How Jim Harbaugh rebuilt Michigan, starting with a creative approach to spring practices year one

Seeing the Wolverines have made back-to-back appearances in the College Football Playoff as champions of the Big Ten the past two seasons, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that Jim Harbaugh was on shaky ground in Ann Arbor just a few years ago coming off the COVID 2020 season when they finished 2-4 during their abbreviated schedule.

When Harbaugh took over at Michigan heading into the 2015 season, he was inheriting a team coming off a 5-7 season under Brady Hoke that needed a lot of work to get them back to a position where they were competing for Big Ten titles and beating their big rival to the south.

It's clear to see now that a strong foundation was set in his first few seasons with the Wolverines, as the program has won 25 of their last 28 games, perhaps none of those wins more important than the past two dominant wins over the Buckeyes. 

Over the weekend, former Wolverine tight end Jake Butt took to Twitter to lay out a story of how some creative thinking by Harbaugh and his staff during their first spring in Ann Arbor helped to lay some of the groundwork for the program we see now.

"Our first spring ball as a team after he got hired he told us we needed to improve across the board (he was right). So per NCAA rules each team is allocated X amount of hours per week and the maximum per day was 4 hours. 

Most teams set it up to be 1.5 hours of meetings and 2.5 hours of practice. Harbaugh told us you get better at football by playing football. So he confirmed all 4 hours could be spent on the field. Not only that, and here’s the grey area, it was 4 hours per each individual player. 

So he divided the team into 2- an A and a B team. The B team would practice by themselves for two hours from 1-3 pm. Then the A team would join them from 3-5 for two hours. By then the individuals on the B team had completed their 4 hours, so the A team stayed out for the last 2 hours by themselves. 

That meant the coaches were out for 6 hours total coaching both teams. We got an insane amount of reps. 

He’d call us up at the 3 hour mark and make a point: he didn’t need 100 guys. If you didn’t want to be here then don’t be here. He needed 30 warriors. 11 on offense. 11 on defense. And a few more in special teams. We could win with that. The 4 hour practices, and it’s a point I’ve emphasized on here, we’re a psychological experiment. 

Everyone says they want to win. Everyone says they want to play in the NFL. Everyone says they want to contribute. In that fourth hour your words meant nothing and it became clear who could be counted on. 

That first spring, to me, is the first instance of belief being instilled into the renewed Michigan program. There is a price to success. We didn’t achieve the ultimate success, but what I love about the current program is how they embrace challenge. The guys don’t blind. The leadership is phenomenal. It’s organic. Those kind of things can’t be quantified or measured, but it’s clear as day when you see it."

It's no secret that Harbaugh is an outside-the-box kind of guy in a lot of ways, and that story lays out how they were able to view the rules creatively and adjust in a way that would allow them to maximize their development as a program.

The 2015 Wolverines, Harbuagh's first following that creative spring approach, went 10-3, followed by another 10-3 season in 2016.

Now they're a top-5 team that many expect to be able to compete for another College Football Playoff appearance, and are also expected to be in the national title hunt.

Here's Jake's original tweet.