1st I am enjoying this conversation!
Did any of those teams you're talking about have functional offensive lines? (You don't need to answer. I already know the answer.) You can start a freshman or sophomore QB when you have sound line play, but it's hard to do that when the QB is scrambling for his life right away. If Michigan had the line play of Alabama or Georgia, the QB situation would not be an issue. Michigan probably wouldn't have even gone after Patterson. (It's still hard for veteran QB to do it with a sub-par line, but Speight was mostly getting the job done before he got injured.)
Great point here. UGA had a medicore line 3 years ago that progressively got to great last year. It was more about great RBs up until alst year where at all came together. They were still not top notch pass blockers. However, this is huge point.
I trust that you're joking and that you understand football better than that. That said, there's an argument to be made (and I've made it before) that Harbaugh turtles the offense with a close lead in the second half and allows the opposition to stay in it. He did that against Iowa a couple of years ago, and he did that in the spot game against OSU.
I was, but as you say there is some validity to this the last couple of years. He needs to know when to put teams away. That's bad coaching.
The rest we are way off and why this talk probably can't continue.
There are two things you never do in football (coaching and playing)
1. Blame losing on an injury.
---It's a lazy excuse because it doesn't take into context the other teams' injuries in each game. If you are willing to dig that up and we can do a factual comparison of each team's injuries and their importance to victory than it is just an excuse. I'd be willing to bet they played a team or two along the way with some injuries of their own. May have even had a few critical starters in there. I'm not willing to research it though, because im lazy.
--I would concede points here if you can show me there were numerous long lasting injuries at multiple spots. For an 85 man roster and only 1 injury? nope.
2. Blame one play on a loss (aka the "if only")
---It's a lazy excuse because it doesn't take into context the fact there are 59.5 minutes of other football that could have been played better to negate it coming down to one play. I get it. It sucks losing close games (I'm from Atlanta so well aware) but you just can't do it.
Edit to add:
And did you just ignore all the stuff I wrote about the injury, stressing numerous times that it was just a factor - an important factor, to be sure, but not the only factor? Because if not, re-read what I wrote. If you still think it's lazy, then you and I should stop talking football, because we're not even speaking the same language.
I read it but :
"Well, it's overly simplistic to blame it on just the one player, I'll admit. That said, it's a
huge factor."
---at that point you were still blaming a loss on an injury. Since than it's gone to "stressing numerous times that it was just a factor".