3 reasons Sherrone Moore will be a home run for Michigan football
We haven't seen a transition quite like the one from Jim Harbaugh to Sherrone Moore as Michigan football head coach since the days of Tom Osborne.
Obsborne retired after leading Nebraska to a national championship in 1997. That was the last time the defending national champions had a different head coach. But just like Osborne, Jim Harbaugh's successor is a former assistant.
Sherrone Moore was the only candidate for Michigan football, which didn't even conduct a national search. Moore was named two days after Harbaugh left for the Chargers. Frank Solich was able to lead Nebraska to a national title game and a conference championship during his time, but eventually, the Huskers dropped off.
Will the same thing happen to Michigan football? Here are three reasons why it won't.
A precedent for success
Part of the issue with Solich is that he was hampered with Osborne's triple-option offense. At some point, that was going to go by the wayside, and the inability to adjust doomed Nebraska. You need elite offensive linemen and running backs to make that scheme work. That died off a little after Osborne left.
Moore said the Wolverines are going to "smash" which means sticking to the run. But will they still have the dudes to run 32 straight times against a top-10 defense, as the Wolverines did against Penn State in a win last November?
It's hard to say, but Michigan isn't stuck with an ancient offense. Moore doesn't have to overhaul anything -- just play to its strengths.
Michigan can throw the ball just as well as it can run -- it's going to have a first-round draft pick at quarterback. It's a modern program and frankly, without Moore's work on the offensive line and as acting head coach, Michigan probably doesn't win the national championship in the first place.
"The proof is in the pudding," as Jim Harbaugh said following Moore's official announcement as head coach, and with a pair of top-10 wins already, Moore has shown he's ready. This program also has the infrastructure to be successful.
Nebraska didn't drop off as much as people think either. Solich won nine games in every season as the head coach but one and was still fired. He had three top-10 finishes in six seasons and two in the top five. So that was just a mistake on the Huskers, one they still haven't fully recovered from.
Solich posted a 58-19 record in six seasons. If Moore does that, Michigan football will be looking at a bunch of 12-team playoff berths. Like Nebraska, and even Stanford when David Shaw took over for Jim Harbaugh, everything is in place to keep winning at an elite level.