visor pace Spurrier

Per many, many people, Michigan's hired former Jacksonville Jaguars OC Jedd Fisch as a WR coach and "passing game coordinator."

Fisch's coaching trajectory is an odd one. He played high school tennis, showed up at Florida hoping to sign up as a manager, and got rebuffed. He got a break a bit later:

An assistant coach for the Gators was recruiting one of the players on Fisch’s high school team, and before long, he had invited Fisch to do odd jobs around the football office. He spent a year quietly laboring before another assistant started giving Fisch higher-profile tasks.

His break had come. Finally.

“After a year of hiding around the office to do random projects, Coach Spurrier started noticing the work I was doing and liked what I was doing,” Fisch said. “Our relationship grew tremendously.”

After a couple of years as a GA under Spurrier at Florida, Fisch latched on to a defensive quality control spot with the Texans for a few years, then got an assistant (to the) QB/WR coach job with the Ravens, a spot he held for four years.

At this point his career blew up. First he got an honest-to-God position coach slot coaching WRs with the Broncos. That didn't last. The next year he was Minnesota's offensive coordinator and QB coach. That didn't last. He bounced back to the NFL the next year as the Seahawks' QB coach. That didn't last; the next year he was OC/QB with Miami (college edition); after two years of that he bounced to Jacksonville, where he was just unceremoniously terminated.

Fisch hasn't been anywhere for more than two years since his stint as an assistant to an assistant with the Ravens and has held three different offensive coordinator slots since 2009.

College performance:

Fisch's first year with the Hurricanes (which was also Al Golden's first year) saw a drastic improvement at QB. The year before an interception-flinging Jacory Harris struggled to the point where he was platooned with true freshman Stephen Morris. Harris completed 55% of his passes for 6.6 YPA and had a TD:INT of 14:15.

Fisch enters; Harris holds the job for the entirety of his senior season, completes 65% at 8.3 a pop and has a 20:9 TD:INT. Miami leaps from the middle of the pack in YPA to the top 20 and maintains that performance the next two years as Morris becomes a solid option.

The 2011 Miami season stands out as one of the weirdest in advanced stats. It was thoroughly discussed at the time around here since I like using FEI and having a Miami team that pooped out a 6-3 win over South Florida that far up the chart was credibility-sapping. As best I can figure, a 35-point performance against a rampant Virginia Tech defense was fuel for that ranking. S&P was not so impressed with the Fisch impact.

In any case, Fisch had a clear positive impact on the Hurricanes offense, especially in the passing game.

Things weren't nearly as successful with Minnesota. Fisch's single year there saw Adam Weber regress in most statistical categories, throwing a bunch of picks. It's hard to pick what was going wrong there, deep into the Tim Brewster era. Not much was going right with the Gophers and a single year there is no more indicative of coaching talent than Doug Nussmeier's lost 2014.

There's not much to like about Fisch's tenure with the Jaguars.

But there wasn't much to work with, either. Fisch had a rookie QB last year; three of the top four Jags WRs were also rookies. Denard Robinson had just established himself a pretty good running back when he was lost for the year, leaving a meh offensive line trying to get Toby Gerhart yards. No offense to Chad Henne, but he doesn't seem like an NFL QB.

Fisch was hurled overboard as Gus Bradley tries to salvage his job. On the one hand, you've got a short stint with an already moribund franchise that features a ton of injuries and rookies; on the other you've got a guy who is 38 and has already impressed enough people to be an offensive coordinator at three different places. The one situation he found himself in that could plausibly result in success—Miami under the competent Al Golden—resulted in that. He's a bit of a swing for the fences, but… I mean… he's basically a position coach with a cool title..

PREDICTION BASED ON FLIMSY EVIDENCE

I'd be leery of Fisch as a coordinator since his track record is a little short and uneven. As the kind of sort of third OC behind Harbaugh and Drevno and a WR coach, it's a good get. Fisch doesn't have much college experience but the guys around him all do, and if this is his goal…

What’s down the road for Fisch? Ultimately, he wants to be a head coach, and he’s working fervently to get there. He takes detailed notes in every meeting, saving the dozens of notebooks he’s amassed over the years so he can always look back along the way.

“You try to take what you can use today and use it today and then you try to store the rest of it,” Fisch said. “There’s so much from each one of these guys. I’m trying to soak it in and then make it my own — I’ve got to make sure I’m not trying to be somebody else but that I’m learning from all of these guys.”

…you know he's going to get after it as a recruiter despite having little track record in that department so far.

UPSHOT FOR THE REST OF THE COACHING STAFF

We're just about complete here, with one spot on each side of the ball yet to be determined. The leaders for those spots are Roy Manning and Jimmie Dougherty, but Manning might get pushed out if Michigan needs a bonafide second DBs coach. Chart:

S&C: Kevin Tolbert.