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.

WIDE RECEIVERS

Changes: Josh Gattis to Miami (yes THAT Miami). Ron Bellamy will move from safeties.

On-Field Impact: I’m supposing that Bellamy, a former NFL wide receiver, will be competent in developing the talent on hand. Gattis was superb at this, however, so treading water would mean that Bellamy turns out to be one of the best WR coaches in the nation. What that looks like is a natural progression of Michigan’s receiver room to elite. Ronnie Bell’s first game was a Heisman season if he kept it up (remember the catch the refs wiped out?) Cornelius Johnson is one step from being a top-3 Big Ten receiver. Roman Wilson was breaking out. Andrel Anthony could be better than all of them, and should make the greatest jump. Sainristil and Henning were excellent in their roles and often featured in them. Bellamy would have to meet the highest expectations for a new position coach that I can ever remember.

That’s…possible. Bellamy did an extraordinary job with the safeties last year even though that’s not something he did before. He also built the worst football program in the state of Michigan into the best football program in the state of Michigan, producing more WR prospects than anything else in his West Bloomfield tenure. And lest we forget, Bellamy was going to be the WRs coach when they hired Helow and Macdonald. Helow moved down to linebackers when Brian Jean-Marie departed for Tennessee, which precipitated the hiring of Weiss. So it stands to reason that Bellamy’s a better wide receivers coach than he was a safeties coach. And he was an excellent safeties coach.

Recruiting Impact: Again, you’re losing one of Michigan’s best recruiters, and replacing him with one of Michigan’s best recruiters. Gattis was one of Michigan’s top recruiters, but fortunately he built a deep receiver room with disparate eligibilities. Any group like that which lost its position coach is going to be more subject to poaching, and with the new transfer rule and the NCAA a functional non-entity in preventing tampering, I’m sure every Michigan receiver up to and including Ronnie Bell have been receiving calls.

Fortunately Bellamy is an even more effective recruiter than Gattis. Remember, Sainristil and Johnson were recruited before Gattis came to Michigan, and some of the younger guys, like Andrel Andrel Anthony, Darrius Clemons, and Amorion Walker, already had Bellamy involved in their recruitments (remember Bellamy was going to be a receivers coach during the cycle). That leaves just Roman Wilson, AJ Henning (who’s JJ McCarthy’s dude) and Cristian Dixon who might feel like the guy they committed to has gone. As for recruiting future receivers, Bellamy is loved in Detroit, very well respected around the coaching community, and trusted by players. There’s been talk this offseason of Bellamy taking on Courtney Morgan’s role in addition to his coaching duties. So you’re going here from strength to strength here.

The bigger question is what happens to safety recruiting, including the extraordinary class that just signed here. Since Bellamy’s on staff still, Michigan isn’t totally pulling the rug out from those guys, but they should definitely make sure whomever they bring in on defense is liked by Dent, Berry, and Sabb.

TIGHT ENDS

Changes: Promoted analyst Grant Newsome to TEs coach. Jay Harbaugh will be moved to defense, position TBD.

On-Field Impact: Grant Newsome has been a constant presence and by many accounts a major asset to the program since his career was ended by a freak leg injury. I’ve met him a couple of times, but people who know him well absolutely rave about Newsome, a certifiable genius who could have thrived at an Ivy League school had he chose. It’s something of a coup that Michigan has been able to bring him into the coaching ranks—the guy could be a senator one day—and it was past time to give him an on-field position.

That he’s getting tight ends—if you recall he played offensive tackle at Michigan—is hardly weird. Sherrone Moore was an offensive lineman who coached tight ends, and the path to OL coach usually runs through the position where the larger part of stuff to learn is blocking. Erick All is at the point now where he can start mentoring guys, Schoonmaker’s more advanced right now as a receiver than a blocker, Honigford is a 6th year 6th OL and unlikely to become much more than that, and Newsome has been around all of these guys as long as they’ve been here, so the transition should go smoothly. If you think an OT can’t teach passing, there are few guys I would worry about learning new skills less than Grant Newsome. Tight end also functions as a shared position, not a separate unit, so time with the offensive line won’t be much different than it has been, and since the WRs coach is no longer also the OC, Bellamy should have more time than Gattis to help develop the tight ends’ routes. Michigan probably has an “analyst” around who can keep developing Hibner, Hansen, Loveland, and Klein on fundamentals when the current generation is taking snaps with the 1’s. Tight ends should be in good hands.

It’s still a transition, however, and it should be noted he is filling some big shoes. As with Bellamy, Jay Harbaugh can coach a number of positions. Also like Bellamy, Jay has done a superb job at the position he’s been coaching. Moore was a good TE coach in between, but it’s hard to improve on Harbaugh’s work there. In his first two seasons Jaybaugh coached Jake Butt to a Mackey, recruited Asiasi, and left his successor underclassmen Gentry, McKeon and Eubanks the most effective part of Michigan’s 2017-’18 passing game. In his second stint Harbaugh turned Erick All into a star (he should have been 1st team All Big Ten), and got Schoonmaker to a late breakout with Honigford also developing before our eyes. Again he leaves a loaded depth chart, and two very high upside prospects signed to the 2022 class.

In the interim he built the Haskins-Corum-Charbonnet-Edwards running back room, and the #1 special teams unit in the country, so he’ll probably have success wherever they put him. But Jay’s only been an offensive coach in his time here, and Michigan has to replace quasi-coach senior starters at linebacker and safety, so I’m a bit nervous. Long-term, coaching both sides of the ball bodes well for Jay continuing the family tradition of great head coaches. Short-term, I think whatever role they choose for Jay is going to be supplementary to start; they have George Helow who can coach LBs or safeties, so however the titles work out, most likely they’ll have the defensive coordinator take one of those groups with Jay as his understudy, and Helow the other.

Recruiting impact: Here is where the loss of Jay could be felt most keenly. Recruiting is less about raw brain power, and we haven’t seen Newsome do it yet, so it’s a complete question mark. The good news is they can have an excellent tight end room for years if they only hold onto the guys they have. Thanks to the free COVID year, Schoonmaker and All are technically juniors (though one or both will probably head to the NFL next year), Hibner has eligibility through 2024, Hansen can go to 2025, Loveland and Klein could redshirt and get to 2026, and Rappleyea would go to 2027. I don’t expect Newsome to be one of the most effective recruiters of his generation like Harbaugh, but Harbaugh left him so many toys that Newsome has time before he even has snaps to peddle.

RUNNING BACK

Changes: None, however Hart was not mentioned in Sam’s writeup, and there are credible rumors that Hart is the other assistant who put out feelers when Harbaugh was in the wind and got back some interest. I know Hart was told he wasn’t going to be head coach if Jim Harbaugh went to the NFL, but I’m sure that he wants to be a head coach someday, and he gave up an associate HC title to come home last year, so it’s not unreasonable to assume he’s going to be interested in any offer—including one from Michigan—that continues him on that path. Without movement there, we have to assume Hart will be back for another year as Michigan’s RB coach. If he isn’t, they can quite naturally shift Jay Harbaugh back to running backs.

On-Field Impact: None for now. If they lose Hart, one of the few knocks on Jay Harbaugh is how he deployed the RBs in 2019, when they couldn’t find enough touches for Charbonnet, Haskins, Corum, and Chris Evans, and severely under-utilized the latter two as receivers. The room isn’t as crowded now, and it’s silly to think that they’ll go to less RB-as-receiver stuff with Edwards and Corum taking over most of Haskins’s snaps. That Michigan has another good option on staff should not be taken to mean that Michigan wouldn’t be losing something if they lost Hart. There’s a reason a lot of people in Schembechler Hall were putting forward Hart’s name as a potential head coach, even this early in his career. He’s a legend at this University, but also a universally acknowledged rising star in his profession. The RBs room played an outside role in the attitude turnaround last year, and while that’s mostly a credit to Haskins, Corum, and Edwards themselves, it’s not like any Michigan fan over 30 can pretend the confidence, will, and focus emanating from Mike Hart’s wards has nothing to do with Mike Hart.

Recruiting Impact: Hart just secured a commitment from Cole Cabana. If we lose Hart, it may affect that, but again it’s too early to say. If they have to replace Hart with the guy who recruited Haskins, Charbonnet, Corum, and Edwards, I think we’re going to be okay.

OFFENSIVE LINE

Changes: None.

On-Field Impact: As mentioned, Moore may take a more active role in game-planning based on how his line is shaping up. I expect, for example, that they’ll be running behind Zinter an awful lot.

Recruiting Impact: None. All of the OL principles are still in place.