Harbaugh vs. Romer II

Patrick Barron / MGoBlog

(You should probably read the prior installment of this series before this one in order to understand the context and motivation of this article.)

I collected the data on Jim Harbaugh’s fourth-down decision making for the 2016 season and the results were staggering enough that I had to have the co-founder of this site check my work. We ultimately came up with a “success rate” of 91.1%, counting decisions that didn’t follow the Romer chart but were deemed correct by yours truly given the larger context of the game. If you went purely by the Romer chart, our success rate is 76.8%. Using either metric, this is a substantial improvement from last season.

Harbaugh vs. Romer

Patrick Barron / MGoBlog

I’ve always subscribed to the theory that success in college football requires four ingredients, all of which are necessary but not sufficient for success — in other words, to win the type of games Michigan has the intention of winning under Jim Harbaugh, we’ll need excellence in all four: recruiting, player development, scheme, and in-game coaching.

Michigan has recruited at a high-level under Harbaugh and will continue to do so. The program’s foremost recruiting analysts attribute this to the combination of the staff’s ability to sell the university’s greatest assets (academics, tradition, Ann Arbor, life after football, etc.) while at the same time constantly putting the Block M in the national spotlight. Be it with the Jordan brand contract, Signing of the Stars, or having Derek Jeter, Michael Jordan, and Charles Woodson all on the Big House field during the team’s home opener. When you combine Michigan’s resources with Harbaugh’s incredible work ethic, it isn’t hard to imagine more prospects with a stature similar to Rashan Gary’s pledging to the Wolverines.