Michigan Football: Josh Gattis drops hint that offense is opening up

New Michigan football offensive coordinator Josh Gattis dropped hints Saturday with the hashtag speed in space. Yes, Wolverines fans should be excited.

It has been an eventful week for the Michigan football program and the Wolverines finished it off Saturday by welcoming Josh Gattis to Ann Arbor.

Early on in the day, Matt Dudek, the Michigan football director of recruiting tweeted that he and the team plane were headed to Alabama to get the new Wolverines offensive coordinator Josh Gattis.

But when Gattis tweeted about things, he got the Michigan fan base in a tizzy of excitement with one phrase or hashtag as it were: speed in space.

Now the words speed in space may not seem like a big deal for most college football fans but at Michigan, it’s everything fans have wanted to hear the past couple of seasons. The offense under Jim Harbaugh has been too conservative, especially in this era.

It was somewhat understandable when John O’Korn was the starting quarterback, but when you have Shea Patterson, Donovan Peoples-Jones, Nico Collins and Tarik Black, it’s just dumb. Yet, with the hiring of Gattis, something no reporter close to the team predicted, Harbaugh showed the awareness that a change is needed.

The first step to correcting a problem is admitting one exists. Harbaugh changed things on the offensive line by hiring Ed Warriner. It changed the running game and simplified things and there was a tangible impact on last year’s team.

Well, after another failure against Ohio State and a bad loss to Florida in the Peach Bowl, Harbaugh recognized that his conservative, power-run based, NFL-offense wasn’t working

No matter how great your defense is in college football, it can still get scored on. The athletes are too good and the game is too wide open. Unless you have dominant players in the front seven and the back end and even with that sometimes, you will struggle. It’s just life and maybe Michigan has finally realized that.

Michigan Wolverines

It’s better to have an offense that scores around 50 a game than a defense that gives around 10-14. Not saying an elite defense isn’t required but it can’t be expected to shut down great offenses each time it faces one. That’s just not realistic and sometimes, you have to win a shootout.

With Gattis, Michigan football might have a chance. The speed in space hashtag certainly hints at using the tremendous athletes the Wolverines already have. Peoples-Jones, Collins and Black are all going to be NFL draft picks. Giles Jackson is going to be a nightmare in the slot and Chris Evans is a very good receiving back that has been criminally underutilized in the passing game.

Gattis could change all that. He could unleash Patterson too, a guy who should be throwing the ball 30-some times per game instead of 20. Of course, the one question you have to ask is where will Harbaugh fit into all of this?

Obviously, he will always be close with the quarterbacks, that’s just who he is. But how will he mold his system to fit with what Gattis wants to do? That will be fascinating to watch and has me looking forward to spring football more than ever.

It’s not like Michigan football needs to get away completely from its power run, it just needs to have more than one bullet in the chamber. Clemson barely ran the ball against the Crimson Tide and still threw it all over the lot in the national title game. UM needs to learn from that example.

At the very least, Gattis seems to get it and by hiring the former co-offensive coordinator at Alabama, Harbaugh showed that he finally gets it too.