Chris Spielman, as much as anyone, knows what a good Michigan team looks like.
The two-time All-American at Ohio State went 1-2 against Michigan in his career, during a 25-year stretch when the Wolverines won 17 times in The Game. Spielman, who played at Ohio State from 1985-87 and later spent 10 years in the NFL, is baffled by what Michigan has become.
The latest indignity came last Saturday at Wisconsin.
"Watched the whole Michigan game. I can't recognize what I'm seeing on the field," Spielman, now a football analyst, said on the podcast he hosts with Bruce Hooley.
Hooley said Michigan resembled a team like Purdue or Indiana, "on a bad day," against the Badgers. Spielman went a step further.
"I'm not being facetious or I'm not speaking in hyperbole. Take the helmets off, and I might as well turn on Central Michigan, Western Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Ferris State, Wayne State, any other state up there, Grand Valley State, because that's not a Michigan team," he said. "When you go to a place like Michigan, there's a certain standard that needs to be be upheld. When you're not upholding that standard, there's going to be blowback.
"So I want to see if this 'Michigan Man' thing is anything to these guys. Are they going to come together? Are they going to respond? Are they going to have pride? Because this offense is not what they are. That offensive line was decimated and destroyed by Wisconsin."
Michigan was shut out in the first half, totaled 40 rushing yards on the day and failed to convert a single third down. The new offense under Josh Gattis appears in disarray. To Spielman, the problem's are tied to personnel. Michigan doesn't have the elite talent it used to -- and the decline is especially clear when compared to Ohio State.
"It comes down to this," he said. "People can say what they want about Jim Harbaugh, and maybe he's lost it a little bit, as far as being in touch. It seems like he's out of touch, that's what they say. But to me, there's such a discrepancy in talent when you compare Ohio State's talent to Michigan's talent. It's not even close, and I have no idea how it got that way. Michigan should never be in a position of wanting for talent. Don Brown's a good football coach, Ed Warinner's a good offensive line coach.
"The other thing people weren't talking about, if you want to run that offense, you have to recruit to that offense. They haven't been recruiting to that offense. It's a mess right now. It's a big mess now. It's one loss in the Big Ten so they certainly can turn it around, but I don't see any signs of them turning it around."
To illustrate the talent gap between Michigan and Ohio State, Spielman pointed to the Wolverines handing the ball to Ben Mason on 2nd and goal from Wisconsin's seven-yard line. Mason, who's spent most of this season at defensive tackle, promptly fumbled.
"It says everything when Ohio State in that situation on the goal line can roll out J.K. Dobbins, Master Teague III, (Demario) McCall and about five other guys we haven't heard of yet, and Michigan's rolling out a defensive tackle converted to fullback and he fumbles the football. It says everything about where the two programs are," Spielman said.
Spielman also echoed the thoughts of former Michigan All-American, Jake Long, who criticized the Michigan offense for walking onto the field to start a drive late in the fourth quarter.
"It's like, they don't want to play, they're not interested in being there," Spielman said. ... "There's no sense of urgency, there's no energy, there's no celebration of playing the game. It's college football, it's supposed to be the time of your life. It looks like everybody's miserable under those winged helmets."
Against Wisconsin, Spielman said it was clear Michigan lacked trust in themselves, and the result was a slow, uncertain football team.
"They're not playing with any confidence. Thought brings hesitation, hesitation brings embarrassment and also missed opportunities," he said. "Why they may look slow, I'm not saying they're slow ... but I do know this. They're not in sync. As a football player, if you are out there thinking, you have no shot, especially against an opponent that's not thinking. Michigan was so slow they made a normally slow-looking Wisconsin team look like an Olympic track team."
The conversation eventually turned to Michigan's quarterback situation, where Harbaugh has yet to find a dominant player in his five years at the helm. Shea Patterson is regressing after a strong first season and Spielman said Dylan McCaffrey is "not your answer either."
"That's what we've been saying all along about Harbaugh, is that he can't develop a quarterback," Spielman said. "The most surprising thing about Harbaugh's tenure at Michigan is that exact problem. Why can't he get a guy? Here's a reason, because he was running a 1990 offense. What do all the great high school quarterbacks want to do? They want to run the spread, they want to sling it around, they want to put up gigantic numbers and they want to get ready to play in the NFL."
Harbaugh adopted a modern offense this season, of course, but the product so far has been ugly. It all comes back to personnel, Spielman said.
"It doesn't matter what we're running and how we're running it, it comes down to players. Michigan might have very good players, but they're not playing very well. That's just the fact," Spielman said. "In the Big Ten, because it's horrendous besides Ohio State and Wisconsin, they need Michigan. And Michigan State, they're like the scrappy little guy that's always in the corner screaming for attention, but they'll fight you. ... It's ugly, it's not pretty, but they fight, man."
Michigan, meanwhile, continues to lose the fights that matter.
