Sitting next to Nick Saban at the Rose Bowl’s head coach press conference on New Year’s Eve, former Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh couldn’t help but reminisce about watching football being played in sunny Southern California when he was a child in the Midwestern tundra.
In hindsight, he might have dropped a hint or two about his future plans as well.
“You grow up watching the Rose Bowl New Year’s Day. There’s a couple feet of snow outside and you’re like laying on your stomach in front of the TV, hands like that, looking at palm trees and the parade and the football game,” Harbaugh said. “ … I know that’s why a lot of people in the Midwest probably move to California. You wanted to be there.”
A Rose Bowl, National Championship and parade later, and Harbaugh was off to the palm trees, reuniting with the region in which he first built his head coaching pedigree. In his wake is a revitalized program that quickly promoted Sherrone Moore from within to replace Harbaugh, a sign that Michigan values stability and is putting a premium on keeping what it has rolling despite losing its head coach.
But as much as the Wolverines want to keep their staff together after the National Championship run, the rosy picture Harbaugh painted — a paradise for a snow-sickened Midwesterner — along with NFL coaching experience to boot, is just too good for many to pass up. Harbaugh hired all the assistants on last year’s staff, so it’s understandable that some were going to make the jump to the league to keep working under him while advancing their careers and increasing their Vitamin D intake.
All that movement might seem to contradict the stability Moore’s hire sought, but in reality the Wolverines’ coaching staff is as stable as any program could ask for coming off a National Championship.
For starters, a National Championship is one hell of a resume bullet for any coach. Even if Harbaugh stayed, his assistants would still have fielded offers for assistant coaching positions in the NFL or to take the reins of another collegiate program, so coaching shakeup was a given regardless of Harbaugh. How Michigan is handling its coaching carousel is a testament toward the commitment to stability that it signaled when promoting Moore.
Let’s start with the defensive coaching staff, the side of the ball that at face value looks most ransacked by Harbaugh’s departure. Defensive coordinator Jesse Minter, defensive backs coach Steve Clinkscale and defensive line coach Mike Elston all took the Harbaugh Trail across the country to L.A., seemingly making the Chargers’ 2024 defensive staff look more like Michigan’s than the Wolverines’ themselves. Harbaugh with everyone, Michigan with no one; that surely leaves Moore and company having to inconveniently reinvent a wheel that was working so well, right?
But not only do the Wolverines not have to reinvent the wheel, they got the inventor himself. Michigan’s 2021 defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald and 2022-23 defensive coordinator Minter both coached under new defensive coordinator Wink Martindale when Martindale was the Baltimore Ravens’ DC under John Harbaugh.
The Harbaugh-to-Harbaugh Ravens defensive coaching pipeline that led to so much success over the last few seasons came through again, even if any Harbaugh-to-Harbaugh transfer from here on out is a coast-to-coast one. Martindale led the defensive scheme that played such a vital role in the build up to and culmination of a National Championship. Even though the departures leave more positions to fill, his hiring leaves the defensive coaching staff and system as intact as possible to go along with a unit returning plenty of production next season.
On the other end, the unit losing lots of its player production to the NFL Draft, the offense, is as stable as any one can ask from a coaching perspective — seemingly unbothered by Harbaugh’s departure. Last year’s offensive coordinator is literally the head coach, while quarterbacks coach Kirk Campbell will take OC duties, tight ends coach Grant Newsome will coach the offensive line and former Michigan analyst Steve Casula returns to Ann Arbor to coach the tight ends. While the offensive staff still has to round out too, it’s avoided any seismic shifts that can stifle National Title momentum.
All things considered, the Wolverines’ assistant coaching staff is coming together in stride despite a departure level that is high yet pretty unavoidable. It’s shaping out to be an even more stable process and result than programs like Ohio State, which aren’t even experiencing a head coaching change. Looking for a shakeup on offense, coach Ryan Day hired former Texans head coach and Patriots offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien as offensive coordinator, only for O’Brien to leave and take the Boston College head coaching position weeks later. Newly-Big Ten counterpart UCLA head coach Chip Kelly then left the Bruins to take the OC job in Columbus.
Long story short, this is the time of year for coaching moves, and they happen at every program. Like sun in California and snow in the Midwest, they’re unavoidable. What is avoidable is letting those changes disrupt a program’s goals and vision, and Michigan was sure to steer clear of that. Through internal promotions and well thought out external hires, the Wolverines are sticking with the stability they wanted in the first place when they hired Moore to take over for Harbaugh.
As Harbaugh said before the Rose Bowl, it’s easy to know why so many people move from the Midwest to California — him taking an NFL head coaching job there just adds to the list of reasons why for Michigan’s assistant coaches. But the Wolverines haven’t been left out in the cold with those moves.
Instead, Michigan is making the right hires to keep instability far from Schembechler Hall.