Last year I did an offseason series looking at changes via NFL decisions/coaching changes/transfer portal for every team in the B1G. While I hope to still do that, it hasn't yet felt appropriate when Michigan is going through major changes of their own on. Instead, it feels like a better idea to do a piece looking at some of the changes that have been made to the coaching staff we have yet to cover at MGoBlog, as well as some NIL and off-field staffing news. 

Introducing: Greg Scruggs, DL Coach

Though not yet official, it appears that Wisconsin DL coach Greg Scruggs will be joining Michigan's staff. Insiders on both the Michigan and Wisconsin side have confirmed the news and Josh Henschke tweeted on Tuesday that Scruggs has begun calling Michigan players to announce his arrival. Seems like it's happening. 

In which case, what's the story with Scruggs? Firstly he's 33 years old, beginning a theme of many of these coaches that Sherrone is targeting being on the younger side. Scruggs is from Cincinnati and played at St. Xavier in Ohio, home of Michigan DL recruit Ted Hammond, among many other players. Scruggs played his college ball as a defensive end at Louisville, competing on the 2010 and 2011 teams coached by Charlie Strong, that featured young Sherrone Moore on staff as a GA. That is the basis for Scruggs' relationship with Moore, which was then followed by Scruggs' transition to the NFL. He was a 7th round pick by Seattle who played some in 2012 but then was mostly a reserve piece after that, seldom competing in actual games (he did, however, participate in a photoshoot where he modeled kilts). After winning Super Bowl LI from the sidelines with New England in February 2017, Scruggs called it quits as a player and went into coaching. 

Scruggs returned to his hometown as a coach, joining Luke Fickell's staff at Cincinnati for the 2018 season. He spent two years as Director of Player Development, before getting the DL Coach job for the 2020 season. Over two seasons running Fickell's DL, Scruggs coached some talented players who were dominant within the American Athletic Conference. The 2020 Cincinnati defense featured one 1st Team All-AAC lineman and two 2nd teamers. The 2021 defense didn't have any 2nd teamers, but had two 1st Team All-AAC linemen. Among the players to earn honors under Scruggs were Curtis Brooks (6th round pick), Myjai Sanders (3rd round pick), Marcus Brown, and Elijah Ponder. The latter two went undrafted but Ponder got a cup of coffee as a UDFA in Tampa and recently signed in the CFL. For an American Athletic Conference team, Cincinnati had talented, strong defensive lines and Scruggs had a hand in coaching and developing those. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: the other hires]

[Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

In 2022, Scruggs opted to take an assistant DL coach job with the New York Jets, doing the gig for one year, before Fickell came calling again to give him a promotion, the opportunity to take over DL responsibilities at a Power 5 program (Wisconsin). Scruggs accepted and spent this last season coaching the Wisconsin DL. The Badgers did not feature a particularly fearsome defensive front, but Scruggs was not handed a ton of talent either. Now Sherrone Moore has offered him another promotion and Scruggs will be walking into a DL room that, if the roster can be kept together, is loaded with riches of superstar talent for him to work with. 

Conclusively evaluating Scruggs, like many of the names in this article, is difficult because he is a young up-and-coming coach and those sorts of guys don't stay in one job long enough to get a proper sense of them. With longtime positional coaches in their 50s or 60s, you have a track record built up and probably several jobs where they stayed for long enough blocks of time that both their recruiting and player development abilities can be fairly assessed. We don't have that with Scruggs but we know a few things. One thing we know is his recruiting exploits have generally been praised, with Bucky's 5th Quarter describing him as an "excellent recruiter". The Substack "BadgerNotes" talks up Scruggs' recruiting acumen, citing his 2024 recruiting class which includes two 4* DL and one 3*, headlined by Ernest Willor Jr., who finished the cycle ranked 172nd in the composite. The 247 rankings which attempt to rank assistant coaches by their recruiting abilities, gave Scruggs reasonably favorable reviews as a recruiter too. While we don't have concrete proof, there's a positive reputation and also logically, a 33-year-old ex-player should be a pretty decent recruiter.

The other positive indicator for Scruggs is Luke Fickell deemed him a piece he wanted to bring with him to Wisconsin. Fickell's abilities as a P5 coach are uncertain right now, but he ran a masterful program at Cincinnati, becoming the only Group of 5 team to ever play in a CFP game during the four team era. By bringing Scruggs with him to Madison, Fickell offered a tacit endorsement of Scruggs' abilities, which is another good sign. While Scruggs does not have the track record of a Mike Elston, he has a lot of attributes that are desirable, originally from the Midwest and has exclusively coached in this area in college, has a bit of NFL experience (from the Jets), had a hand in winning football teams (at Cincy), and has been climbing the coaching ranks without any setbacks. With Wink Martindale as DC, an older, NFL guy who is only going to do so much recruiting, the positional coaches on the defensive side likely need to be young guys and strong recruiters and all the information we have on Scruggs suggests he has a shot to tick all those boxes. 

[WolverinesWire]

Introducing: Stephen Adegoke, DBs coach

Speaking of young coaches, Michigan has apparently hired a DBs coach as well. When I set out to write this piece, I planned to talk about the candidates for the DB position but the news broke while I was writing so instead we get to focus in on Stephen Adegoke (add-uh-go-KAY). Though I do not have a confirmed birth year, Adegoke began his college playing career at San Diego Mesa College in 2014 meaning that Adegoke is likely born in either 1995 or 1996. Which means, yes, he's in his 20s. Young! 

After playing in JuCo, Adegoke transferred to Mississippi State, where he played safety from 2016-18. After graduating from Mississippi State, Adegoke spent two years as a GA at Florida, following his old coach Dan Mullen to Gainesville. He left Florida with a masters in hand and then spent one year in Ann Arbor as a GA on Michigan's staff, during the 2021 season. From there Adegoke made the move to the pros, joining DeMeco Ryans' staff in San Francisco as the defensive quality control coach. When Ryans was hired as Houston's head coach, Adegoke went with him to serve as the team's safeties coach during this 2023 season, a year where the Texans went worst-to-first and captured the AFC South, knocking off Cleveland in the playoffs before losing to Baltimore. 

While Scruggs had a rather short resume, it looks incredibly long in comparison to Adegoke, who has just one season as a positional coach at any level of football. Compared to alleged runner up for the gig, Louisiana-Lafayette DC Lamar Morgan, Adegoke was the high-upside, swing for the fences, "unkown" hire. However, we shouldn't make it out to be that Adegoke is an unknown to Sherrone, who has far more information on him than we do, since they spent a season together on the 2021 staff. The insiders, who get the program spin, have been extremely bullish on Adegoke, so it's reasonable to assume that Michigan believes they have unearthed a dynamite hire in Adegoke. For example, Steve Lorenz's brief write-up on the Adegoke hire claims "the belief is that the Snellville (GA) native is a home run hire for the Wolverines. An ascension through the college ranks into pro position coach gives Moore a rising star in the ranks and a young coach who could emerge as a defensive coordinator of the future for the Michigan staff". Henschke's brief write-up claims that "according to those inside the facility, Adegoke's name came highly recommended and will be a popular choice". 

So it seems like there was some consensus among the Michigan apparatus that Adegoke is a Dude in the making, but only time will tell if they are right. We, the uniformed observers, have little to go off of, especially on something like recruiting. The best nugget we have is from On3's EJ Holland, who tweeted that Adegoke was involved in recruiting efforts during his 2021 stint at Michigan and seemed good at it. That's decently optimistic but again, this logically holds up because "ex-player in his 20s" should be able to relate well to recruits and win over their allegiances on paper. Hiring a young coach with so little track record comes with inherent risk involved but at the same time, if Sherrone is confident that Adegoke is a star in the making, you have to give it a shot. Now we get to see if he's right. 

[WolverinesWire]

LB Coaching Search Reaching A Conclusion? 

All arrows from the insiders are pointing towards Brian Jean-Mary (French pronunciation- "Zhahn-Marie") as the #1 choice for Michigan's linebackers coach. Problem is that Jean-Mary is currently the LB coach for a well-funded Power 5 program (Tennessee). Michigan is reported to have made a sizable offer to steal Jean-Mary from the Vols and we should be getting an answer soon. With no other names at the top of the big board, I'm going to just focus on Jean-Mary today. If Michigan doesn't win him over and has to pivot, we can cover that in a future piece. 

If the name "Brian Jean-Mary" rings a bell, it's because he's coached at Michigan before. BJM was on the 2020 Michigan staff as the linebackers coach, spending one season in Ann Arbor before Don Brown was canned and Mike Macdonald led a restructuring of the staff that saw George Helow take Jean-Mary's place. Sherrone actually has two connections with Jean-Mary, having also coached with him at Louisville, where BJM spent 2010-13, before heading with Charlie Strong to Teaxs. While Jean-Mary is still on the younger side (under 50), he has a much longer track record of coaching built up. His list of jobs are as follows: Louisville GA (2000), South Carolina GA (2001-02), North Alabama DBs (2003), Georgia Tech LBs (2003-09), Louisville AHC/LBs (2010-13), Texas LBs/Recruiting Coordinator (2014-16), USF AHC/DC/LBs (2017-19), Michigan LBs (2020), Tennessee LBs (2021-present). 

BJM's previous stop at Michigan was not particularly satisfactory, although nothing in that 2020 season was. He did have a hand in landing Junior Colson (who committed in May 2020, during Jean-Mary's tenure), but not much else went right, certainly not on-field. Thankfully there's a much larger track record here to suggest that Jean-Mary is a coveted option and the fight allegedly unfolding right now to keep him in Knoxville speaks to that. As Chris Balas wrote this week, the Tennessee people feel he's done a "'great job' at Tennessee, both as a recruiter and a coach". Since joining UT's staff, Jean-Mary signed a top 200 4* LB in 2023 (Arion Carter) and a consensus 4* in 2024 (Edwin Spillman). His responsibilities as Recruiting Coordinator back in his days with Charlie Strong at Texas also speak to the experience that he possesses in that avenue. Rocky Top Insider credits Jean-Mary with shoring up Tennessee's depth at the LB position through both recruiting and the transfer portal. 

If you believe that being coveted by your current gig is a metric of coaching acumen, then BJM checks that box. He also, like Adegoke, has familiarity with the South, which is a nice contrast for recruiting purposes with Scruggs, who has done more of his work in the Midwest. Jean-Mary is another guy on the younger side (though more typical age) and someone with considerable recruiting experience and success in his past, meaning that on paper, a potential Scruggs/BJM/Adegoke triumvirate should have plenty of recruiting juice to counterbalance Wink Martindale. From a bird's eye view, this move makes sense and legitimate poaching from the SEC is never a bad sign, especially not from an SEC team that has won 20 games the past two seasons. If Sherrone can get this one done, I think it seems to be a reasonable idea. 

Sean Magee [MGoBlue.com]

Introducing: Sean Magee, General Manager + other NIL developments 

Pivoting to off-field developments, Michigan has also hired one "Sean Magee" to be the new "Michigan Football General Manager". If you are confused by this position, fear not, it's a pretty new development. Where recruiting coordinators used to be enough, the age of the portal has shaken things up and the new conventional wisdom is that one guy is needed to preside over the entire roster building operation, recruiting and portalling. Magee is a familiar name in Schembechler Hall, even if we are not the most aware of his existence. He served as Associate AD for Football from 2017 to May 2022, meaning there was plenty of overlap with Sherrone. In May 2022 he was hired by the Chicago Bears to be "Chief of Staff", a job that apparently manages relations between the GM, head coach, and operations team. According to his LinkedIn, Magee holds a B.S. from the US Naval Academy and an MBA from the College of William & Mary. 

I don't have too much else to add here, since Magee is a white collar employee and has no football track record. However, the hiring of Magee is an example of a broader restructuring going on within Michigan Football, as Magee is said to have considerable connections with donors that could expedite the process of Michigan loading up on NIL. This leads into today's formal news about NIL, where Michigan is partnering with Learfield and Altius Sports Partners. According to the press release from today, this will involve the creation of an in-house executive GM provided by Altius and a senior manager of business development supplied by Learfield. The rest of the information provided publicly involves extensive jibberish and Corporate Speak, but a quicker summary is that Michigan is looking to make it much easier for their athletes to land NIL partnerships and hiring these firms shows they are trying to get serious about it. 

More broadly, we've heard reporting from insiders that Sherrone Moore intends to greatly expand the NIL and recruiting operations. Various insiders have noted ($) that Moore plans to increase the size of the recruiting department. Those of us who have read years of EJ Holland's recruiting updates are probably familiar with complaints that Michigan's recruiting operation was comparatively small potatoes when put up against the recruiting juggernauts like an Ohio State, who have so many more hired hands contributing. It is unclear how many more staffers Sherrone intends to hire, but it does not seem like it will be marginal changes. 

There are rumblings today of Michigan courting a "sizable" NIL donor (not going to reveal too much for paywall reasons) who could transform the state of the program's operations. Based on the tenor of reporting it seems that more could change in terms of Michigan's approach to NIL and recruiting under Sherrone than the approach to football on the field changes. It's going to be a different staff for sure, but these off the field changes are massive as well, with rumblings of Sherrone planning to be more public/visible in his support for NIL too. It will be very difficult for this new era of Michigan Football to be as good at scouting and developing talent as Jim Harbaugh's 2021-23 staff was, but they seem to be intending to make a much more concerted and serious effort to be with the times on NIL which in the long run could pay massive dividends for the program.