Al Washington Rumors
I know these are just rumors but they are out there right now that Ohio State has already been in contact with Al Washington to take over their linebackers coach position which would be a lateral move in position at this point.
I know this is something that can happen and it would be a blow to the michigan staff it were to come to fruition. And as it is still speculation at this point i dont want to make too much of it but if some school is going to take him away i would much rather it not be the school that has been whooping up on us for the past decade.
January 2nd, 2019 at 12:25 PM ^
So daddy is taking care of him. Got it.
January 2nd, 2019 at 11:36 AM ^
Agree with your main point that playing in the NFL or college isn't a necessity in order to coach, but:
Tom Landry played in the NFL for seven seasons, and was an All-Pro with the Giants in 1954.
Don Shula played in the NFL for seven seasons with the Browns, Colts, and Redskins.
Chuck Noll played in the NFL for seven seasons, all with the Browns.
January 2nd, 2019 at 11:43 AM ^
Yeah, I probably should have Googled it first before posting names.
January 2nd, 2019 at 11:41 AM ^
landry - i thought he was an all pro DB with the giants; maybe punted too. i could be wrong though. trying to remember seeing some of those old nfl films.
January 2nd, 2019 at 12:58 PM ^
The “Jay is only here because his dad is the coach” takes are so bad and lazy and tired. He’s one of the top few recruiters on staff, and his position group (with the current one’s success being mostly based on recruiting) has always been a strength. The man has a super bowl ring. His success in recruiting and time spent in winning organizations is undeniable, and his position has never been a weakness. Jay is such a weird boogeyman for this fanbase.
January 2nd, 2019 at 1:05 PM ^
I have no idea if Jay is a good coach but he has a super bowl ring because his uncle coached the Ravens and got the Michigan job because of nepotism. Getting a job because of nepotism doesn't mean you can't be good at your job, it just means he would never have been hired here with his resume if he wasn't the coaches son. Just like he wouldn't have been hired by the Ravens if he wasn't the coaches nephew.
You can argue Jay has been a good enough coach, I have no idea, it doesn't seem like the running backs got better at blocking or picking up blitzes or anything that coaching would improve but he is a good recruiter, but he 100% got hired due to nepotism.
January 2nd, 2019 at 1:28 PM ^
He worked with TEs and STs for the Ravens, whose coach is a ST specialist and who won a Super Bowl in his time there. He was hired here to coach the TEs and work on STs. His resume on a person with a last name other than "Harbaugh" is not one that leaves nepotism as the only explanation as to how he could be hired. Guys who are NFL assistants become college position coaches all the time, especially if they're young and likable.
Did Jay get the first call because the HC had a connection? Maybe. Does it necessarily mean that Jim only hired him because he is Jay's father? No. Jay has a resume commensurate with college position coaches. That alone disproves that "he 100% got hired due to nepotism". That's an impossible claim to backup.
January 2nd, 2019 at 1:52 PM ^
This is such a weird hill to die on since I didn't even say he was bad but lol at the extent to which you are overstating his experience. He was a quality control coach for the ravens offense, not an actual coach. He wasn't teaching the TE's or special teams anything, wasn't running drills, etc. He was there to learn how to be a coach, which is how people get started in the coaching career but lol at claiming he was an actual coach in terms of teaching things to players. There is a reason when Jay got hired on as a TE coach and ST coach at Michigan it was at two positions that already had coaches with experience in those areas (Drevno with TE's and Baxter with ST) and its because he didn't know how to coach those positions on his own. The other TE coach who turned us down for that position according to rumors was Kentucky TE coach and recruiting coordinator Vince Marrow. Marrow's resume included playing college at Toledo and in the NFL for 3 years before going to europe. He then coached tight ends in europe for 2 years, at toledo for a year, worked as a high school head coach, coached TE's in the UFL, served as a GA for 2 years at Nebraska and had coached and proven himself as a really good recruiter for a year at Kentucky before Harbaugh offered him. Lol at comparing a guy with 3 years as an NFL QC coach that he got due to nepotism to a resume of a guy who played at the highest level and had been an actual coach for 7 years and saying its the same.
A normal career arc for a guy who doesn't play is to be a GA, then get some experience at lower level schools, not graduate college, get a QC job for an nfl team and parlay that into an actual position coach at blue blood college. You sound like one of those people that gets into Harvard because their parents donated 100 million, gets a manager position at large company your uncle owns and then claim you've earned what you got solely because of hard work.
January 2nd, 2019 at 2:49 PM ^
He was there to learn how to be a coach, which is how people get started in the coaching career
Correct, thank you. Turns out learning how to be a coach from the highest level of the professional ranks gets you jobs. Weird.
Lol at comparing a guy with 3 years as an NFL QC coach that he got due to nepotism to a resume of a guy who played at the highest level and had been an actual coach for 7 years and saying its the same.
I literally never did this - you compared Jay to Marrow, not me. Decent strawman, I guess, IDK I've seen better. Additionally, I can't help but laugh at pointing out the fact that Jim actually called and tried to hire a guy with a better resume before calling Jay. Wouldn't have been my game plan if I was trying to paint Jim as a nepotistic manager.
January 2nd, 2019 at 5:56 PM ^
Find me a single position coach at a team with a top 10 winning percentage with a resume similar to Jay's. The only guy on OSU's staff without multiple years of actual coaching experience is Brian Hartline who a) played college and nfl football b) worked as a QC and assistant with OSU for 2 years and c) is only the interim wr coach due to the Zach smith stuff so who knows if they would have hired him normally. Urban's nepotism hire was making his son in law senior quality control staffer. Bama doesn't have a single guy without multiple years of coaching experience at the college level and from what I could tell Clemson didn't have a single position coach without at least 5 years of real actual coaching experience prior to their hire.
The point isn't that Jay got a job, its that the job after being a Ravens QC for 3 years as his only professional experience should have been being a GA at a major program not one of only 10 position coaches on a staff. Harbaugh tried to hire someone qualified, got turned down, and hired his son rather than find someone else qualified. Its worked out on the recruiting front and seems to have been a miss on the coaching front. Neither of those facts makes it not a nepotism hire. Jay could be the best TE pr RB coach in the country now but that wouldn't change the fact it was a nepotism hire at the time.
January 2nd, 2019 at 7:43 PM ^
Lol another attack on JayBaugh.
RB blitz pick ups got better under his watch. ZC also isn’t coming unless Jay is his coach. He’s a very good recruiter.
But yeah you HAVE to have played RB to be a RB coach.
Andy Reid was an OL coach his entire career before Green Bay hired him as QB coach for two years.
That worked out.
January 2nd, 2019 at 9:37 PM ^
What did Jay do to you and why haven't you forgiven him?!
It's ok WD, let it go man, just let it go.
January 2nd, 2019 at 10:45 AM ^
He will be in demand as will others on JH's staff. Nothing new about that. Jim assembles a very good staff. Alabama made contact with Warinner too. Partridge last year.
January 2nd, 2019 at 10:47 AM ^
Saban really seems to respect Harbaugh's choice of position coaches. Too bad we don't have an OC worthy of Saban's staff.
January 2nd, 2019 at 10:54 AM ^
Hopefully, soon!
January 2nd, 2019 at 10:56 AM ^
What are you hearing umbig11?
January 2nd, 2019 at 10:58 AM ^
**too bad we don’t have an OC worthy of Saban’s staff who isn’t handcuffed by someone’s urge to run an antiquated system.
January 2nd, 2019 at 11:02 AM ^
I'm not sure that Harbaugh's directive to Pep is, "give me pass plays that are super hard to execute, and don't really work very well". Maybe it is, but I doubt it.
People around here weren't super thrilled when Pep got here, and I don't think we've seen anything to prove them wrong. If Harbaugh brings in someone with a great track record and they end up looking like shit, then it's Harbaugh. Until then, I'm Team Pep.
January 2nd, 2019 at 11:08 AM ^
I’m with you, I think the offense, namely the passing game, performed much better under Fisch than it did under Pep.
I meant that I don’t think it matters if Michigan was to bring in someone like Kliff Kingsbury, Michigan would still run the ball into stacked boxes 70% of the time on first and second down even when trailing late in the game.
If an OC comes in, they need to be given free reign. We need someone caught up with the times.
January 2nd, 2019 at 11:13 AM ^
I totally agree. The history of sports is filled with coaches who looked great, up until the time that either the game passed them by or that one special player moved on/got old. Shit, RR looked great for a second.
Sustaining success is hard, and it's even harder if you're unwilling to change. Hopefully Harbaugh is flexible.
January 2nd, 2019 at 11:46 AM ^
Are you off your meds? You agree it’s Pep, and seconds later you agree it’s Harbaugh. D&$)
January 2nd, 2019 at 11:17 AM ^
I don’t want to kick up a shit storm here, but our best offense under Jim was this year’s. 24th in S&P+ is better than either Fisch offense. The offense made a massive jump after a year in which I don’t think Sean McVay could have fielded a top 50 unit.
I’m still in the “jury’s out” camp with Pep. He had an unwinnable task last year. The offense improved immensely this year. It still has it’s flaws, mainly the long-developing routes. The question you need to answer to evaluate Pep is how much of our improvement this year was due to his coaching vs. how much was due to Shea, older WRs, Warinner/better OL, etc.
I just don’t know that I have all of the information I need to say “Pep is bad” or “Pep should stay”. The offense was going to improve this year no matter what, but 60 places in S&P is absurd and indicates more factors than just Shea or Ed Warinner.
January 2nd, 2019 at 11:25 AM ^
This is a really level headed take, and it's hard to disagree with. Clearly, you're right since the S&P+ numbers don't lie.
However, it's mostly just a thought exercise of extrapolating what such a capable offense could have looked like under someone else. The fact that Speight seemed to regress when Pep got here is one data point against him - though was it the much worse line or Pep? Who knows.
With all that said, is Pep the Warinner of passing game coordinators? I suspect not, or else he would have had a few sniffs from other programs.
January 2nd, 2019 at 11:33 AM ^
I understand your last paragraph/take there. I think an issue that plagues Pep is some stubbornness in shifting his mindset from the NFL passing game to a college passing game. You can run route concepts in the NFL that you really shouldn’t ask of college players due to increased practice time, talent level, etc. I think Pep still has a lot of NFL-level asks of our WRs and OL in the passing game.
January 2nd, 2019 at 11:58 AM ^
S&P+ and FEI show the offense to be OK (Top 25 is about minimum for making the CFP)... but they also show it to be PAINFULLY unexplosive.
... and 60 places very well could be just Shea and Ed Warinner.
The offense this year was pretty efficient, which allowed it to make up for its complete lack of explosiveness... but it also means mere minor reductions in efficiency cause the offense to crater.
January 2nd, 2019 at 12:53 PM ^
This may have been Harbaugh's best rated S&P+ offensive unit at Michigan but those previous offenses lacked the available talent that the 2018 team did.
It's criminal that Shea Patterson + Donovan Peoples Jones + Nico Collins + Tarik Black + Zach Gentry + Karan Higdon or Chris Evans + decent OL = Mediocre Offense. Hand that roster to Jeff Brohm or Matt Canada or Scott Frost or Joe Morehead or Lincoln Riley or Tom Herman or Mike Leach or Kliff Kingsbury or Chip Kelly or Brian Kelly or [insert a couple dozen other coaches/coordinators names here] and there's no fathomable way in hell their teams get their asses handed to them like Ohio State and Florida did to Harbaugh.
There's no two ways to look at this man, Harbaugh needs to evolve his approach. If Pep can't convince him otherwise then he's failing at his job and so is every other offensive coach on staff.
January 2nd, 2019 at 2:03 PM ^
I would like to see Harbaugh go more of the Meyer route - be the special teams coach while maintaining input in the offense but not the play calling duties. Have one pure, sounding voice as who calls plays
January 2nd, 2019 at 11:04 AM ^
Too bad Saban doesn’t think the world of Pep...
January 2nd, 2019 at 12:21 PM ^
You are killing me UMBIG11.
January 2nd, 2019 at 12:40 PM ^
That may just be the best comment I’ll see on the blog until then.
January 2nd, 2019 at 12:55 PM ^
So, hopefully there’s some hidden meaning behind your comment...like impeding OC hire perhaps? :) :) :)
Pretty please with sugar on top? ?
January 2nd, 2019 at 1:01 PM ^
Please, please, please let this come to pass.
January 2nd, 2019 at 2:50 PM ^
Rarely has a one- word response had me so intrigued.
Hopefully the hire you're hinting at will make this fanbase a little less BPONEy.
January 2nd, 2019 at 12:53 PM ^
Well, he took Enos last year, who is now the OC at Alabama.
January 2nd, 2019 at 1:00 PM ^
Dan Enos says hi?
January 2nd, 2019 at 1:23 PM ^
He left last year before coaching a game....
January 2nd, 2019 at 11:45 AM ^
Please tell me ed told saban to go pound sand.....
January 2nd, 2019 at 10:48 AM ^
Could just be a backup plan if Don Brown goes to Temple. Al Washington may not know/ like/ be liked by the new DC.
January 2nd, 2019 at 10:51 AM ^
Any chance we can get them to take Pep in a package deal?
January 2nd, 2019 at 10:55 AM ^
That's like taking a rat turd in order to get some skittles.
January 2nd, 2019 at 10:51 AM ^
This would be a gut punch. He was good and as has been pointed out got us back into Ohio High schools.
January 2nd, 2019 at 10:51 AM ^
Rumor source?
January 2nd, 2019 at 11:03 AM ^
I've only read it on 11W as a blog post, but have yet to hear a credible source. But, typically where there's smoke there's fire. Just because he was contacted by Day does not however mean he's interested.
January 2nd, 2019 at 11:01 AM ^
It is not a lateral move. OSU is a better job.
January 2nd, 2019 at 11:04 AM ^
You are a thief of joy.
January 2nd, 2019 at 12:41 PM ^
ACCKKKTUALLY, that line was said to Dwight.
January 2nd, 2019 at 11:09 AM ^
Guys coach under Harbaugh and get head coaching jobs or move up quickly. He has a ton of clout across the entire football world, including the NFL, and would be one hell of a reference. What would be the draw of coaching under a kid who's never been a head coach and has like two years of coordinating experience under his belt?
January 2nd, 2019 at 11:09 AM ^
Not a lateral move. The championships he would win at OSU would make him even more appealing for new jobs, plus at OSU he won't have to deal with the defense being pressured to win every game on its own. If his defense has an off day, the offense will pick up the slack. Any shortcomings he has on a given day won't be put in as big of a spotlight.
January 2nd, 2019 at 11:59 AM ^
Can someone here with real knowledge chime in on whether Al can even go directly to OSU or not, if has a contract restriction. I imagine he does...unless Harbaugh got him under condition he could leave at will.