Exit Pep Hamilton, Enter Ben McDaniels
The Pep Hamilton will-he or won't-he ended the same way Tim Drevno's tenure did: a hard landing after an attempted soft one.
The Michigan Insider has learned that Pep Hamilton is leaving Michigan pursue other opportunities. The program confirmed that former offensive analyst Ben McDaniels will now take over coaching the quarterbacks in Ann Arbor.
Since Michigan gave Hamilton a boggling four year, 4.25 million dollar contract two years ago the "hard landing" in question is more like a Scrooge McDuck vault dive, but perhaps Hamilton's pride is injured since nobody in football wanted him at that price any more. That's the ticket.
[After THE JUMP: IMPLICATIONS]
Per Webb, Ben McDaniels is now set to be the QB coach, which is a cleaner fit for his skillset since he is a former QB himself and has had a QB title at five different stops during his winding coaching career. Josh Gattis will presumably be the WR coach.
Hamilton became a lightning rod for criticism over the past year despite Michigan's passing efficiency shooting upward as the Speight/O'Korn/Peters era gave way to Shea Patterson. Rarely in the history of football has a guy with a top 10 S&P+ passing offense been so squarely in the crosshairs.
A lot of that has to do with how Michigan achieved those numbers: with an absurdly slow (123rd nationally) run-focused offense that barely connected the disparate parts. Michigan's burgeoning, effective arc zone read game was never paired with any play action off that look except for the very occasional RPO, of which there were exactly three. Patterson's wheelhouse was frequently ignored in favor of slow-developing multi-read plays that he didn't have the patience—or sometimes the protection—for.
Constant rumors that Michigan was going to pitch the whole offense more towards the strengths of their players gave way to post-mortems in which insiders asserted that the plan was not followed on gameday as Hamilton reverted to the Stanford sludge-ball that is his lizard brain default. How much of that is real and how much of it is finding a scapegoat is unknowable. Several aspects of the offense seem more Harbaugh than Pep.
What's certain: Michigan has gotten a ton younger, although this move is less of a youth movement than you might expect. Hamilton is 44; McDaniels is 38. More important is the fact that Pep's departure clears the decks for Josh Gattis to have full control, give or take Warriner suggestions and Harbaugh interventions. With a loaded WR corps and a senior QB, the direction seems clear: replicate the Moorhead-era Deep State approach that PSU took with Gattis at WR coach.
The spring game is now very interesting.
February 5th, 2019 at 4:31 PM ^
The spring game is now very interesting.
*two months from now*
The public spring game is now the Brady Hoke Memorial Punting Extravaganza
February 5th, 2019 at 4:32 PM ^
So, basically, Jim is out of scapegoats.
February 5th, 2019 at 6:52 PM ^
Or has a whole new herd, comrade. So long as we remember “four legs good, two legs bad” we’ll be fine.
February 5th, 2019 at 4:32 PM ^
Mehh - The spring game was going to be interesting anyways seeing how the larger part of the staff's turnover had already been completed and the new OC had been in place.
What's more interesting going into this season is the margin for error. At some point we're either going to get over the hump and win the B1G with a spot in the playoff or we stay status quo around 9-10 wins. Harbaugh will cement his career in 2019 one way or another. I wonder what the rallying cry this year will be?
February 5th, 2019 at 4:37 PM ^
Unpopular opinion, but I have come around to the feeling that if we consistently win 10 games, do it clean and occasionally beat OSU, I'm totally fine.
February 5th, 2019 at 4:53 PM ^
Really? I'm all for a 10-win season and beating OSU to go off to a sunny NYE 6 bowl once in a while but... I don't feel like Harbaugh was hired for that. Our norm is now some term called BPONE and that's depressing.
Additionally I seriously felt like we wasted one of our best defenses in the past 20 years because we couldn't pull it together at the end of the season -- with our goals very clearly in reach. I'm actually starting to hate the month of November because of this.
February 5th, 2019 at 6:04 PM ^
"Additionally I seriously felt like we wasted one of our best defenses in the past 20 years because we couldn't pull it together at the end of the season "
I'm not sure where you are going with this. The offense had issues, yes, but the defense utterly fell apart. Between Florida and OSU the defense gave up 103 points. It wasn't the offense that lost us those games.
February 5th, 2019 at 6:28 PM ^
Seriously. The offense for the most part did what it needed to, our painful losses were on the D.
February 5th, 2019 at 6:53 PM ^
The offense lost us Notre Dame, the defense Ohio, and I think Florida was a joint effort. The defense gave up too many points, but the the wheels came off in the second half, after the offense got only 10 points through 3 quarters, with one field goal coming off a 0-yard drive.
February 5th, 2019 at 11:03 PM ^
I would assume this refers to the 2016 defense which legitmately held up all year and should have been enough to beat OSU if not for turnovers
February 5th, 2019 at 8:28 PM ^
Occasionally beating OSU would be a huge upgrade from where we’re at. I’d like to beat them once.
February 5th, 2019 at 4:39 PM ^
Another Harbaugh vest has taken too much damage... good luck Gattis
February 5th, 2019 at 4:39 PM ^
Bye! Good Riddance.
February 5th, 2019 at 4:40 PM ^
"Hamilton reverted to the Stanford sludge-ball that is his lizard brain default. How much of that is real and how much of it is finding a scapegoat is unknowable"
It may be unknowable on February 5th but I can assure it will be VERY "knowable" about 1pm on August 31st. Pep is the variable but Jim is the constant.
February 5th, 2019 at 4:57 PM ^
Disagree; wait till the first difficult game and see what happens.
Remember, Michigan ran tempo early against Notre Dame. That was, uh, not what they ran the rest of the year.
When Michigan is down a TD late in the third quarter, we’ll find out what has changed.
February 5th, 2019 at 4:42 PM ^
Lol so who are we going to blame next year when we have the same issues again?
February 5th, 2019 at 5:00 PM ^
The guy who's already started to come in for some of the blame. Harbaugh.
February 5th, 2019 at 4:50 PM ^
The Spring Game will be interesting, but will it be...telling?
February 5th, 2019 at 6:06 PM ^
It's a spring game.
I always go into the spring game expecting amazing fireworks and end up seeing 'Wow, that was messy...'.
So, I expect with new coaches and a new system using new terminology, that it will be vanilla and messy. This isn't necessarily bad or unreasonable.
Of course that won't stop us on the board from losing our shit.
February 5th, 2019 at 6:08 PM ^
I was trying to reference a really old board post (back from RR days) where some poster talked about how "these actions would be very...telling" and thank god we are far enough removed from those dark days that nobody remembers those silly posts or anything else about those days except for Denard's smile.
February 5th, 2019 at 4:52 PM ^
good bye and good luck Mr. Hamilton!
February 5th, 2019 at 5:12 PM ^
It never ceases to amaze me that the coaches, errr critics on this blog know more than Harbaugh, Hamilton and the rest of our staff.
Trouble last year was NOT offense, Try 62 and 41 points allowed in last 2 games.
I can run the offense next year. Set up to be great with our veteran wide outs and senior qb.
The point..........PLAY DEFENSE in the big ones.....
February 5th, 2019 at 5:25 PM ^
Michigan football scored 19 points (one was gift wrapped by OSU's ST miscue) in competitive setting against OSU and scored 10 points against a meh Florida team (5 pts were garbage time). They also scored 17 points (scored 7 points in the 4th quarter but it was too little, too late) against ND.
Defense didn't play well but it's the offense that can't do shit against team with a pulse.
February 5th, 2019 at 8:27 PM ^
Um, I seem to recall a lot of three and outs and too many to start the game. I also remember an embarassing delay of game penalty. I expect even the best defense to give up an occasional score on a short field because the offense failed to get a first down and the punt was less than desired. Defense isn't the problem when the offense can't sustain a long drive.
Florida tells me little about our defense because 7 starters were missing or injured. Kind of like last year's bowl when we were playing our third string QB and without 4 of our offensive linemen. Maybe we can blame the coach for lack of depth.
February 5th, 2019 at 5:21 PM ^
As Brian mentioned at the end of his article, lets see how the spring game goes. Until then, I'll reserve from the circle-jerk.
February 5th, 2019 at 5:23 PM ^
Best OSU
February 6th, 2019 at 6:17 AM ^
North OSU is best OSU.
February 5th, 2019 at 5:30 PM ^
So what player is most affected by this and the general reshuffling of the offense? Ben Mason?
February 5th, 2019 at 5:44 PM ^
I can't think of a recent player whose worshipful-bordering-on-sycophantic MGoBlog hype is so out of balance with what he's actually done on the field as Ben Mason.
February 5th, 2019 at 6:11 PM ^
Well, that may be true ... but it doesn't really address my question asked.
If the arrival of Gattis and McDaniels, with the departure of Hamilton, signals a sea-change in offensive philosophy, then the FB position is probably most in jeopardy. Some of the more blocky-and-less-catchy TEs might be affected as well.
FWIW, Mason ran the ball 13 times for 80 yards and 7 TDs in 2018. His blocking may be more impactful, but there are no stats for that.
February 6th, 2019 at 4:17 AM ^
I don’t know. Ben Mason can catch the ball and isn’t a bad route runner. I would love watching what happens if Gattis decides to get Ben Mason the ball in space. When he gets the chance to accelerate and build up a head of steam, that’s fun to watch.
February 5th, 2019 at 5:37 PM ^
I don't want to dump on Pep because, after all, the guy is out of a job. But he was paid very well to produce better results. Harbaugh's offseason coaching moves have been very encouraging.
February 6th, 2019 at 8:11 AM ^
He made $2 million, give or take, in two years at that job.
I would love to have Pep's problems.
February 5th, 2019 at 6:05 PM ^
I’m not one to celebrate people’s misfortune. However I will celebrate Michigan’s fortune.
February 5th, 2019 at 6:47 PM ^
One advantage of hiring McDaniels may be to bolster recruiting in Ohio. He's from Canton, and his dad was a legendary coach at Warren G. Harding. Maybe help fight Mattison & Washington on the recruiting trail. Hope so!
February 5th, 2019 at 6:50 PM ^
Thanks for trying, Pep. I’m sure he’s a good guy and I’m sure he never cheated his players out of a day of work and effort, but the man had to go if the offense was going to move to the next level.
Nothing personal. Strictly business.
February 5th, 2019 at 8:50 PM ^
We had some amazingly well designed plays. Unfortunately, they weren’t executed correctly more often than not.
I think Pep is probably a good coach. I’m not sure he’s a good coach for college kids who are still learning how to execute on a big stage.
I hope he does well in the pros after sitting for a season.
February 5th, 2019 at 10:13 PM ^
Pep really seems like a really great guy with a heart for the players he coaches. No doubt he goes on to succeed at this next stop.
He just wasn't a good fit at Michigan. Add to that the fact is seems like he was never given the kind of control most good OCs need and he did take a lot of unnecessary flak from the fanbase, myself included.
All that said, I'm excited to move onto a more traditional offense. This is exactly what Brian Kelly did and they've gotten a lot better since he surrendered the reigns.
February 6th, 2019 at 12:15 AM ^
*Warinner. Someone on here once posted it was like combining war and winner. Super easy way to remember.
February 6th, 2019 at 9:11 AM ^
I'm glad that you added this post to this thread. It was extremely valuable.
February 6th, 2019 at 1:15 AM ^
You can't give Pep credit for post Speight/O'Korn/Peters passing efficiency gains unless you also give him blame for the Rudock/good Speight to shitty Speight drop off.
That's like ignoring Rich Rod's 3-9 season and just commenting his teams always were 2 wins better than the year before after year 1.
February 6th, 2019 at 1:56 PM ^
IDK, I am happy to join in the chorus of Pep being the problem, but begs the question why JH would defer to the point of implosion (tOSU and UF, specifically; season-long slow offensive starts, generally)? He was handpicked because of their mindmeld on play design and calling. Did Pep go rogue? Maybe this is - in a light more favorable to Pep - an admission by JH that he needs a stronger play-calling contretemps? More plausible than he getting out of line.
February 7th, 2019 at 5:46 AM ^
nice article sub heading
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