Opinion: Jim Harbaugh and Michigan football got a needed reality check in Orange Bowl. That's good.
Sometimes a team is just better. Stronger. Quicker. More agile in mind and spirit.
It’s never easy to admit this, of course, when you play for the team that can’t quite match up. Call it an existential crisis. Because if you admit someone else is just too good, it’s easy to convince yourself you’re giving up, and maybe giving in.
Everyone needs faith of some kind.
And so, it was no wonder that late Friday night, after Georgia thumped and demoralized Michigan in the College Football Playoff, Jim Harbaugh and his Michigan football players didn’t want to talk about the Bulldogs’ obvious physical advantages.
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“Well,” said senior offensive lineman, Andrew Vastardis, “we just didn’t execute the way we were playing, not executing the way we had been all season.”
That’s true. The Wolverines didn't.
But not because they were internally out of sync or unfocused or particularly mistake-prone after a season of mostly savvy play. No, they didn’t execute because they couldn’t. Because Georgia wouldn’t let them.
Though not according to Aidan Hutchinson, U-M's star defensive end, who said, “They executed more than us today. I think that’s what it comes down to.”
In theory? Sure. But the Bulldogs were able to get where they wanted because they were faster and more athletic and able to use those advantages to expand the field on offense and shrink it on defense.
Yet what player or coach wants to admit that?
Not Harbaugh, who, when asked whether his team got outmuscled, refused to concede:
“It was a heck of a football fight tonight. They got the better end of it, but I thought it was physical on both sides of the ball.”
And?
“They executed well,” he said.
Don’t blame Harbaugh or his players for their response to what happened. What matters is they know what happened. And they do.
Here is Vastardis again, after mentioning the lack of execution and misplay of his team, after praising his team’s lack of quit, its character and how he was blessed to be a part of the improbable run:
“Great defense. A lot of those guys will be playing on Sundays.”
There it was. The 10 words that said everything: A lot of those guys will be playing on Sundays.
How many? Probably most of the defense. Another handful, at minimum, from the offense.
It’s the same for Alabama, for Ohio State (usually), for LSU and whatever random SEC team rises in any given year. And it’s sobering.
Of course, it’s not fun to admit that even a month of film study and practice and mental preparation don’t mean much when the guys on the other side of the line are just plain faster to the ball.
At the NFL level, the talent is more even, and execution is often the difference when the games matter. Bill Belichick has won six Super Bowls, almost every one within a single score, because he manages to get one or two more plays out of his roster — which included Tom Brady, so yeah — but you get the idea.
Harbaugh lost a Super Bowl like that once, to his brother, when the younger Harbaugh’s San Francisco 49ers fell a few yards short of the trophy to the older Harbaugh’s Baltimore Ravens.
That night, after that loss, yes — Jim Harbaugh saying they didn’t quite execute enough would explain everything. Like most coaches, he’s used to saying that, and teaching players to talk about similar things.
Again, it becomes existential. If you talk about mistakes of planning or execution, then you’re talking about things that you can correct, that you control, and isn’t that idea central to football? Study. Watch film. Rep everything until it’s perfect.
Grind.
Harbaugh grinds with the best of them. His team grinded with him this fall, all the way to New Year’s Eve in South Florida, to the sport's penultimate stage, where it got reminded that it takes more than execution.
There is nothing wrong with that. College football inherently creates such disparity at the top — by geography, demographics, the cult of big-name coaches, boosters — and it's an imbalance that will have to be addressed at some point.
Which isn’t to make excuses for the Wolverines. They wouldn’t want them, anyway.
But they got an up-close look at the highest rung of the sport Friday night. That’s a good thing. They needed that look. Needed to feel it, in their marrow, because getting to that rung is what U-M and Harbaugh still aspire to.
By all accounts, Friday night should help. As Harbaugh said a few times, this season — and the Orange Bowl — were a beginning, and I’m guessing he’s right.
It’s not the worst thing in the world to be forced to think about how you relate to the best. Nor is it the worst thing to refuse to admit how that looked.
Execution?
Yeah, U-M's could’ve been better. What matters is that they know why it wasn’t. They do. And that knowledge is critical for the next step.
Contact Shawn Windsor swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.