Jim Harbaugh breaks down J.J. McCarthy performance — 'law of averages'
Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy played his worst game in maize and blue Saturday night against Bowling Green, throwing three interceptions in a 31-6 win. Fortunately, it came against an opponent that had virtually no chance to beat the Wolverines in Ann Arbor.
Still, McCarthy wasn’t pleased about it, and he made that clear in the postgame, vowing to get better. He’ll get his opportunity Saturday when Rutgers comes to town in the Big Ten opener. The Scarlet Knights have been playing well and will be — by far — the best team Michigan has faced yet. Head coach Jim Harbaugh said Monday he is confident his signal caller will rebound, noting he wasn’t going to be near perfect forever.
“Sometimes I say, ‘it’s scary good right now.’ What does that mean, ‘scary good?'” Harbaugh said of McCarthy and the passing game. “Scary good, that’s where you want to be. But the law of averages is going to catch up to you at some point. You do what you can to keep those balls in the air — they want to come down. So … where were we just at? We were comparing touchdowns to incompletion ratio. We weren’t talking touchdowns to interceptions, because there hadn’t been any.
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“There’s no way that’s going to continue. It’s not going to happen that way. But — yeah. Some things as a player … you want confident; you want aggressive. Optimistic … everything’s going to work out. There’s a little bit sometimes even as a football player of optimistic bias that can get you in trouble … sometimes leaves you unprepared.”
It certainly does in life, Harbaugh said. But in football and athletics, he added, you’re much better off there than playing scared. But some precautions have got to be taken and some risks avoided. Turnovers … ball security. That’s the big one for McCarthy, he noted.
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“Plenty to learn from, but plenty to coach and super excited about it. [McCarthy] is smart enough to know he didn’t play a very good game, but he’s also smart enough to know he can learn from it, as well … let it rip, but see the completion is critical. Being in a good base. One game with eye discipline broke down for J.J. then he let it rip without seeing the throw or seeing the completion. He threw another one kind of like a fadeaway jumper that he didn’t have to fade away on it. That one did not get intercepted — could have been. Throwing it right over a defensive tackle that got tipped, was actually a completion.
“But there’s no question … I think I’m the coach I am today because I had so many coaches that I learned from and believe me that pretty much did what they did. But also coaching times and coaching events were, ‘oh — I’m not doing that. That’s what you don’t do.’ And that’s when you learn the most. You learn what not to do. Same thing as a player. You have success, and yeah, you learn from that. But there are things you do — eye discipline and footwork. You get away with it, it’s a positive outcome, you don’t learn really as much. It’s when you don’t have the right foot discipline, eye discipline, or footwork … now it’s seared into your brain. You learn more from the mistakes.”
Harbaugh is confident McCarthy will, excited to see him get back at it Saturday at Michigan Stadium.
