This is as fine and insightful an article as I’ve ever read on a college coach. He is absolutely correct, Jim Harbaugh used to coach at UM with a crazy fire. Everywhere. “What’s your story?!” at Stanford to Pete Carroll. He’s right, Harbaugh has not coached with that crazy fire the last two years. He is right that Harbaugh appears to be “searching” for his identity and derivatively, his team’s identity. What happened? How could he searching after success everywhere he has been? Shawn Windsor of the Detroit Free-Press:
MADISON, Wis. — He used to prowl more than pace, a nuclear-powered stalker on the sidelines. He slammed his clipboard and tossed off his headset and howled whenever he saw injustice.
Back then, during the first couple seasons of his tenure in Ann Arbor, Jim Harbaugh channeled his mentor Bo Schembechler, along with whatever demons lay deep within, and coached as if in a controlled rage.
To watch a game, especially in front of a television and its unforgiving closeups, was to see a football coach operating in a dark and narrow space. His first two teams at Michigan played like he prowled, absorbing his ferocity and temperament.
That was Harbaugh’s identity, and he imbued his team with it. He even had a mantra that encapsulated the philosophy: “Attack each day with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.”
Whatever else you say, his teams knew who they were, from San Diego to Stanford to San Francisco to Michigan. The offense may have changed, and the players obviously did. Yet Harbaugh’s success as a coach was never really attached to any one style or offensive or defensive approach.
It was him. His inferno.
And while it may burn just as hot, it no longer envelops Michigan’s program. Certainly not this year’s team, where a 35-14 thumping at Camp Randall Stadium on Saturday felt inevitable early in the game.
Witness the slumped shoulders on the sidelines in the first quarter, after Wisconsin scored its second touchdown to take a 14-0 lead. The Wolverines were a long way from losing at that point, but some 12 minutes into the game they were acting like they’d lost.
Actually, the self-doubt crept in earlier when Ben Mason, who’d carried exactly zero times this season, fumbled the ball inside the 10-yard line as U-M looked to tie the game at seven.
“That kind of killed us,” said tight end Nick Eubanks, who desperately tried to lift the hanging heads after the Badgers’ second touchdown.
Really? Killed them? A few minutes into the game?
Yes, it did. Not that U-M stopped playing. Or competing.
It’s that the team lost its belief too easily. And that, more than anything, more than the offense or the quarterback or the defensive line, is what Harbaugh must fix.
But he needs to rediscover himself first. And unleash the inner coach who rebuilt every team he touched and whose presence immediately gave U-M's program a jolt.
It’s been a while since we’ve felt that jolt. He still talks about work and grinding and the process and enthusiasm, but something isn’t quite the same.
He coaches as if he’s searching, maybe even uncertain, and his team reflects the uncertainty.
“I think … as a whole group we don’t have an identity yet,” said Eubanks. “We have to find our identity. We have to find it quick.”
Eubanks is right. These Wolverines don’t know who they are. There are flashes, moments when the talent is easy to spot, and the new schemes appear savvy and it looks like they have found something.
Then something goes awry, and the shoulders begin to slump, and the heads began to bow. It’s understandable, really. Teams that are searching for identities don’t handle adversity in the way championship teams do.
Harbaugh understands this, obviously. In his last five or six games, though, he’s been unable to lead the way.
On Saturday afternoon, he was blunt about what happened:
“We were outplayed … outprepared and outcoached,” he admitted. “It was thorough.”
He also said his team was outblocked and out-tackled. Normally, this would be coach speak. But after watching Wisconsin dismantle his Wolverines, especially up front on both sides of the ball, Harbaugh was right to keep his explanation so simple.
Besides, his team doesn’t block or tackle as well as it should. Part of that may be talent and experience, but part of that is mental, driven by internal fire as much as anything else.
For most of Harbaugh’s career, he’s provided that fire, and the fuel that burns those flames. It’s not that he needs to stomp and scream and throw headphones on the sideline to uplift his team, but it’s essential that he find some way to lift them.
In no team sport does a coach matter more than in college football. Now, more than ever, U-M needs its coach.
