Michigan football fans need to put this loss in perspective
By Ash Thompson
The Michigan football team dropped its opener to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in a disappointing fashion. The season is far from over, however.
The Michigan football team lost a game. It is going to be O.K. There are support groups that you can join. There are helplines you can call. You’re going to get through this.
If your first instinct is to go on Twitter and rip on one of the players, put your phone down. If your first instinct is to renounce your fandom and to proclaim the season over, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Michigan was never going to go undefeated. If that was your expectation, that’s on you. They were ranked as the number 14 team in the nation going into this game, not number one. They lost a one-score game to a team that was ranked higher than them.
The first half was disastrous. The Irish put up 233 yards of offense to the Wolverines 90. The second half was the opposite side of the coin. The Irish managed just 69 yards in the second half, and the Wolverines 217. The game was decided with less than a minute on the clock. That’s what happened yesterday.
The Wolverines came out flat. They got down early, and could never make up the deficit. A defense that was hailed as one of the better groups in the nation before this game got punched in the mouth and took some time to realize that they were in a fight.
This loss smacks of a team that bought into the hype. This felt like a team that decided they could show up and win. This looks, from the outside, like a team that took on the unjustified arrogance of its head coach.
Do not get me wrong, Jim Harbaugh is a good coach. But the fact that his response to a flurry of player transfers was to put up a sign in the locker room that implied their weakness was the problem tells you what you need to know.
Jim Harbaugh is a throwback to an era that nobody wants to go back to. Harbaugh runs his show with a “my way or the highway” manner that is great, as long as it works. When it doesn’t work, it’s the fastest way to lose a team.
These players are not oblivious to what is going on here. Harbaugh has sold them on the idea that if they stick it out, and if they put in the work the team will win. None of that happened yesterday against Notre Dame. It hasn’t gone that way in years.
The Michigan football team just tripped and fell at the beginning of a marathon. This season not over. This wasn’t a conference game, truthfully it doesn’t really matter much at all outside of re-setting the fan base’s expectation of what 2018 is for the team.
Next. Lions trade Robinson to the Panthers. dark
This season is now about whether or not Jim Harbaugh’s ego can handle the fact that he has made mistakes, and he needs to clean them up. This is a good team, but it is not a great team. They were outplayed and outcoached in the season opener. It was, however, just one game. The season is not over.