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The Michigan Wolverines rattled off a double overtime 24-21 victory against the Army Black Knights on Saturday, and Jim Harbaugh answered questions about Michigan’s performance at his post-game presser. Among the topics discussed, Harbaugh spoke about what into the rationale of going for it on 4th down, his overall thoughts on the game, pass protection, and more.
Going for it on 4th
Jim Harbaugh explains the thinking of going on fourth down late in the game instead of kicking the field goal pic.twitter.com/JoTtDhTMjr
— Anthony Broome (@anthonytbroome) September 7, 2019
- “The analytics said that the best thing to do if you got in that situation, 4th and 3, that distance, was to go for it. It ended up being 4th and 2 and we didn’t convert. Same with the second one, that was another 4th and 2 and analytics told us to go for it and we didn’t make it again.”
On pass protection, play-calls
Jim Harbaugh said they ran the ball as much as they did because those were the “plays that were called.” Says you can make that argument in any football game. pic.twitter.com/WcQUSg0bcH
— Anthony Broome (@anthonytbroome) September 7, 2019
- “I thought our pass protection was really good. At times we had a long time back there in the pocket and some of the big third down conversions were by pass. (WR) Ronnie Bell, seemed like every one of his receptions, I think 7 for 81 yards, were big catches. Shea had time to throw, I thought the protection was good in that sense.”
- “We could go every game with the ‘why didn’t you pass?’, ‘you ran and it didn’t work so you should have passed’, we could do this for every game that’s ever been played in football. ‘Oh you passed, you shoulda run’.”
Why the game was a “football fight”
Jim Harbaugh calls today’s game a “football fight” pic.twitter.com/r8RuIiBDrf
— Anthony Broome (@anthonytbroome) September 7, 2019
- “Like I told the team, that’s how you fight, that’s how you scratch and claw and both teams did that. I was very impressed with both squads, but our team, the way they hung in there, they had their courage, their resilience, their sharpness of mind. Thought that seems to be a bit of a higher level this year with this ball club and I’m happy about that. Sometimes you gotta fight like that. Football fight.”