Michigan Football: Jim Harbaugh's Most Critical Judgement Is In 2017

With so many pieces from last season’s team missing, the job Jim Harbaugh does with Michigan football in 2017 will be his most scrutinized yet.

There are basically three ways every season can go for any team in any sport. You can either fall short of your expectations, you can meet your expectations, or you can surpass your expectations. For Michigan football this season, whichever one of those three happens will lead to our best look yet at Jim Harbaugh.

For those saying we got a good look at Harbaugh his first season at Michigan, as the Wolverines were coming off four years of Brady Hoke that ended in a 5-7 disaster, you’re not wrong. We knew before then that Harbaugh was a good coach, and he didn’t do anything to muddy those waters in 2015.

But those years are far enough behind now that anything Harbaugh does—good or bad—can’t be met with the idea that he’s working with Hoke’s players. That isn’t completely true, of course. After all, should Speight win the job again this season, Harbaugh’s starting quarterback will be a Hoke holdover.

Same thing with Mike McCray and Maurice Hurst, for example. But it’s true enough that trying to use such logic wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense. Not to mention that, for those certain players, this is their third offseason with Harbaugh and his staff.

More from GBMWolverine

The reason Harbaugh will be so critically judged for what the Wolverines do this season is because of how much his program lost after last year. No more Jabrill Peppers, Jourdan Lewis, Amara Darboh, Jake Butt, Channing Stribling, Taco Charlton—and the list goes on.

Any look at a depth chart is obviously a guess at this point, but it’s conceivable that the Wolverines will have around 20 freshmen/sophomores on the two-deep. That’s a lot of young talent, and it’s the main reason people are lowing the expectations for Michigan this season.

That Michigan wasn’t able to do more in 2016 with a senior-laden team is very disappointing.

The Wolverines are replacing 18 starters, and they might look south to find out how to do that. Not too far south, though. I’m talking one state down, to Ohio, where the Buckeyes replaced 16 starters (12 NFL draft picks) and finished 11-2 last season.

That was wildly impressive, and anyone still holding out, for whatever reason, on Urban Meyer being a top-tier college football coach was surely embarrassed.

Are there people holding out on Harbaugh? Probably. I don’t personally know them, but I’m sure there’s more than a couple. Should Michigan finish this season with something like seven wins (falling short of expectations), it’s not like those people would be vindicated. See Stanford. See the 49ers. See the last two years at Michigan. Harbaugh’s a pretty good football coach.

Still, Harbaugh would come under his most critical judgement yet, and the verdict would be that he’s not an Urban Meyer-type coach who can replace a large swath of talent and not skip a beat. Should the Wolverines meet expectations (nine or 10 wins?), great. If they go beyond that, even better.

Next: Top 10 running backs in Michigan history

No matter what, though, Harbaugh is coming out the other end of this with even more poking and prodding than what’s been done these last two seasons.

Home/Michigan Football

Michigan Football: Jim Harbaugh’s Most Critical Judgement Is In 2017

By Tyler Fenwick | May 31, 2017

With so many pieces from last season’s team missing, the job Jim Harbaugh does with Michigan football in 2017 will be his most scrutinized yet.

More from GBMWolverine