According to multiple reports Thursday afternoon, Michigan is hiring former Penn State defensive coordinator Bob Shoop to its defensive coaching staff.
After entering the offseason with stability at both coordinator positions for the first time since 2017, the Wolverines quickly had two assistant coaching vacancies with the departures of linebackers coach Anthony Campanile and special teams coordinator and safeties coach Chris Partridge.
Shoop was most recently the defensive coordinator at Mississippi State, where he was let go earlier this offseason along with head coach Joe Moorhead. Shoop has previously been an FBS defensive coordinator at Tennessee and Vanderbilt, along with Penn State.
While at Penn State, he worked on the same coaching staff as Michigan offensive coordinator Josh Gattis from 2014-15. He also worked with Michigan defensive coordinator Don Brown as a player in 1987 and graduate assistant at Yale in 1989. In 2006, Shoop was the defensive backs coach on Brown’s coaching staff at UMass.
While Shoop has been a defensive coordinator since leaving UMass in 2007, he is expected to fill one of the two assistant coaching vacancies on the Wolverines’ defensive staff. His ties to the East Coast will also help fill the recruiting void left by Campanile and Partridge, who both recruited heavily in New Jersey, which has been a fertile recruiting ground for Michigan under Harbaugh.