coaching changes

good offensin' [Chris Cook]

So Michigan just hired Jim McElwain to coach football in some capacity. That capacity is apparently offensive coordinator and WR coach. This doesn't make much sense to me. McElwain becomes Michigan's fourth offensive coordinator, more or less, along with Harbaugh, Drevno, and Hamilton. He may be second amongst equals, for whatever that's worth.

McElwain was a notoriously bad recruiter at Florida, failing to crack the top ten once during his tenure and finishing no better than fifth in the SEC, and that was with a steady stream of Questionable Dudes that came highly rated but had seen various other teams back off. Those questionable dudes saw their super powers combine into a credit card scam that got a tenth of the team suspended last year. If you were to go back and re-rank recruiting classes by removing confirmed knuckleheads, Florida would plummet towards the nether reaches of the SEC.

Meanwhile, McElwain had a public meltdown about an internet joke, twice, made an unsupported assertion he had received death threats that almost got him fired for cause, and marketed his own barbecue sauce in the midst of a disastrous, tenure-ending football season.

Whatever offensive aptitudes he seemed to demonstrate at Alabama and Colorado State evaporated in a haze of ineptitude in Florida. Spencer Hall:

Statistically, Jim McElwain turned 2017 Florida into 2017 Rutgers. There is no evidence McElwain or the offensive staff can develop a quarterback or build an offensive line or tell a wideout how to run a route. There’s actually less and less evidence the offense is even designed competently. The big highlight—maybe the only real morbid but funny highlight, really—of watching Gary Danielson this season call a long string of SEC blowouts has been him literally correcting play design for Florida on the screen. He does this when not openly laughing at false starts and procedural penalties. It’s a full to-do list when watching Florida football, and just getting through half of it should earn him an Emmy.

Yours truly surveying the devastation after the opener:

Watch Florida left tackle Martez Ivey start yelling at the left guard on the Furbush touchdown before the play is even over:

You! Come over here! I know you're in the middle of a football play, but look upon the destruction your incompetence has wrought! Feel in your very bones the touchdown you have given up and shall never recover from! Eat at Arby's!

Also here is Florida's quarterback getting hammered on a rollout that Michigan rushed three on.

That's some dystopian business right there, and we should slow our roll a little given the evident dysfunction of the opponent. How much? I don't know.

McElwain doing well at Alabama proves little; having a decent offense at Colorado State because five-star Dee Hart needed a landing spot and rushed for 6.6 YPC doesn't prove a whole lot more. What success Florida did have under McElwain was an artifact of a trash SEC East and a defense he inherited from Will Muschamp.

On the positive side, McElwain does have a lengthy tenure as a collegiate WR coach stretching from 1987 to 2005, with the odd QB or special teams duty thrown in. And he probably has some great stories about John L Smith, who he coached under for five years at Louisville and Michigan State.

The best thing about this hire is that it doesn't really matter since it's Harbaugh's offense anyway. While McElwain comes in with a very Greg Robinson track record—aging successes and recent debacles paired with press interactions that make him seem slightly insane—he's not going to be put in charge of half the team and subsequently told to run something he's completely unfamiliar with. But neither is he likely to move the needle in recruiting or help organize the team. He'll seem like a brilliant WR coach because Michigan's WRs are about to get a lot better by virtue of not being freshmen, in the same way Ron English was a god until he wasn't.

Maybe once released from the prison of being a head coach he's actually a good offensive coordinator—but Michigan doesn't need tactical help. They need someone who can throw a ball straight and an offensive line that doesn't get that guy and his backup murdered. They do need a skill position coach and McElwain sort of fits there. He seems more like a duplicate of a duplicate, and he is very hard to take seriously after his year of baffling press conferences and Keystone Kops coaching.

He's a tenth assistant, and therefore more of a missed opportunity than a burgeoning disaster. And since every other thing with a track record immediately defies it when it arrives to do Michigan football things (except Don Brown, God bless Don Brown), maybe he'll be brilliant.

Via Evan Petzold, Central Michigan’s tight ends coach is leaving Mount Pleasant for Ann Arbor, probably for the same or similar position once the staff shakes out:

Source: Central Michigan tight ends coach Sherrone Moore departs for Michigan staff https://t.co/QhNlNhVMXS pic.twitter.com/jIZMpMg0tX

— Evan Petzold (@EvanPetzold) January 12, 2018

Moore was also CMU’s assistant head coach and recruiting coordinator last year. He’s young, like young enough that he’s in the recruiting databases as a player (he played offensive guard for Oklahoma from 2006-’07). Moore was a grad assistant with Louisville, where he got his master’s degree and first two years of TE coaching in, then joined Dan Enos at CMU in 2013.

CMU’s athletic department posted a mic’d up video of him last spring if you can glean things from clips of a guy coaching:

For those not keeping an assistant coach scorecard on them, here’s the offseason so far:

• OUT: Greg Frey (OTs/TEs), Brian Smith (safeties)
• IN: Dan Enos (OC), Al Washington (DL/LB), Sherrone Moore (TEs)

The “IN” guys have their previous positions given because jobs haven’t been handed out yet. With the 10th assistant position everyone gets this year Michigan could be done after some shuffling, though Pep/Enos/Drevno would be a lot of OCs for one kitchen.

Per Bruce Feldman, Michigan is hiring another former Arkansas assistant:

SOURCE: #Michigan is hiring former #Arkansas OC Dan Enos, a former #MichiganState asst and ex #CMU head coach.

— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) January 5, 2018

For what is as of yet unknown. Rumors that Pep Hamilton and/or Tim Drevno are on their way out seem likely to come to fruition as a result of this, since Enos is another offensive architect type and not a recruiting-maven/position-coach sort.

Enos is a former MSU quarteback who entered coaching immediately after his playing career ended; since 1991 he's been a college coach. After bouncing around small schools for a decade he landed at Cincinnati as Mark Dantonio's QB coach and followed him to MSU for four years; he landed the head job at CMU in 2010. That didn't go that well—a couple of 3-9 seasons to start followed by .500 ball after—but he was something of a trendsetter in college football when he voluntarily left the CMU job to go be a P5 coordinator, joining Arkansas as OC in 2015.

His tenure through the lens of S&P+:

That's better than I expected in the SEC West; Bielema would probably still have a job if his defense hadn't cratered to the 113th this year.

Enos is a college guy whose most prominent stints as an assistant were at mashing pro-style programs, and he had good results despite working at a substantial talent disadvantage. College-lifer pro-style coaches are an endangered species, and while Enos doesn't have a Don Brown resume he's probably the best available coach who's at all a fit for what Michigan wants to do.

Frey will return for halftime, and only halftime, of the 2025 Indiana game [Bryan Fuller]

Greg Frey's second stint at Michigan was shorter than his first:

SOURCE: #MIchigan offensive tackles/tight ends coach/run game coordinator Greg Frey will be the new #FSU O-line coach & will come home at work back at his alma mater.

— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) January 4, 2018

It's not exactly his fault that he walked into a Harbaugh team after years of basketball on grass and the transition didn't go particularly well, but hoo boy did it not go well at all. Michigan's ground game improved midseason when it more or less abandoned everything slightly reminiscent of Frey's approach and inserted mauler Juwann Bushell-Beatty at right tackle.

Meanwhile his impact on Michigan's pass protection was either negligible or terrible, since those are the only two options. If he was brought in mostly to be Michigan's Kevin Wilson insider, that might have worked out okay, but with that knowledge downloaded and the offense seemingly uninfluenced by him there wasn't a compelling reason to keep him around. For Frey's part, he doesn't have to be the other OL coach and can return to his alma mater under Willie Taggart.

Former Michigan OL and Arkansas OL coach Kurt Anderson has been rumored as a potential replacement. His resume is pretty thin, with a couple of grad assistant years at Michigan during the dying days of the Carr regime followed by four years as the OL coach at EMU—the ultimate knife-at-a-gun-fight situation— and three years as the assistant OL coach with the Bills before he landed at Arkansas in 2016.

There he coached PFF fave-rave Frank Ragnow, by their estimation the best C in the country for two years running, and coulda-shoulda-been Michigan Wolverine Hjalte Froholdt, who moved from the DL and developed into an elite-level OG:

The 2017 PFF All-SEC First Team Offense pic.twitter.com/ts35FSCyOj

— PFF College Football (@PFF_College) December 6, 2017

Arkansas had a top ten run game per PFF... and was 89th in pass protection. He's clearly not working with the same level of talent he'd have at Michigan, so make of that mixed bag what you will.

Washington background

This isn't quite official yet but Sam Webb says Cincinnati DL coach Al Washington is telling Cincinnati recruits that he's leaving, Brandon Justice tweeted about it, and Chris Vannini is confirming Justice's report, so it seems good enough for bloggin' work.

So: Washington was a three-year starter on the DL at Boston College from 2004 to 2006 and then went into coaching. He's been a DL coach for the duration of his career with the exception of one year as a LB coach at Elon and a stint from 2013 to 2015 when he was BC's running backs coach; BC RB Andre Williams won the Doak Walker and was a fourth-round pick in 2013. FWIW, he also gained "special teams coordinator" titles at his last two stops.

There's conflicting information about where Washington will end up; Justice reports that he'll be the RB spot but there's other chatter that he'll slot in at linebackers as Partridge moves to safeties. If it is RB that's a bit odd since this is more of a Don Brown hookup than a Harbaugh one. OTOH, RB is a spot that's generally regarded as a recruiting-heavy one. Washington's young, has a good reputation...

Tough loss for Luke Fickell and Cincinnati if it comes to fruition, very good recruiter for the Bearcats. https://t.co/dSA29qQebK

— Jeremy Birmingham (@Birm) January 4, 2018

...and is well-known to Brown, so that seems like a good bet to work out. BC folks weren't happy at his departure:

This is... pretty bad. Al Washington is one of BC football’s most important coaches, in particular with his ability to sell the school and bring in some of the Eagles’ best recruits. And as @BearcatJournal pointed out, Washington was the DL coach for Harold Landry, who tallied 15 sacks and may be an NFL first round pick this season.

We'll see how the rest of the coaching staff changes shake out. Michigan has at least one more guy to add since a tenth coach has just become official, and probably a few more since there are rumors of a wholesale overhaul on the offensive side of the ball.

strength coach: check

Jim Harbaugh said that Michigan had to get stronger after the OSU game, and he appears to have meant this literally:

A source told Sporting News that Kevin Tolbert, who had served as the team’s strength and conditioning coach the past three seasons, won’t be returning to the Wolverines’ football program in 2018.

A replacement was not immediately known.

Last time around Harbaugh went after Stanford's Shannon Turley but was rebuffed as Turley picked up a nice new contract; he's probably off the table as a result. No other names have been kicked around, really, except the occasional message-boarder bringing up Ol' Gravel Voice Mike Barwis. That seems unlikely, to say the least.

Looking forward to the brief, thrilling window when some guy gets hired and half the lifters on the internet say he's a genius and the other half say he's Mike Gittleson in a Scooby Doo mask. A tradition on par with Flight Aware.