Michigan is losing at least three assistant coaches to the NFL as Jesse Minter and Mike Elston join the Los Angeles Chargers while Jay Harbaugh heads to the Seattle Seahawks.
The 2024 Michigan football team will look very different than its 2023 national championship team after losing Jim Harbaugh and more than two-thirds of its starters.
We’ve all seen the HOT Takes about firing Warde because he hates Jim Harbaugh, only drinks skim milk and doesn’t wear khakis. But his legacy will be defined based on what happens next. And I’m sure we are all curious how much he has prepared for this moment - the one where his National Championship coach may leave.
Previously: Offense. DEFENSIVE END A paring of Derrick Moore and Josiah Stewart might not be particularly far off the legendary Hutchinson-Ojabo pairing from 2021. Stewart and Moore were already Michigan's top edge guys per PFF, and they were more or less indistinguishable from the departed Braiden McGregor and Jaylen Harrell in UFR grading. Neither was exactly a star in 2023, but it's not hard to extrapolate them from very good rotation players into stars with another year of development They had pass rush win rates of 17% (Stewart) and 15% (Moore), which was good for 18th and 43rd, respectively, amongst 251 P5 edges with at least 100 snaps. Meanwhile, you may remember some grousing in this space about Stewart not holding the edge in a couple early games but once he got that figured out he was an excellent run defender. Also: the way Michigan ran its pass rush last year probably put a cap on just how highly they could grade out. Guys like Chop Robinson and Bralen Trice are s
UFR GLOSSARY is here. Video note: I went back to Streamable because Youtube's been awful lately. FORMATION NOTES: Saban got creative in his last coaching appearance. I called this one "Pistol TTBy (X)" for Trips to the Boundary with a covered X-receiver. Reminder that "RB" means the halfback set up on the same side as the strength and a letter in parentheses means that player is covered. For example I called this "Single-Wing RB (Y)." There's a WR on the far left covering #45. Michigan's passing downs exotic was that 30-wide front with a stand-up DE in the B-gap that I started calling "Crable" at some point because I'm an aughts guy. In the 2nd half Bama started using two-back sets and setting up their RT in the backfield (they weren't calling anything this game) to give Milroe more protection. Speaking of respect… [Patrick Barron] Out of respect for your time and our photographers' skills I'm going to refrain