offense at the expense of the defense. The results were two historically awful defenses and an offense that hadn't quite figured it out yet. However, if given another year or two, Michigan's offense was going to be stellar... and maybe the defense would have eventually caught up.

Despite all that, RichRod's biggest failure was trying to ram-rod his offensive system onto personnel that had no business running that offense. If he would have tailored his offensive approach to his personnel the first two years and slowly moved into his spread once his recruits came in, the narrative would have been much different.