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Nuss went from sense-bringing savior to Brandon crony really in one trip to South Bend. And he didn’t even make our list. [Fuller]

The Question:

The assistant you changed your opinion on the fastest, negative or positive? Note: this was inspired by a conversation about Durkin, whom nobody took. In fact we probably left a lot of answers on the table in trying to avoid the obvious.

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The Responses:

Adam: I was on the fence when Jedd Fisch was hired; he hadn't spent more than two seasons anywhere since his time as an assistant QB/WR coach with the Ravens from 2004-2007, and his stints as an offensive coordinator in college and the NFL yielded uninspiring results. One need only look as far as his Hello post to see that advanced stats weren't kind to his tenure as a college or pro OC outside of one shiny FEI number in 2011.

You shouldn't judge based on a limited data set, and Fisch's work is a reminder why. Jake Rudock, already a pretty good quarterback when he got to Ann Arbor, saw his completion percentage rise 2.1% and his yards per attempt rise 0.7 yards to 7.8 from 2014 to 2015. The Harbaugh caveat applies, but the receivers also made big year-to-year improvements.

[After the jump: another thinks—we had them coming]

We're from the Erik Campbell branch

From 1995 to 2007 Michigan had a Hall of Fame head coach who embodied the ideals of ethics and education within a championship-caliber football program, the thing we're actually referring to when we venerate "Michigan." It won a national championship, usually beat its rivals, took a lot of trips to Pasadena and Orlando, won a share of the Big Ten as often as not, and put more players on NFL rosters than any team save Miami (YTM).

But in two (soon to be three) coaching searches hence, there has been a remarkable lack of suitable head coaching candidates from that 13 season span, and it's all due to the single biggest flaw of its last successful head coach: Lloyd Carr was too loyal to mediocre assistants.

A baseline. I'll start with what I consider normal. A coaching staff will typically go through a lot of dudes. On the whole it's more common for an assistant to get a better job than be fired from their current one, with the caveat that a new head coach most often cleans out the old assistants. One or two new guys per year is normal for a successful coaching staff.

You want fresh blood and fresh ideas coming in, but also a core stability, especially from the guys you lean on for recruiting, and that's why a mix is important. The group is usually a mix of the head coach's best bud, a few lifetime position coaches who are loyal and great fundamental teachers but not coordinator/HC material, and a few up-and-comers who are. Have one spot for a young guy who's loyal to your program and can relate well to the players. In coordinators, unless one of them is your best bud, you optimally expect a pair of strategic operatives who'll be around for three seasons or so before their success gets them a head coaching job. You replace those guys with other up-and-comers, or promote one of yours if you think they're ready.

The head coach can take on one of those roles, since in himself he probably has one of the best possible position coaches or coordinators in the country. You see why Mattison is so valuable to Hoke then, because he's good at his job, and good at recruiting, and doesn't want to leave it. That's the kind of rare luxury who can make a staff extraordinary.

For Lloyd's guys, I'll break it up by group.

Offense

Year	Coordinator	Quarterbacks	Off. Line	Receivers	Backs
2007	Mike DeBord	Scot Loeffler	Andy Moeller	Erik Campbell	Fred Jackson
2006	Mike DeBord	Scot Loeffler	Andy Moeller	Erik Campbell	Fred Jackson
2005	Terry Malone	Scot Loeffler	Andy Moeller	Erik Campbell	Fred Jackson
2004	Terry Malone	Scot Loeffler	Andy Moeller	Erik Campbell	Fred Jackson
2003	Terry Malone	Scot Loeffler	Andy Moeller	Erik Campbell	Fred Jackson
2002	Terry Malone	Scot Loeffler	Andy Moeller	Erik Campbell	Fred Jackson
2001	Stan Parrish	(Parrish)	Terry Malone	Erik Campbell	Fred Jackson
2000	Stan Parrish	(Parrish)	Terry Malone	Erik Campbell	Fred Jackson
1999	Mike Debord	Stan Parrish	Terry Malone	Erik Campbell	Fred Jackson
1998	Mike Debord	Stan Parrish	Terry Malone	Erik Campbell	Fred Jackson
1997	Mike DeBord	Stan Parrish	Terry Malone	Erik Campbell	Fred Jackson
1996	Fred Jackson	Stan Parrish	Mike DeBord	Erik Campbell	(Jackson)
1995	Fred Jackson	Kit Cartwright	Mike DeBord	Erik Campbell	(Jackson)

Primary complaint was offense so I'll start there. Number is parentheses is the guy's current age.

Lloyd's first OC, Fred Jackson (64), was promoted more for loyalty than any supposed grasp of the offense. The fan consensus at the time was that Jackson was in over his head, and wasting all of that air-the-ball talent that Moeller had so carefully constructed. The latter half of '96 was brutal (except for OSU), and Jackson was demoted back to RBs coach, where he will remain until the end of eternity.

The reason we thought Lloyd Carr would only be an interim head coach at first was he made Fred Jackson his first offensive coordinator, i.e. he replaced GARY EFFING MOELLER with a lifetime running backs coach/program glue guy. [photo: Fuller]

At that point, rather than find a real OC, Lloyd promoted OL coach Mike DeBord (58). It's likely that had the defense not been enough to win a championship with just mediocre offense, DeBord would not have become as entrenched. Nevertheless Michigan spent half of its championship season doinking Chris Howard into stacked lines for two plays then passing on third down, succeeding just enough thanks to a couple of really shining young guys on the offensive line, and spot offensive duty by Woodson.

The DeBord who ran zone left all damn day in 2007 had been a wonderful offensive line coach before that. Prior to 1992 Michigan had Bo's de facto associate HC Jerry Hanlon as OL coach, and then Les Miles, except for a year Bobby Morrison (more on him later) coached it. Moeller hired DeBord after watching Northwestern's theretofore crap OL suddenly not suck in one year, and found a resume of just-as-quick turnarounds at Fort Hays State, Eastern Illinois, Ball State, and Colorado State in a matter of 10 years. From Runyan and Payne to Hutchinson and Backus, DeBord's OL were ready to insert after a year in the system, and usually ready for the NFL after three.

The problem was he approached offense coordination the same way: repetition, execution, toughness. Carr recommended DeBord to CMU as a training ground for eventually taking over Michigan, and when DeBord proved bad even by directional school standards (this was the disaster Brian Kelly remediated), Lloyd made room for him as special teams coach and recruiting guy. The loyalty to DeBord was the biggest complaint we had about Lloyd's tenure, and the caveman-style football they championed survives as a cancerous ideology within the program. As Carr's handpicked successor, DeBord is the personification of this complaint.

Michigan found a spot for him coordinating various non-revenue sports. This seemed nice and natural because dude did dedicate his life to Michigan, but something about DeBord being around now gives me the willies.

[After the jump: the rest of the staffs]

The Firehouse Museum, the Huron River, Depot Town, the phallic watertower, Sidetrack burgers, a bowl of everything at the Bomber Restaurant that magically absorbs your entire hangover, bowling…this is the entire list of nice things my EMU grad wife had to say about Ypsilanti. Even their Meijer sucks. To her list I would add running backs coach Mike Hart and the "Players Coached" section of Ron English's chrome website, where you can get quotes like this:

"When I think of Marlin Jackson, I think of a stallion. Marlin Jackson was a stallion. I didn't break him, but I did corral him a little bit in terms of getting him to believe in technique."

-Ron English, EMU Head Coach

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File under things you will never unlearn. Other things that are like mammals according to Ron English: LaMarr Woodley and Prescott Burgess.

How this works again:

1. Wednesdays I put up a winnable prize that consists of a desirable good.
2. You guess the final scores of this weekend's designated game (football or hoops, depending on the season), and put it in the comments. First person to post a particular score has it.
3. If you got it right, we contact you. If not, go to (5)
4. The desirable good arrives at the address you give us.
5. Non-winners can acquire the same desirable good by trading currency for it.

About Last Week:

So it's come to this, Bob Huggins. A fight to the death. Mano a mano. Man to man. Just you and me and my GUARDS!

*SWISH* *SWISH* *SWISH**SWISH**SWISH**SWISH**SWISH* 81-66. Simon of SimonOnSports was closest at 81-65.

This Week's Game:

The University of Discgolf heads west on Washtenaw at 8:30 tomorrow night. Winner gets to claim to be the dominant school in the county.

And on the Line…

Fact: If you are wearing this shirt in Ann Arbor while facing South, you could be pointing at Mike Hart right now!

Fine print: One entry per user. First user to choose a set of scores wins, determined by the timestamp of your entry (for my ease I prefer if you don't post it as a reply to another person's score--if you do it won't help or hurt you). Deadline for entries is 24 hours before the start of the game. MGoEmployees and Moderators exempt from winning. We did not invent the algorithm. The algorithm consistently finds Jesus. The algorithm killed Jeeves. The algorithm is banned in China. The algorithm is from Jersey. Rutgers is from Jersey. Holy shit guys Rutgers is in the Big Ten. BIG TENNNNN! The algorithm constantly finds Jesus.This is not the algorithm. This is close.