No Passing Fancy

On today, Jim Harbaugh’s 50th birthday, a nice time for another guest post from Steve “Dr. Sap” Sapardanis.   While it’s no shock that Bo Schembechler didn’t like to put it up in the air, check out this breakdown by Sap.

Guest Post by Steve Sapardanis

Woody Hayes taught Bo Schembechler a lot of football lessons.  One that resonated with Bo was the importance of running and possessing the football.

The thinking was establishing a powerful ground game would almost certainly ensure victory, because by the end of the game you would be able to impose your will on your opponent.  When that happens, your opponent will have been morally and physically defeated.   Besides, when you throw the football, three things can happen, and as Woody liked to say, two of them were bad.   You think Bo forgot this?

I pulled the passing stats for every game during the Bo era at Michigan (1969-1989) to see if there was any statistical correlation to Bo’s disdain for throwing the football and losing.   Sure enough, I found something.   In the 21 years that Bo coached at Michigan, his teams only attempted more than 25 passes just 23 times.   The Wolverines lost 20 of those games.   And before Jim Harbaugh arrived, Bo had lost 17 straight games when attempting more than 25 passes.

In 1985 and 1986, Harbaugh was the nation’s most efficient passer. He got Bo off the passing schneid with three victories in 1986 against Wisconsin, Iowa and Ohio State while attempting more than 25 passes.  Data:

 

DATE   OPPONENT Result/SCORE COMP/ATT/YARDS
10/4/1969 vs Missouri (9-2) L 17 40 10 27 99
10/18/1969 at Michigan State (4-6) L 12 23 13 35 164
1/1/1970 vs USC (10-0-1) L 3 10 14 32 127
11/21/1970 at Ohio State (9-1) L 9 20 12 26 118
10/22/1977 at Minnesota (7-5) L 0 16 13 29 122
1/2/1978 vs Washington (8-4) L 20 27 14 27 239
11/10/1979 at Purdue (10-2) L 21 24 14 28 159
12/28/1979 vs North Carolina (8-3-1) L 15 17 17 26 328
9/27/1980 vs South Carolina (8-4) L 14 17 17 30 206
11/21/1981 vs Ohio State (9-3) L 9 14 9 26 136
9/25/1982 vs UCLA (10-1-1) L 27 31 14 37 174
11/20/1982 at Ohio State (9-3) L 14 24 12 28 127
1/1/1983 vs UCLA (10-1-1) L 14 24 19 34 209
9/17/1983 at Washington (8-4) L 24 25 18 26 225
9/15/1984 vs Washington (11-1) L 11 20 17 37 183
11/3/1984 at Purdue (7-5) L 29 31 21 30 259
11/17/1984 at Ohio State (9-3) L 6 21 17 27 164
10/4/1986 at Wisconsin (3-9) W 34 17 15 27 310
10/18/1986 vs Iowa (9-3) W 20 17 17 28 225
11/22/1986 at Ohio State (10-3) W 26 24 19 29 261
10/10/1987 at Michigan State (9-2-1) L 11 17 12 26 158
9/17/1988 vs Miami (Florida) (11-1) L 30 31 17 27 245
9/16/1989 vs Notre Dame (12-1) L 19 24 22 28 178

 

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