It’s Harbaugh.

It’s his roster. These are all guys he has brought in. The holes? He’s the one that recruited and managed the guys who left. Either he scouted poorly or, more likely, he’s not great at retaining players. I have a theory that Harbaugh is a nice enough guy but has a real blind spot in understanding how people perceive his manner of interacting with others. He doesn’t have a good empathetic sense of how to deal with people. He can’t read them, and he says things that many people easily realize aren’t wise things to say. It’s not bad in itself, but it would explain the way he has carried himself of the 30+ years I have known about him and would explain how he rubs people the wrong way despite being earnest and hard-working. It’s a theory that fits the facts; even if it’s wrong, Harbaugh has managed the roster abominably, failing to recruit properly to fill holes and losing dozens of 4-star level prospects before they ever meaningfully contribute. His roster.

It’s his QB room. DCaff left? Of course. The next QB that improves under Harbaugh will be, generously, the second after Jake Rudock. Nobody else has. McNamara was hurt, of course, and allegedly so is Milton. So was Shea last year, and Wilton a few years ago. You know what? Other teams still win games with QBs getting banged up. OSU beats us with backups, wins titles with backups. You really think that DCaff would be slinging the football like Kyler Murray if we had just hung on to him? Of course not: his QB coach is Jim Harbaugh. Harbaugh’s a guy who isn’t ignorant, he played the position. He knows just enough to think he knows more than he does, and whatever it is that he does hurts the development of his QBs. His QB room.

It’s even his defense. We’re playing walk-ons on the DL. Yeah, that’s not going to go well. It’s Harbaugh’s roster. And whatever has happened to cause Don Brown to collapse as a DC after a statistically excellent four year stretch, Harbaugh is the one that is ultimately responsible for the players. When Brown leaves after this year, he’ll get picked up by a mid-range P5 team and instantly make them better. Harbaugh is less responsible here, but it’s still his team.

It’s also, in the end, Harbaugh’s running game. I don’t know how to explain how bad Michigan is at running the ball, but they are always underwhelming. We were underwhelming in 2016, when the ability to run for a first down in the fourth quarter of either Iowa or OSU wins those games on the road. We were decent last year, averaging 150 yards per game and 4.0 yards per carry. Nice, right? But I’d expect more from a team that had four OL drafted the following spring. Yeah, we’re missing key guys this year. We also can’t run for short yardage to save our lives. His running game.

It’s Harbaugh. It’s all Harbaugh. None of the problems we see this year, or last year, are new. They are problems that have been with us for the entire Harbaugh tenure. The reason I don’t get too upset at Pep or Gattis is that these problems existed before Pep and Gattis and, as long as Harbaugh’s here, will last beyond them as well. He should go. Now, I’m not going to be furious when he isn’t fired during the season (I do think the optimal situation would be for him to step aside now and let Gattis take over. Not because I believe Gattis is a genius, but given my opinion of Harbaugh’s effect on the offense, give it a shot to at least try out that 5% possibility that Gattis could be quite good without Harbaugh influencing the calls, even though it’s unlikely—but Michigan will not fire Harbaugh before the end of the season). Michigan doesn’t do that, and that’s fine. But he should step aside graciously after we get demolished by OSU. If he doesn’t, Warde should graciously show him the door.

It’s sad. I’ve always liked him. I wrote a significant defense of him on this site when he made the SB with the Niners. I was, like everybody else, thrilled when he came. It could have gone so differently.

But it’s over.