The Crier

A Stalled Carr: Why Michigan Football Needs to Change

Football is a game of tactical adjustment. For years, Michigan has rarely strayed from its brutish offensive strategy

Adrian Drake · Sport · Feb 19, 2007

The world is changing. Information is moving faster, currency will soon be obsolete — and BlackBerries and other devices are eliminating the tedious necessity of thought.

But even in this age of unrelenting transformation, we can still depend on the world of sports to preserve a few conventions. The Yankees will be in the pennant race. Americans will yawn as their team washes out of the World Cup. And of course, Michigan’s football team will get smoked in a bowl game.

For a program with the highest all-time winning percentage in the nation, it’s hard to fathom Michigan’s dreary bowl record. We slipped below fifty percent with last year’s Alamo Bowl loss (we’re currently 18-20). Our postseason ineptitude has given rise to a healthy stock of quips. Why do Michigan players eat Wheaties straight out of the box? They’ll choke if it’s in a bowl. What do Michigan football teams and marijuana have in common? I’ll let you figure that one out.

What can explain this phenomenon? The answer, surprisingly, might be rooted in one of the University’s most valued assets: tradition.

Michigan strategy boils down to two words: “Hit them” (with the possible addition of “hard”).

Tradition is everywhere; campus is steeped in the stuff. The Friars have been crooning for 51 years. The Daily has been editorializing freely for 117. Even fading rituals like Hash Bash manage to thwart irrelevance.

The football team is no exception. Tradition is partly why the Big House brims with the nation’s largest NCAA football audience each fall. Recruiters lure the nation’s top talents to our locker rooms with phrases like “winning tradition” and “tradition of excellence.”

Tradition is vital because it preserves information and practices that might otherwise fade. It helps us retain and improve the knowledge our predecessors accumulated. Like the titular character of Joseph Stein’s Fiddler On the Roof, we find balance in tradition. But if traditions are too firmly rooted, they can keep us from adjusting to changing environments.

Michigan football, and Lloyd Carr in particular, are renowned for straightforward, no-nonsense offense. The strategy boils down to two words: “Hit them” (with the possible addition of “hard”). The idea is to pound opponents into submission with a muscular running attack. Eventually, the theory runs, something will open. And if you hit the other team hard and often enough, they’ll be too bruised to put up a fight.

Our rosters, packed with athleticism and size, clobber Big Ten bottom-feeders like Indiana with this strategy. And in the late ’80s and early ’90s, the approach worked brilliantly. From 1988 to 1995, Michigan won six of its eight bowl games.

But times change.

The country’s most successful coaches are hopping on the bandwagon. But Carr, with Gibraltar-like impassiveness, is fixated on the tried and true.

In the mid ’90s, West Coast offense started gaining popularity. It was a novel concept: pass-centered offense. A strong running game has been vital to football since its inception. It allows teams to control the clock and convert on short plays. Passing is much riskier, and it was generally thought that passing strategies were losing ones.

The West Coast offense turned this mentality on its head. Bill Walsh pioneered and perfected the tactic with the San Francisco 49ers, employing it to capture three Super Bowl titles in the ’80s.

In 2003, a hotshot named Urban Meyer started making a name for himself by using unorthodox offenses like this at the University of Utah. Meyer rose quickly, and claimed an unexpected national title with the University of Florida Gators this year. His predecessor in Gainesville, Steve Spurrier, also employed unconventional pass offenses, and is widely credited as revamping SEC tactics.

West Coast and spread offenses are becoming popular at every level of football. The country’s most successful coaches are hopping the bandwagon. But Carr, with Gibraltar-like impassiveness, is fixated on the tried and true. Why bother with fad tactics? We’re Michigan. We’ll play the game our way.

The problem is, these strategies aren’t just fads. Programs like USC and Boise State, who bested Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl this year with decidedly non-traditional play-calling, prove this. Such teams employ a cornucopia of plays. People joke that Michigan uses only four.

Watch a Michigan football game. We’ll usually start by stretching left — a play in which the running back sweeps to the side, and waits for something to develop before attacking. USC noticed this in this year’s Rose Bowl. They eviscerated our blocking scheme and crowded the line of scrimmage. Once they shut down our running game, we were helpless. It looked like Pete Carroll was reading Carr’s mind. But Carroll didn’t need to bother with telepathy. We gave it away on our own.

Football is about tactical adjustment. This applies to both in-game calling and crafting playbooks. The game is subject to a kind of Darwinism in that new strategies evolve as environments change. Those who can’t or won’t adapt, usually don’t survive.

The University of Nebraska was one such team. For years, they were devoted to an option-based offense, which, like Michigan, relies on strong running attacks. This was a popular approach throughout the ’70s and ’80s, when the game was dominated by running strategies. But option-based tactics have declined in recent years. Coaches grew used to it and countering tactics were refined until any team using an option-based offense was at an inherent disadvantage. Eventually, Nebraska’s recruiting declined and, along with it, their performance.

Football is about strategic adjustment. The game is subject to a kind of Darwinism in that new strategies evolve as environments change.

Enter Bill Callahan. Fresh from the Oakland Raiders, he took the program’s reins in 2004. He modernized the team by installing the West Coast offense. They shifted away from a Michigan-style approach, and used the new strategy to embarrass us in San Antonio.

Still, it’s hard to hate Lloyd Carr. He’s a good coach and runs a solid program. In 1997, he won us our first national title since the Korean War. In the pre-Jim Tressel era, he could take five out of six against Ohio State. It would be wrong to fire Carr, but the game is passing him by. Whispers of retirement have been gathering for years.

“Adapt or Die” is a popular mantra among business owners. The philosophy is that change is inevitable. You can either change too or sink. The American auto industry sunk. Sony’s Playstation 3 is sinking. Hopefully, we’ll be able to stay afloat.

When Carr does leave, the football program should strike a balance between convention and innovation. That way, we’ll be able to preserve the tradition that matters — the winning one.

Jack Bruce contributed to this article.