grant newsome is happening

While we wait to hear about a new DC, as Sam Webb reported($) yesterday and then publicized on WTKA today, Michigan will be shuffling around their offensive assistants in the wake of Josh Gattis’s departure. In a nutshell:

• Matt Weiss promoted to co-OC with Sherrone Moore
• Ron Bellamy (safeties) to wide receivers
• Grant Newsome (analyst) to tight ends, a promotion to an on-field role.
• Jay Harbaugh (tight ends) to a defensive position TBD.
• Moore (co-OC/OL) and Hart (RB) remain in place (for now?)

Let’s discuss.

OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR

Changes: Matt Weiss, who was brought on board last year from the Ravens, and was Harbaugh’s top lieutenant during the Vikings saga, has been raised to co-OC, the position previously held by Josh Gattis. Sherrone Moore, who gained the title last season with his promotion to OL coach, will remain co-OC and share the play-calling duties with Weiss.

On-Field Impact: Weiss is an analytics dude who was supposedly a big part of the success of the Ravens’ running game, and was basically brought in as a co-OC with Gattis and Moore. The title bump allows him to take a more active role in shaping the offense around his quarterbacks’ various strengths and weaknesses. They already did a lot of that last year, anyways.

I believe however that people are overestimating how much of that is going to be Weiss and how much of a role Sherrone Moore’s plans are going to shape the kind of offense Michigan runs. Moore was a real part of the play-calling brain trust last year, and appeared to have a major hand in gameplans, which featured subtle changes in blocking while other aspects remained static. That’s partly because Harbaugh learned offense from Schembechler, and has been a feature of Harbaugh offenses throughout his career. But it’s also meant that his OL coach has been a chief officer of the head coach—usually with Drevno, but certainly with Warinner too. Moore may not be getting a title bump, but I think it would incorrect to assume that Weiss has been promoted to the primary OC of the pair. It’s probably going to be even more of a collaborative effort, with Moore and Weiss and Harbaugh taking on some of the roles that had been consolidating under Gattis the last three years.

Make no mistake: More than any OC ever under Harbaugh, Gattis was the one running the collaboration. His fingerprints were all over the offense, his history evident in the interesting things they tried (there were 10x as many ideas stolen from Penn State or Vanderbilt than from Stanford), his #SpeedinSpace philosophy forming the basis of its function, and he was deciding what plays they called. My guess is those duties are going to be spread around, not simply passed on to Weiss, because giving over to Gattis in the first place was a huge concession by Harbaugh.

Recruiting Impact: OC is not a position group. We’ll come back around to this with the receivers.

Asiasi-asi! Oy! Oy! Oy! [Bryan Fuller]

Our weekly roundtable.

The Question:

How are our pre-season predictions on new starters and heavy rotation guys holding up? Eligible players are anyone getting significantly more snaps this year than last.

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The Responses:

David:

Tyree Kinnel. I'm relieved and satisfied from what I've seen from Kinnel so far; he looks to be another Boring Safety™. Hooray!

I looked back through the last few defensive UFRs and he received increasingly more snaps, hovering around +1 while being relevant on only a few plays. After Clark got hurt Kinnel seemed to be the DB of choice to take his spot and shift others around as necessary. Kinnel has also been used on special teams and blocked a kick. While he's not going to be a starter just yet (hopefully), his work load should increase, and for the moment it looks like that will come without a drop-off. I'm not thinking that anyone ever has serious doubts about whether he could contribute on this team, but he's at least met expectations so far.

On the other end of the secondary spectrum appears to be Brandon Watson. He hasn't played a ton, but he definitely saw his snaps go up for the Hawaii and Colorado games. In the UFR he was -2 and -3, respectively, for those games. He was put in the slot against Colorado for the first couple of quarters and definitely looked overmatched. He's always been a guy who could potentially succeed if he got a good jam on a WR...however, when that does not happen, he looks lost in space. With Michigan's current and future set of CBs, its not looking like Watson will see too much extra time in close games, or not on defense anyway. It looks as if he could be destined for special teams duty for the long term.

[Hit THE JUMP for MGoBlog contributors trying very hard to find something that hasn’t gone right so far.]

You can jump now Steve:

Michigan has finally posted their rosters with new weights and freshman numbers and such. I haven't included spring weights this year since they didn't update those on the roster; listed weights as recruits or early enrollees are in the 2015 column, with the recruits in parentheses. The exits of Canteen and Pallante have been covered.

Remember the rules:

• All weight gain is burly muscle that won't slow them down AT ALL
• All weight loss is a guy in the best shape of his life who's going to do crazy fast things as his new svelte self.

NEW RULE FROM NOW UNTIL THE END OF HARBAUGH:

• Believe any of it at your own risk. Harbaugh wouldn't hesitate to list Nate Johnson 6'11"/375 pounds if he thought the confusion might gain a yard this year.

TO THE SPREADSHEETS:

[Things of GREAT IMPORTANT after the JUMP OF GREAT IMPORTANCE thing.]