wins:
Nothing really needs to be said about Alabama. That’s just absurd. But Ohio State and LSU also had multiple top-5 classes feeding into its title-winning teams (in Ohio State’s case: 3, with its only class outside of the top 5 being No. 6 overall). Clemson is the only pseudo outlier here, but there are a couple caveats. Clemson’s classes have traditionally been much smaller than other elite programs, and recruiting rankings reward larger classes. The Tigers have been a top-5 recruiting program over the past decade if you’re dealing strictly with average star rating.
The other caveat: Even though Clemson’s recruiting classes have been good-not-great from a team ranking standpoint, they have consistently included one very important component: elite QBs. Clemson's 2014 class included 0.9794 QB Deshaun Watson. Clemson's 2018 class included 0.9999(!) QB Trevor Lawrence.
So, recruiting is important. I don’t think it’s necessary to spend more time establishing that. But I do think some people get confused when it comes to causation/correlation. Here’s my take: Being a great recruiting program doesn’t mean you’ll end up being a great team on the field. But it’s very hard to be a consistently great team on the field if you’re not recruiting at a high level.
Michigan’s recruiting since Harbaugh arrived
Here’s a handy little chart that shows how Michigan has performed in recruiting the last five years. Brace yourselves — this is a recurring theme you’ll see throughout this piece: Michigan is recruiting very well, and consistently better than 12 of the 13 other teams in the Big Ten. But Ohio State is king.
Here’s an alternate way of viewing things. Michigan is still No. 2, but unlike the first chart where the gap between Ohio State and Michigan at 1 and 2 is the same gap as the one between Michigan and Penn State at 2 and 3, this one creates more of a Ohio State is No. 1, Michigan is No. 2a, Penn State is No. 2b-type effect. For what it’s worth, I think this is probably a better way to do it, since it’s a little more fair of a measure that doesn’t weight class size as heavily as the normal team rankings do.
Michigan’s current recruiting
The haves/have nots and tiers associated with them are even more clearly defined when it comes to the current recruiting cycle. It’s Ohio State, then it’s Michigan/Penn State and then it’s everyone else in the Big Ten East. Harbaugh’s class is pretty much right in line with what an average class of his has looked like in recent years.
Speaking of which, here’s how Harbaugh’s five classes size up against all of Rich Rodriguez and Brady Hoke’s.
Overall, it’s pretty favorable. Harbaugh has three of Michigan’s top six classes over the past 13 years. And all three of those classes have come in the last four years. The 2018 class is the closest thing to a negative outlier he’s had since taking over in Ann Arbor. It’s not a coincidence that class came on the heels of Michigan’s only on-field negative outlier season in 2017, either.
Future outlook
Michigan has been a strong recruiting program under Harbaugh. Not elite, but pretty on par with where the program sits among other big-time football programs. The only Big Ten program that has recruited has been Ohio State. The 2021 class looks like more of the same trend-wise — just on steroids. Ohio State could realistically end up with what is statisically the best recruiting class … ever? Michigan’s will likely be very solid, but short on true star power (save for five-star QB JJ McCarthy, whose importance should be explained by the Clemson caveats above).
I’m not going to waste a ton of time comparing Michigan to similar programs in the South, because I think it’s kind of a waste of time. Northern programs have some built-in disadvantages when it comes to recruiting — geography, weather, lack of nearby elite fertile talent pipelines, etc. Northern programs with academic standards have even more built-in disadvantages. What do Joe Burrow and Justin Fields have in common, outside of being really, really good at football? Their final exams consist of completing the first three levels of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing and sending in 250-word essays on James And The Giant Peach to their Transcendent Literature Of The 20th Century 401 professors. And hey, I’m not knocking their priorities. If I’m a five-star athlete that knows my future is in athletics, I’d have a hard time resisting the temptation to do the exact same thing. But just keep things like that in mind when you’re coming up with what you think reasonable expectations should be for Michigan’s recruiting out. As long as Michigan continues to want to be Michigan and not bend as much academically as others, Harbaugh’s 2017 and 2019 classes are going to be pretty close to the program ceiling when it comes to recruiting.
Developing talent
Like I mentioned in the previous section, the data is very clear: You need to recruit really well to succeed at the collegiate level. But here’s a dirty little secret that I believe wholeheartedly: I don’t care if Michigan isn’t a Tier 1 recruiting school. Recruiting is still super important, and is a great way for a big program like Michigan to gain a competitive advantage with some of its superfluous resources that other peer programs don’t have. But I truly and honestly believe that a Tier 2 recruiting school (which I think Michigan currently is) can still be a legitimate college football contender. But that’s with one MAJOR caveat: That Tier 2 recruiting school MUST be an elite development school.
The good news? I think Michigan can be exactly that.
Michigan has had Michael Zordich on staff for every year of the Jim Harbaugh era. And there’s good reason behind that continuity. One could (/should?) argue that the secondary, and specifically the cornerback position, has been Michigan’s most consistent area of excellence since Harbaugh took over in 2015. And that’s Zordich’s responsibility.
Michigan had the No. 3 pass defense nationally in 2015. That was a great start. But it got even better the next three years when the Wolverines boasted the No. 1 pass defense in 2016 and 2017 and the No. 2 pass defense in 2018. That unit took a slight step back in 2019 by finishing No. 10 overall nationally, but five straight years as a top-10 group is pretty incredible nonetheless.
From a recruiting standpoint, the only time Zordich has ever been one of Michigan's top 5 recruiters in a given class (according to the 247Sports recruiting rankings dashboard, which is a really cool tool to play around with) was with the 2016 class, when he was No. 22 overall in the Big Ten and fifth among Michigan coaches. That year he was responsible for securing commitments from David Long, LaVert Hill and Khaleke Hudson. But in the five classes that have happened since (with 2021 obviously still being a work in progress), Zordich's best ranking as a recruiter has been No. 43 among Big Ten coaches. That was with the 2020 class, when he was responsible for three commits: Andre Seldon, Darion Green-Warren and Eamonn Dennis — the latter two of which were top 200 national recruits. That’s not really “Michigan standard” when it comes to recruiting. But guess what? I don’t care. Because he’s been successful with the players he’s been able to bring in to the program. He’s the perfect poster child for the argument that development can trump recruiting — as long as said recruiting drop off isn’t too big.
Michigan had two assistant openings this offseason. And I think Harbaugh’s decisions on the hires show he’s not a recruiting > development guy, either.
Bob Shoop has a VERY impressive track record when it comes to defensive coaching. He's served as a multi-year defensive coordinator for Penn State, Tennessee, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt. When Mike Leach took over in Starkville and decided to bring in his guys, that put Shoop, whose reputation has been built on coaching/development more than recruiting, onto the open market. But he wasn’t there for long, as Harbaugh swooped in and locked him up as a defensive position coach (!). Brian Jean-Mary, the other offseason addition, has more of a recruiting pedigree, but he’s also an experienced coach who has been a defensive assistant at four different Power 5 programs, including a three-year stint at Texas.
I can’t speak for Harbaugh when it comes to his decision-making process, but going all in on recruiting and trying to beat other recruiting juggernauts when you’re playing by different rules seems counterproductive. Having great technicians, teachers and developers like Zordich, Shoop and Ed Warinner (whose praises I’ve already sung multiple times on other mediums) on your staff is going to do wonders for your program development.
And it has. Let’s dive into some charts.
Michigan’s draft showing during the Harbaugh era
Thanks to Richard Winters for some really great graphs/tables on this subject over the weekend. There’s more good stuff in a thread, which you can/should follow along with on Twitter.
If you narrow it down to the last four years (which, IMO, is a better indication of the Harbaugh effect, since it's not really fair to put too much stock into the 2016 draft when it comes to him, since he didn't get to choose any of the players on that roster and only had one season with those seniors), Michigan's pick output is even more impressive. The Wolverines (28 picks in the last four drafts), would only trail Alabama (41), Ohio State (33) and LSU (32) in that case, with a pretty comfortable lead over Florida (25) and Clemson/Miami (22) as its next closest competitors. (HT to Zach Shaw for that data)
Where Michigan stands currently
Michigan is coming off a very impressive 2020 draft class. It tied for the second-most players drafted in the nation, trailing only national champion LSU, which had a gaudy 14 players selected.
Clearly not all picks are the same. Ohio State’s 10 picks included three first-round picks, with seven of its 10 players coming off the board by Friday night. Michigan’s draft class was much more backloaded. I have that context for you right here, if that strikes your fancy. But 10 players drafted is 10 players drafted no matter how you look at it. And most impressively, this 10-player haul wasn’t even the best Harbaugh draft class in the last handful of years.
How do Harbaugh’s five draft classes stack up against draft hauls of Michigan past? Very, very favorably. Here’s another chart, if you’re not all charted out yet:
That’s a great look for Harbaugh. A nice reminder that things weren’t as bad as fans made it seem during the Lloyd Carr era. And a triggering reminder of how bad things had gotten for this program during the seven years in the desert with Brady and Rich.
Future outlook
How can you not feel good about this? Alabama, Ohio State and LSU are the only schools that are really putting more players in the NFL than Michigan since Jim Harbaugh was handed the guys to the program.
When you compare how Michigan sizes up with peers in terms of putting players in the draft and where the Wolverines are from a recruiting standpoint, it’s a nice feather in the cap of Michigan’s development. If you compare Michigan’s recruiting in the Hoke era and Michigan’s recruiting in the Harbaugh era (very similar) to the NFL draft numbers between eras (very … uh, not similar), it’s another big data point in the “Jim Harbaugh knows how to develop players” camp.
This can, should and hopefully will be the program’s calling card in the Harbaugh era.
On-field performance
Recruiting is great. Seeing players develop during their time in Ann Arbor and become NFL-ready is fantastic, too. But it all comes down to wins and losses, right?
Right.
Luckily, there’s a sizeable difference between what #narratives say and what reality says.
How Michigan has performed on the field since Harbaugh arrived
There are exactly six Power 5 programs that have more regular season wins than Michigan since Jim Harbaugh took over. Six.
If you listen to TV talking heads, rival fans and self-loathing Michigan fans, you’d expect that number to be double. Or hell, triple.
But no, it’s six. Those schools? Clemson, Alabama, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Georgia, Wisconsin. Not exactly chopped liver.
Similarly, in the six years since the CFP came into existence, only six different teams have actually won at least one CFP game: Alabama (6), Clemson (6), Ohio State (2), LSU (2), Oregon and Georgia.
Michigan hasn’t made that CFP leap, and that’s disappointing to anyone that’s being honest with themselves and the expectations everyone had when Harbaugh took over in December of 2014. But it’s not exactly a very inclusive club to be joining. And nobody could have reasonably expected for Ohio State to make such a dramatic (and consistent) leap into a Bama-level program.
BUT MICHIGAN CAN’T WIN BIG GAMES
FIVE YEARS AND NO CFP APPEARANCES?
AND WHAT ABOUT INDY? INDY! INDY!!!!!!!!
Yes, if you’re a Michigan fan, you’ve been on the receiving end of this highly original, very deep line of thinking. But as I mentioned in my big offseason thread last year, all of the above is just various forms of word vomit that says the exact same thing: Michigan hasn’t beaten Ohio State yet. It does win big games. Just not THE big game. And one win in 2016 or 2018 over Ohio State eliminates those bottom two bullet points in an instance.
The truth is, Michigan is in great shape within the Big Ten compared to anyone not named Ohio State. And there are only a handful of programs nationally that are in a better place than Michigan, too.
Here’s how Jim Harbaugh has fared against every Big Ten foe since taking over in Ann Arbor:
Those five closes losses: Ohio State (‘16 — JT Was Short game), Iowa (‘16 — Michigan loses by 1 in Kinnick night game as nation’s No. 2 team), Penn State (‘19 — Ronnie Bell drops TD pass on 4th-and-goal w/ 2 mins left that would/could have sent game to OT), Michigan State (‘15 — Trouble With The Snap Game, ‘17 — Michigan loses by 4 in monsoon).
Here’s how Michigan’s conference W/L stacks up against the other 13 B1G schools.
Yes, Wisconsin has had a better B1G record than Michigan since Harbaugh arrived. No, I should haven’t to explain to you why this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison. Yes, I’m going to do it anyway.
Wisconsin plays in the Big Ten West, statistically one of the worst major-conference divisions in America. Michigan plays in the Big Ten East, statistically THE best major-conference division in America.
Wisconsin has only had to play 14 regular season games against Big Ten East foes over the past five seasons. Michigan has had to play more than double that mark. Wisconsin 9-5 in those crossover games, compared to 25-5 in games within its own division (Wisconsin is 7-0 against Michigan State, Maryland, Indiana and Rutgers. It is 2-5 against Michigan, Penn State, Ohio State.) I didn’t include Big Ten championship games in the above numbers so it would be an even 34-game sample for everyone. But if I did, Wisconsin’s record against Big Ten East teams would actually be bumped down to 9-8, with a 2-8 mark against The Big Three. So yeah, let’s just save ourselves all some time and not play the Wisconsin card.
Michigan has been a very good on-field team during the Harbaugh Era. The problem: Ohio State has been better.
Relevance/health of the program
Not to go all Dave Brandon on you guys, but there’s one more area where Jim Harbaugh has made a noticeable dent when it comes to the Michigan football program — its brand.
Michigan football was obviously a powerful force before Harbaugh got here. All-time winningest program. The Victors. The winged helmets. A legacy of winning that spans over a century. Famous former Wolverines everywhere — from the NFL to your TV sets to the Hall of Fame. But most of those items that bolster(ed) Michigan’s relevance rely on past accomplishments. There’s no denying that the prestige of the Michigan brand had taken a pretty sizeable hit during seven consecutive years of Rich Rodriguez and Brady Hoke.
Case in point from the final year of the Hoke regime (via go-getter Alejandro Zuniga):
Things had gotten so bad in 2014 that Michigan — which had led the nation in attendance in 38 of the last 39 seasons — not only fell off its perch atop college football’s favorite in-person destination, it took a major tumble. To the tune of 5,000 fewer people at its games. That’s a major drop off.
But with Harbaugh taking over the program in 2015, Michigan has reestablished itself atop the attendance rankings, with no school really even coming close to usurping the Wolverines, who “lead” has grown to 5,000+ more fans per game than the next closest school over the past two seasons.
This isn’t just a “The Wolverines just play in a big stadium thing,” either. Michigan was one of just three programs in he nation to average more than 5 million viewers per game in 2019, joining Alabama and Ohio State (HT to @BBsBigHouse1 for that stat, as well as the chart that follows):
And then there’s overall revenue, where Michigan continues to sit pretty, too.
Michigan came in at No. 3 in Forbes’ College Football’s Most Valuable Teams of 2019 feature — ahead of the likes of Ohio State, Alabama and Clemson and trailing only Texas and Texas A&M.
Michigan has been a mainstay in the top 5 of the USA Today College athletics revenue database during the Harbaugh era. It lags a bit behind because of FOIAs/reporting, but with three fiscal years of data, Michigan has made the top 5 in each of the three relevant windows during Harbaugh’s tenure, with the revenue continuing to increase each time: 2015-2016 ($164,850,616), 2016-2017 ($185,173,187) and 2017-2018 ($195,769,104).
Attendance? Check. TV ratings? Check. Revenue? Check. All keys to the overall health of a football program, all elite marks for Harbaugh and Michigan.
Overall thoughts
So what is Michigan’s current place among the college football landscape? Here’s my best crack at a tier system for where the top 25-30 programs in the country currently sit, using the four areas of focus above as my primary criteria (schools are alphabetized within the tiers, not ranked within their individual tiers).
Tier 1a -
Alabama
Clemson
Ohio State
Tier 1b -
Georgia
LSU
Oklahoma
Tier 2 -
Auburn
Florida
Michigan
Notre Dame
Penn State
Tier 3 -
Oregon
Texas
Texas A&M
USC
Washington
Wisconsin
Tier 4 -
Baylor
Boise State
Florida State
Iowa
Miami (FL)
Michigan State
Oklahoma State
South Carolina
TCU
Utah
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I want to wrap this up with what I think the key takeaways should be. Like I said at the top, you’re not going to get a much different overall conclusion than what I gave last year: The program is in a good spot. Michigan has made strides in every key facet of the program since Harbaugh took over. But it’s also not in Ohio State’s league right now, and Michigan won’t be where it needs to be as a program until it solves its Ohio State problem. That problem just seems pretty damn daunting right now with the Buckeyes in a healthier long-term spot than they’ve possibly been in uh, forever?
Since that’s not exactly an earth-shattering conclusion to reach, I want to leave everyone with three things I’d like to see the program do to help chip away at its Ohio State problem and to work toward getting in the top tier of programs nationally.
Sign Jim Harbaugh to a contract extension
Jim Harbaugh signed a seven-year deal in December of 2014. That sounds like a super long deal. But it really only leaves two seasons left on the deal. Once you have a coach with only a year or two left on their contract, that’s blood in the water for opposing coaches when it comes to negative recruiting. If you don’t think Ryan Day, James Franklin and others are telling recruits that Harbaugh’s contract stops in 2021, you’re insane. Harbaugh is the subject of unfounded negative recruiting each year — he’ll certainly be on the receiving end of something that’s actually true. It’s super rare for a coach at a major program that isn’t on the hot seat (which Harbaugh 100% is not on, and its a testament to just how awful Michigan Twitter is that I actually have to cut into my word count and write that out) to have his contract come this close to expiration. Warde Manuel is on the record saying that he wants Harbaugh to retire as Michigan’s coach. What’s the hold up? Get this done.
Focus on innovation/forward-looking thinking
One of the staples of the Harbaugh Michigan programs when he took over in 2015 was that there would never be a dull moment. Harbaugh would gladly push the envelope when it came to satellite camps and international travel and anything else that could create a competitive advantage. I don’t think that’s necessarily gone from the program, but the year-to-year quest for innovation seems a little … tempered?
Where could this next leap be? How about the news of the new NIL plans for the NCAA? Starting in 2021-2022, college athletes are going to be able to be endorsed for endorsement, social media and things of that nature. Schools that can be proactive and creative in how to best utilize this as a recruiting play are going to greatly benefit. Michigan has a great alumni network and endless resources as both an institution and as an athletic department. Harbaugh has been in front of the game before. It’s time to do it again.
Beat Ohio State
Please. For the love of God. Please just beat Ohio State.
Hey Scott, great write-up! I think a lot of the Michigan twitter thinks that we're in tier 1 when we are really in Tier 2 or 3? I believe in Harbaugh and I think we can get there. We're 2 great DTs away from making some noise in the division. Love your stuff, keep it up.
Wow , Well written and on point!! The ONLY thing that you didn't touch on is the quarterback play. ALL great teams have an elite quarterback and that is something we haven't had yet. In the late 90's and 2000's we had the best QB in the conference and we haven't in a long time. I think that is one of out biggest issues!?!