A week ago Michigan fans were wrapping their heads around the idea of Josh Gattis as Michigan’s next head coach (or telling lies to prevent it). While Jim Harbaugh was interviewing for NFL jobs, however, his staff couldn’t be expected to sit around waiting to see if they’d get his. Evidently, Josh Gattis connected with Mario Cristobal, and Bruce Feldman now reports that Michigan’s Broyles Award-winning offensive coordinator is leaving for Miami.

BREAKING: Michigan OC Josh Gattis is accepting the Miami’s offensive coordinator job, per source. The 38-year-old Gattis who helped the Wolverines to the Big Ten title in 2021, won the Broyles Award as the nation’s top assistant coach. Big addition for the Canes.

— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) February 6, 2022

That’s a blow. Gattis was the blueprint for the youth takeover on Harbaugh’s staff, and a leader in the cultural turnaround toward positivity that fueled their run to a win over Ohio State, a Big Ten Championship, and the program’s first-ever playoff appearance. Gattis also built an incredible, and incredibly fast, young receiving room, with Ronnie Bell, Cornelius Johnson, Mike Sainristil, AJ Henning, Roman Wilson, and Andrel Anthony set to form one of the deepest and speediest groups in Michigan history.

On the other hand, Michigan was already preparing for life beyond Gattis, who just three years into becoming an offensive coordinator in his own right was a top candidate for several open Power 5 jobs this offseason, and almost certainly would have been again in a year. Keeping him in Ann Arbor was likely going to take an Associate Head Coach designation, perhaps with a succession plan.

His choosing to leave to be the OC of another school is what sticks, and therefore I look forward to seeing the details of his Miami contract. How much money he receives, what title he gets, and most of all whether any other assistants leave could swing perceptions of how much Gattis was drawn to Miami or repelled by Ann Arbor. Michigan was set to have a breakout offense next year, with a battle between two excellent quarterback options, that receiver room, a pair of star running backs, three parts of an excellent offensive line, and two great TEs returning. Unless the money is considerably higher, it would have seemed that Michigan was a better stepping stone than the rebuilding Canes to Gattis’s future goals, and that those goals were already very close.

It’s hard, then, not to certain elements of the fanbase and the flow of false rumors as contributing factors. Harbaugh too is rightfully going to be criticized, since by all accounts he did a terrible job keeping his assistants informed of his plans, a breach of trust that’s more relevant now that he’s going to have to get them to work for him again. It also didn’t help that Michigan fans often wondered aloud if it was Harbaugh running Gattis’s offense, or if Ed Warinner was secretly teaching them how to run the ball, claims that always had more than hint of that old “Martelli is secretly running Juwan’s program” flavor of bullshit. However Cristobal is an offensive guy as well, and the Hurricane fanbase isn’t going to be any better than Michigan’s, so it’s not like that situation, at least, is changing.

Co-offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore, another young assistant who has moved up the ranks in the program, could assume the role himself, or, since the O-Line is basically a coordinator position itself, share it with another. Most expect that to be Matt Weiss, who as of last Thursday was expected to be following Harbaugh to the Vikings. There's also speculation that they'll be moving Bellamy to receivers to open up space on the defensive staff. They also have Mike Hart. I’ve confirmed from several who would know that the report Hart was ahead of Gattis in the Harbaugh replacement sweepstakes was a complete fabrication, but Hart had nothing to do with that, and is still regarded as future head coach material inside the building. Harbaugh will probably first look around at outside options. But he should probably look to shoring up the rest of his staff first.