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ANN ARBOR, Mich. — If you’ve been following along with Michigan football in the Jim Harbaugh era, you can usually get a pretty good idea of the state of the program based on his level of enthusiasm during press conferences.
When the team is going to be good, he speaks for much longer, waxes ecstatic about the expectations, and generally speaks in hyperbole, riddles, and odd colloquialisms. When the outlook isn’t quite so good, he’s more morose, short on answers, and generally rattles off every player on the roster.
So, when he met with the media for the first time during spring ball, the fact that he spoke for 28 minutes and was overall very enthusiastic, it’s a good sign for the prognosis of the 2022 team — which he frequently called ‘scary good.’
We started seeing the resurgence a year ago around this time, as spring ball had a lot of ‘energy.’ It appears that’s remained constant, and Harbaugh is excited about the possibilities. Asked about the state of the defensive line, given the departures of Aidan Hutchinson, David Ojabo, and Christopher Hinton, Harbaugh wasted no time sharing why he feels that those stepping in will be able to pick up where those standouts left off.
“Mazi Smith — right off the jump, Mazi Smith is playing really well,” Harbaugh said. “Expecting great things from Mazi. He looks tremendous. Kris Jenkins, Taylor Upshaw — a whole list of guys we’re really excited about. Braiden McGregor — Mike Morris.
“Yeah, the state of Michigan football is scary good right now. Mike Morris could be the next Aidan Hutchinson, Ojabo. There’s some really exciting things going on on the defensive line.”
But what leads him to that conclusion?
For one, he’s seeing similar enthusiasm and togetherness to what he saw a year ago. Secondly, he feels that the team’s buy-in is at a very high level.
“Like I said earlier, right now it’s scary good,” Harbaugh said. “To try to define what that is, you know the law of averages is going to catch up to you at some point, but that’s the place we want to be. As I walk around our field, whether it’s our weight room, whether it’s out there with the guys, coaches and players, it’s people that are engaged, players come up to you, they’ve got a smile on their face. ‘What’s up, coach? What do we got today?’ It just makes the days fly by.
“We’re having a blast, gonna carry that on as we get going through spring ball. It’s three days — we’re four practices in. Three of them have been helmets only. One has been in pads, but now we’re gonna roll for four weeks, three practices a week. Practices will either be tackling practices, non-tackling practices, or scrimmages. Kinda feel good about the team getting forged in these next four weeks.”
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Ultimately, Harbaugh feels that the program has momentum from last season’s 12-1 campaign. Despite the coaching changes this offseason and his NFL flirtation, he doesn’t feel like any of that has had a negative impact on the team.
So when he says the team is scary good, the reason why is because he sees a team that’s picked up right where it left off — having just beaten Ohio State, winning a Big Ten championship, and advancing to the College Football Playoff semifinal.
“Just the whole state of the program,” Harbaugh said. “There’s people that want to keep different stories going, love to hate us or hate to love us, but we’re having a blast. The word tumultuous was used in the offseason. If guys are bringing the energy and having fun and the momentum that the program has, whatever word you want to put on that, that’s what we’re having. And that’s scary good, because you know something’s gonna happen at some point. That’s the place you — the law of averages will catch up to you at some point, but it’s the place you want to be.”
That said, what’s the goal? Is it to just be a ho-hum decent team that wins 10 games?
No, now that Harbaugh has re-committed to the program, having announced he’s staying on national signing day, his goal is to bring more championship hardware to Ann Arbor.
“Yeah, we could win college football’s greatest trophy, we could win the national championship. And that’s plenty good.”
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