Opinion: Jim Harbaugh changed up Michigan again. He could be onto something.
Jim Harbaugh was talking defense. He could’ve been talking about his program.
“We needed some changeups and we needed to show some different looks,” he said Saturday afternoon, after his Michigan Wolverines opened their season with a 47-14 win over Western Michigan.
He’d been asked about the adjustments his new defensive coordinator, Mike Macdonald, made after the Broncos scored an early touchdown.
“We needed to disguise some coverages,” he continued.
Macdonald did, with the help of Dax Hill, a superlative talent on the back end of the defense who can line up just about everywhere, with the help of Nikhai Hill-Green, a linebacker who showed similarly chameleonlike ability.
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It’s not a new concept in football, of course. But it’s relatively new to the Wolverines, which is the point, I suppose. A point Harbaugh wanted to make when talking about his revamped defense, the new faces designing it, and how seamlessly it all looked Saturday.
"To have that all in for the first game? That speaks volumes of what our players understood," he said Monday during his weekly news conference.
Yeah, yeah, I can hear you now. It’s just one game, against a MAC opponent, a team that was overmatched at the line of scrimmage. The Wolverines also looked good a year ago in the opener and everyone knows how that turned out.
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Still, the idea of “disguise” and “changeups” serve as nice little metaphors for what we’ve seen and heard so far from these Wolverines. Again, this isn’t to get too carried away. No one is arguing Ann Arbor morphed into Tuscaloosa.
But it would be foolhardy not to acknowledge a different vibe around the program, or that Harbaugh spent another offseason looking for change within himself and his approach.
Replacing so much of his staff was only part of the effort. Redirecting his energy and time was part of the attempt to redouble his program, too.
His starting quarterback, Cade McNamara, told reporters Saturday that Harbaugh was more “hands-on” this year — with him, with everyone.
When asked to explain, Harbaugh thought for a moment, then answered:
“Definitely a great group to work with. I like working with the quarterbacks. I like going into those meetings. I like going into offensive line meetings. I like going in the linebacker meetings — a lot of meetings I like going into. Wish I could be in more places … two places at once sometimes. I've been in there a lot.”
It sounds simple. And if he could clone himself and attend every meeting and film session, his Wolverines still wouldn't win without talent. Yet figuring out how to develop and maximize players matters, too.
Hill is a great example. Running back Blake Corum is another. He looked decisive and explosive against WMU. He looked patient, too, which is funny, because it’s something he worked on during the off-season.
Corum, by the way, said his team needed to make a statement. That he’d heard the negative noise surrounding the program. That folks needed to see this isn’t last year.
Or the last couple.
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Look, this isn’t the first time Harbaugh’s changed things up. To a degree, he does it every year. Most coaches do.
The kind of change is what looks and feels different. His staff got younger. In a way, he did, too, when he lost some weight. That’s a tidy metaphor, as well.
Said receiver, A.J. Henning: “(There is) definitely new energy in the building.”
That energy comes from lots of places. It starts with Harbaugh, though. It had to.
Where this leads is hard to say. But U-M's opener offered a little hope for the maize and blue for the first time in a while. The team looked faster, more connected, full of purpose and focus.
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Again, this doesn’t mean the Wolverines are ready to knock off Ohio State. But it does mean that Harbaugh has rediscovered something essential about what he needs to bring and where he needs to be.
As long as he’s here, he must be who he was when he arrived. Call it a return to the future.
This past Saturday, we got a glimpse of what all the change looks like. For the first time in forever, it resembled something like a way forward.
Follow Shawn Windsor on Twitter @shawnwindsor.