Rodriguez wasn’t entirely to blame for the Wolverines’ disappointing season this year. Here’s how the offense and recruiting will be affected by his departure.

Offense

The Michigan offense was very explosive under Denard Robinson this season.

The Wolverines averaged 238 rushing yards and 250 passing yards per game. Whenever you have a team creating nearly 500 yards of offense per game, you should be winning more than seven games.

That points to a deficiency in the defense. Looking at the numbers, the offense averaged 32.8 points per game, good for the 26th best scoring offense in the country.

But, the defense allowed 35.2 points per game, ranked 108th in the FBS.

Starting the season, Denard Robinson looked like he would literally run away with the Heisman Trophy. But, as the season wore on, the pressure of having to carry the entire team and knowing that the defense didn’t have his back got to him and he started making more and more mistakes.

So, the problem wasn’t Rodriguez’s offense—it was the defense that held this team back. The best solution would be to fire the defensive coordinator Greg Robinson and hire a new guy to take the reins while allowing RichRod to keep working with his offense.

Bringing in a new head coach next season will only hurt Robinson and the Wolverine offense.

Recruiting

Rich Rodriguez had only been a head coach at Michigan for three seasons. That means he never had a real chance to work with players that he himself had recruited and signed.

He at least deserved another year to work with a class of recruits that he wanted and felt would fit his system.

Charlie Weis was considered a good head coach at Notre Dame until it got to the point where it became apparent he wasn’t recruiting the level of talent necessary to succeed.

For all the bad publicity Lane Kiffin gets, he still has a job because he’s a great recruiter.

The point is that Rodriguez never had a chance to prove that he could recruit a winning football team. He was still coaching a few players from the Lloyd Carr era. That’s not necessarily fair to Rodriguez.

But, with Rodriguez gone, there aren’t any other coaches out there who would be any better at recruiting top talent.

In both the long and short run, this move will hurt the Michigan Wolverines. Look for them to continue losing to Ohio State and getting into mediocre bowl games. If the new guy gets the same amount of time as RichRod, look for him to get fired within the next four years as well.