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Joel Klatt believes Jim Harbaugh could walk away from Michigan after 2019 season
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The question “will Jim Harbaugh be fired?” has become a prominent one over the last several days. It’s what happens to a major college football coach after a three-touchdown loss.
Many believe that, based on UM’s performance against Wisconsin, the Wolverines have no shot to compete with the likes of Ohio State — along with other big-name opponents on the schedule. Failure to beat the Buckeyes this season, and win a B1G title, could potentially result in Harbaugh’s termination.
FOX college football analyst Joel Klatt is offering up another thought, though. He believes that there’s a chance Harbaugh walks away from Ann Arbor after this year.
“I’m not going to be surprised if he walks away at the end of this season,” Klatt told KTCK-AM. “He just doesn’t have that same sense of urgency, that same Jim Harbaugh kind of stinger, if you will, that he did in previous seasons.”
Michigan is 2-1 this year with a chance to get things right against Rutgers. But it’s going to take more than a convincing win over the lowly Scarlet Knights to get people believing the Wolverines are a legitimate contender again.
Klatt says Saturday’s loss to Wisconsin was like something he hadn’t seen from Michigan in the Harbaugh era.
“This was different. They were completely dominated in the trenches,” Klatt said. “Wisconsin ran the ball for well over 300 yards. In fact, they ran it for 350 yards and all Michigan could muster was about 40 yards on the ground. They out-gained them on the ground by over 300 yards — Michigan, under Jim Harbaugh.
“I thought this would work, but when you all of a sudden hit the panic button and you try to change your identity and your philosophy that has been successful over several different stops at several different levels of football, it’s either going to be all or nothing. And what we’re seeing is the nothing side of this. This was very much chips all in the middle of the table and that fifth card comes down and he went bust. Right now, it has been a failure of a switch for their offensive philosophy, and their defense was not even that physical. They lost that game one the defensive side as well. It was just an all around total beatdown.”
Klatt has often been a supporter and backer of Harbaugh. But after the loss to Wisconsin, even the FOX analyst is dumbfounded by what has happened through three games in Ann Arbor.
If things continue to trend downward for Michigan, it’ll be interesting to see what Harbaugh’s future holds.
Dustin grew up in the heart of Big Ten country and has been in sports media since 2010. He has been covering Big Ten football since 2014. You can follow him on Twitter: @SchutteCFB