ben herbert

Then, as farce. Jim Harbaugh is getting the relative book thrown at him for the Hamburger Incident:

Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh and the NCAA are working toward a negotiated resolution that is expected to see him suspended four games this season in penalties stemming from alleged false statements he originally made to investigators, sources tell Yahoo Sports.

This is the same number of games that Michigan State players not named Khary Crump got for the post-game assault on Gemon Green and Jaden McBurrows. For a couple of hamburgers to already-committed recruits. Also Mike Macdonald is receiving a one-year show cause penalty, which is hilariously useless since Macdonald kinda has a job lined up already—he's DC of the Ravens.

None of this matters. Michigan's most difficult game during the period of the suspension is against Rutgers; the national media is more or less ignoring the most blatant pay-for-play scandal to hit college football in a minute, so the only place that's even going to mention this for one second after the suspension expires is the RCMB. It is nonetheless irritating that the NCAA continues wasting its time on the little things they can find at the same time as NIL is rapidly obsoleting the association itself.

[After THE JUMP: Jeremy Pruitt as Nancy Pelosi in that one picture of her kneeling with Africa Scarf™ around her neck]

Previously: Podcast 14.0A, 14.0B, 14.0C. The Story. Quarterback. Running Back. Wide Receiver. Tight End. Offensive Tackle. Interior OL. Defensive Interior. Edge. Linebacker. Cornerback. Safety. Special Teams. 5Q5A Offense.

1. Does losing Mike Macdonald matter?

Probably. Unlike Gattis, Macdonald did not make a lateral move, and his trajectory from nobody to position coach to college DC to NFL DC speaks volumes about what the Ravens organization thinks about him. It's no disrespect to Jesse Minter to say that Michigan would have been better off if Macdonald had set up shop in Ann Arbor for several years. (Schematically, anyway. Macdonald reportedly loathed recruiting with the fury of a thousand suns.)

HOWEVA, that does not necessarily mean this year's team is going to be hindered by the transition. Going from Don Brown's all-man all-the-time approach to the Raven's diverse collection of fronts and zones is jarring. A few different players had issues with the change—or in the case of the freshmen linebackers, with trying to absorb it fresh. Gemon Green was iffy in zones, and when I was going over DL clips I think I found several instances where one guy was running a stunt and the other guy wasn't. Brown used stunts, of course, but whenever you change your playbook and your terminology you lose all that familiarity and increase the chances you bust.

Losing a DC after one year re-imposes all those costs… unless it doesn't.

Jesse Minter is a branch of the Ravens coaching tree and he has seven years as a college DC under his belt. Sam Webb on the transition, or lack thereof:

The commonality in scheme with former defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald has been obvious and has allowed for exactly the kind of seamless transition Harbaugh hoped for when he made the hire. The familiarity for the players has made the install of new elements very smooth, especially when it comes to pressure.

The defensive nomenclature certainly hasn't changed from last year, with Harbaugh announcing a 3-4 style defensive depth chart just like last year's. Minter brings the best of both worlds: continuity from the Ravens and college experience.

What he does not bring is much of a track record. His single year at an abominable Vanderbilt program (2-10 last year, 122nd in SP+, 115th on D) is no data at all. He did do an encouraging job with Georgia State, which transitioned to D-1 in 2013, his first year with the program. After two years stuck near the bottom of FEI (119th and 128th, the latter dead last) on teams that went 1-23, GSU popped up to somewhat respectable (81st and 76th) in 2015 and 2016. Building a fresh-to-FBS program into a defense in the vicinity of 2016 MSU, Kentucky, Maryland, and Arizona State is something. And he moved up over time with the Ravens.

I'd rather have kept Macdonald, even with a recruiting gap, but Minter is a young up-and-comer who came through a good organization and has one build job in his past that looks encouraging. It'll probably be fine.

THE PHONEBOOKS ARE HERE

This morning the football program updated the weights and heights of the official spring roster, which previously published measurements from last fall, and then at 3 today they published the rest. That gift gave me enough lead time to arrange my annual weight gain/loss chart, without all the "here's the new walk-ons and numbers" analysis the American Society of Completionists demands.

Remember the rules: All weight gain is muscle, all weight lost was fat, and all guys who remained the same did so by replacing fat with muscle. I'll highlight the changes worth talking about.

Freshmen Note: Early enrollees' spring weights, and fall enrollees' weights that were previously on MGoBlue are listed under 2018, since those are mostly from high school weigh-ins.

[Hit THE JUMP for the position-by-position excessively optimistic obsessiveness]