The coaching move that will be remembered as the one that tarnished Lloyd Carr's legacy at Michigan.

With Terry Malone leaving to go to the New Orleans Saints, Michigan basically had the ability to pick whoever they wanted to be his successor at offensive coordinator.

The hire would be an important one as Michigan was coming off a brutally disappointing 7-5 season in 2005 and the Wolverines were in desperate need of fresh ideas to rejuvenate their stagnant offense.

What Carr did next not only crystallized the main reason why Carr will never be considered a great coach despite his national title and excellent overall record, it also may have led to the tarnishing of his legacy at Michigan.

Instead of going outside the program and hiring a renowned offensive mind from somewhere else, Carr promoted special teams coach (and best buddy) Mike DeBord to offensive coordinator.

Some thought it was a good move as DeBord was offensive coordinator for the 1997 title team, but the die-hards were left scratching their heads and knew UM had made a terrible mistake.

That 1997 team won in spite of its offense, not because of it, even though it had some big-time NFL talent like Anthony Thomas, Brian Griese, Jerame Tuman, and an entire offensive line of future NFL stalwarts leading the way.

DeBord had his shot to be a head coach at Central Michigan from 2000-2003 and was woefully inept, posting a record of 12-34 in his time there.

And even as a special teams coach at UM, he was nothing special, as Michigan has been mediocre in that area for as long as fans can remember.

This was the guy Carr, head man at a university that draws more than 107,000 fans and many millions each game, chose to run his offense.

And Saturday against OSU (and really all season, despite the injuries), that mistake cost Carr and his team everything, including perhaps his legacy. Carr now will (hopefully) most likely retire with a 6-7 record against the Buckeyes and 1-6 against Jim Tressel.

DeBord took an offense that brought back tons of NFL-caliber talent this year and led them to an anemic 7th place spot in total yards in the Big Ten going into the OSU game, where the Wolverines managed a whopping 89 yards in total offense.

Sure, the Buckeyes didn't exactly tear it up on offense either, but Tressel knew UM wasn't going to do anything on offense all game and just kept running clock.

Then there's the injury excuse with Chad Henne's shoulder and Mike Hart not being at full strength, as well as all the dropped balls by Manningham. But the informed observer could easily see that Michigan's problem all day was that OSU knew everything they were going to run before they ran it.

Every time UM ran on first down they got stuffed but DeBord refused to throw early to loosen up the defense. Again. There was no attempt to keep the defense off-balance whatsoever and by the time Michigan did run some sort of misdirection play-fake it was already too late. Here's a bright idea: try running play-fakes early in the game to keep the defense guessing a little bit.

And then you had Manningham's drops. Most of them were on inconsequential five-yard routes anyway where he would have gotten drilled because UM was passing in obvious third-and-long situations.

The continued refusal of the coaching staff to mix things up is just comical at this point, and that's why Michigan lost the game again this year and will be going to a second-tier bowl at best.

While watching the game, I kept wondering to myself if we had anybody capable of making a big play to get us back in it. The truth is we did, but the players capable of making those plays were the wide receivers, and Michigan's stubborn refusal to get them the ball downfield or to not throw only in obvious situations made it impossible for them to make those plays. Adrian Arrington barely had the ball thrown his way the entire game, ditto Greg Mathews.

If the Michigan coaches were so dead-set on continuing to play conservative, defense-first football, then why didn't they put more energy into recruiting better linebackers and d-lineman? Why do they spend so much time going after top wide receivers when they clearly have no idea how to utilize them?

Anyway, that's enough for now. Congrats to all the Buckeye fans crawling around this site, now go out and represent the Big Ten well in the Rose Bowl or maybe even the title game. In short, do what Michigan never seems to be able to do because their coaches are stuck in the mid-90's with their archaic way of calling football plays.

I don't want to place all the blame on the coaching staff for this one and I will say that OSU outplayed Michigan in every phase of the game.

Let's all hope for the sake of the (now boring) rivalry and the Big Ten that Lloyd realizes what he said earlier in the year: that the game has passed him by. He was being sarcastic that day after the Oregon loss but it turns out he was more right than ever.

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wpeery said:

	It was sad to see Lloyd Carr's last press conference. He seems to be a man that has accepted the fact that he got worked by Tressel. That will always eat at him I'm sure. I always liked him, but there is no denying the fact that he got owned by Ohio State.
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November 18, 2007
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