Jim Harbaugh's Michigan loses his head or beats you

Michigan beat Nebraska 56-10 in the fourth week of the 2018 season. It's hard to believe, but this final result does not do justice to any event. I mean, just look at this score.

This is not a victory as much as an erasure of another team. They just wiped out another Power 5 team from the surface of the earth. It probably would not have been so bad if Nebraska had not brought it himself. Nebraska coach Scott Frost said two years ago that his UCF team was the physical winner against Michigan, even though they had been slain.

"It's hard to tell when the score is what it is, but we came here and passed these guys today," Frost said. "Standing on the sideline, there was no doubt he was hitting harder. Our guys came hungry and wanted to do it. It's rare that you can enter Michigan and run 300 yards on them. They had to sweep in the fourth quarter to reach 100.

The Wolverines left no doubt as to who was the physical winner in this match. They beat so much that they had to resort to volleyball tactics.

But the fact is that Michigan usually does this kind of thing when it wins. And when the Wolverines lose under Jim Harbaugh, they are rarely destroyed.

Let's see these losses.

2015

Yeah, Michigan lost the first match of Harbaugh's term, but he was at least close. The Ohio State game, however, was not.

-Utah: 24-17
– Michigan State: 27-23 (Michigan should definitely have won this game if you remember).
-Ohio State: 42-13

2016

The margin between the potential playoffs and Orange Bowl for Michigan was four points, then UM lost that Orange Bowl by one more.

–Iowa: 14-13
-Ohio State: 30-27 in double overtime
-Florida State: 33-32

2017

Ok, so our theme is a bit boring as Michigan was rebuilt, but aside from the Penn State game, there were still no decisive events, especially once you count the wounds at Michigan's QB this year. They even trailed with an Ohio State team in the finals.

-State of Michigan: 14-10
-Penn State: 42-13
-Wisconsin: 24-10
-Ohio State: 31-20
South Carolina: 26-19

It's 11 defeats of which only four are more than a touchdown.

And it's one of the strangest things with the Harbaugh diet so far.

When it's good, that's fine. When it's bad, it's not terrible … and yet, as rival fans will never stop reminding you, the Wolverines still have not finished better than third in their division.

When Michigan wins, it's often demonstrative.

Here is the average Michigan margin of victory per Harbaugh season:

• 2015: 23.5
• 2016: 34.6
• 2017: 18.5
• 2018 (through four games): 39

The average Michigan score in wins in the Harbaugh period is 39-12. When Michigan is clearly better than you, they are almost like Alabama in the way they beat you exhaustively. Take Rutgers, for example. Do not let an opponent hang out to make a match.

Nah. Michigan clears the teams are much better than that. And I'm not talking about the scorecard here. I'm talking about the complete effort, again using Rutgers as an example.

Rutgers had 6 (SIX!) Yards in the first period. This, said ESPN, was the smallest in the sport in almost two calendar years, since Wake Forest got 6 in the first half against Boston College.

Rutgers lost 7 yards on the first five games in the second half, becoming negative for the day. The Scarlet Knights did not manage to find their way in the dark until halfway through the third quarter. They ended up with a pound of 39, including 5 passing yards. Michigan was 600.

But the best way to measure this is a measure of Bill Connelly called adjusted scorecard.

He adjusts for the opponents and shows what would happen in a game if a team played a perfectly average team. Basically: how much does your score score? Michigan does it often.

Normally, Michigan exceeds its actual scoring margin with its adjusted scorecard, that is, against a perfectly average team, the result would have generally been a more decisive victory. In the 30 wins at Harbaugh, Michigan, the Wolverines' adjusted score range was greater than their actual scoring margin of 20 times.

So, not only do Wolverines win. When they win, it's usually a whoopin, "and those of Whoopin stand in the light.