Michigan Football: Jim Harbaugh is (almost) a great coach

What Jim Harbaugh has done wrong

Jim Harbaugh doesn’t take certain games seriously enough to be considered a top-level head coach. Now, I was careful with the way I worded this, especially considering that I believe this to be an insight that is more obvious as an MSU fan.

The University of Michigan is a proud program, but sometimes Harbaugh lets his pride get in the way of competitiveness.

Just look at Michigan State’s two wins against a Harbaugh-coached Michigan. The Wolverines likely had the more talented team both times, but Mark Dantonio was the one who rallied his team to emotional victories over their rival by taking the game more seriously than any other match on the schedule. Harbaugh, on the other hand, wouldn’t even recognize the matchups as important games.

We’ve seen this lack of competitiveness get the best of Harbaugh in multiple bowl games and it’s been haunting him all the way back to his time with Stanford. It haunts him every year when he faces Ohio State.

Harbaugh’s second and most glaring problem is that he hasn’t developed a single strong quarterback despite being considered a “quarterback whisperer“. Shea Patterson was a world-class dud, but at the same time, I don’t know if I can name a much better quarterback at Michigan in Harbaugh’s tenure. The others have been equal at best.

The guy who developed Andrew Luck and took Colin Kaepernick to the Super Bowl should be doing better.

All in all, he’s done a good job. That’s just not good enough in Ann Arbor.