Charles Woodson Dissatisfied With Harbaugh Era: "I’m Looking At One Game"

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This much is clear about Jim Harbaugh's tenure at Michigan: the Wolverines have made progress. Harbaugh took over a team in 2015 coming off a five-win season and quickly rebuilt it into a national contender. But the Wolverines have yet to really break through, most notably against their biggest rival.

By this point in the Harbaugh era, many fans expected the program to be further along. Charles Woodson included. 

"I’m looking at one game for the most part, I’m looking at the Ohio State game, I’m certainly not pleased where (the program) is in that respect,” Woodson said on the "View from the Press Box" podcast hosted by Angelique Changelis.  “We’ve put together some good regular seasons, 10-win seasons. I mean, those are great, but you’ve got to beat that scarlet and gray team, and so in that respect, disappointed.

“I know Jim, wherever he’s been, he’s had success, so we’re looking for him to continue to lead this team in the right direction, but we’ve got to win that last game. That’s the bottom line.”

It's not the first time Woodson has brought up Harbaugh's struggles against Ohio State, of course. He criticized Harbaugh last year for not putting enough emphasis on The Game. Woodson, the 1997 Heisman winner, went undefeated against Ohio State in his three seasons at Michigan. 

Harbaugh -- now 0-4 against the Buckeyes -- naturally took exception to those comments, declaring, “It’s been emphasized. ... And that’s coming from somebody who’s been there for every single day." 

Fair enough, says Woodson. 

“It’s fair for Coach Harbaugh to take exception because I’m not in the locker room, I’m not on the team during the season, I don’t know what’s talked about,” he said on the podcast. “I can only go off how we approached it when we were there.

"We always focused on that team. The way we practiced, if you didn’t practice each and every day good enough to beat Ohio State, you didn’t practice hard enough. Playing for the Wolverines, you have to prepare each and every day to beat Ohio State. If you do that, you’re going to win a fair share of your games. When I talk about emphasizing that game, yeah, we put that game above all other games. That’s just the way it was."