It shouldn’t be surprising Michigan is this good this quickly. It has Jim Harbaugh, remember?

What did we expect to happen here?

The coach who took Stanford from 1-11 to the BCS inherited a Michigan roster that, despite its 5-7 2014 record, was surely at least as talented as his final Cardinal teams, other than at quarterback. (Andrew Lucks don’t show up every year.)

His new team’s schedule included only one opponent (Ohio State) with more raw talent, and only two (counting Michigan State) with what appeared to be clearly better 2015 prospects of success.

Sure, it felt reasonable to rank Jim Harbaugh’s Michigan third at best in the Big Ten East. After the Wolverines lost by a touchdown at Utah, Ohio State pulled away from Virginia Tech and Michigan State outlasted Oregon, that still seemed about right.

But then Utah blew away those Ducks, who’d given the Spartans a serious challenge in East Lansing. MSU struggled with Purdue as it had against Western Michigan. Ohio State tried to lose to Indiana and Northern Illinois. And Michigan gave up all of 14 points between its road loss to the unbeaten Utes and ... now.

That includes digesting a No. 13 Northwestern that has wins against power-conference division contenders Duke and Stanford. Saturday’s game felt hopeless for NU once the Wolverines made it 14-0 in the first five minutes. Somewhere along the line, Wolverines cornerback Jourdan Lewis single-handedly outscored the Wildcats offense. By the end, Michigan dropped 201 committee rushing yards on the country’s No. 6 defense in yards per play.

And it’s only a surprise because we felt obligated to temper expectations. That, and the offseason of Harbaugh made even those of us in the media seek to balance out the hype. There are no sure things in sports, especially college football, but adding a top coach to a talented roster in a conference with only two current heavyweights was acknowledged as an eventual no-doubter ... except it wouldn’t come together this quickly. Right?

Sure, why not? After what Urban Meyer did at Ohio State with a similar situation, going 12-0 in Year 1 with a title two years after? After Nick Saban followed a Year-4 title at LSU by kicking off an Alabama dynasty in Year 3? Harbaugh doesn’t have a title, but it’s really easy to argue that going 12-1 at Stanford is at least as assuring of his talents as adding Ohio State’s eighth championship or Alabama’s eleventeenth.

Especially since we can also factor in his NFC Championship win with the 49ers. Oh right, he was in the NFL.

I’m supposed to caveat that by saying Harbaugh won’t win a title in Year 1 and might not by Year 5 or whatever. Not going to, though, because the point is that the best six-game stretch in the Big Ten so far is the kind of thing college football coaches of Harbaugh’s caliber -- there aren’t many more than two others -- do when paired with good players.

I mean, the man was up by 31 points when he did this:

Via BTN

We all should’ve seen this coming.