Michigan Friday: Jimmy Hired an Offensive Coordinator

This situation seemed to have popped up out of nowhere.  On Thursday morning, Jimmy's coaching staff was full on the offensive side and had two big holes on the defensive side after Ohio State's new coach went fishing in Jimmy's pond.

All of us were expecting two defensive coaches to be hired, as Pep was looking for an NFL job.   Then Jimmy goes out and hires a young OC off of Alabama's staff that was expected to take the same role at Maryland.

Josh Gattis, is a high riser in the assistant coaching ranks.   He has been coaching WR's at Vandy and Penn State for James Franklin before Nick hired him away to Alabama.   Which also means he has gotten to work with Joe Moorhead and new Maryland HC Mike Locksley at Alabama.  Josh is 34 years old and is also known as a very good recruiter.  

At the surface, this looks like a home run hire and one nobody really saw coming.  In fact, earlier in the day, there where reports he was being hired by Maryland.    What he did with Alabama's WR 's this year can be duplicated in Ann Arbor with the current talent at WR and an accurate thrower in Patterson.   I also love how Alabama's offense was nowhere near one-dimensional this year.

Is it too soon to start nicknaming his offense?  The Gattis Gun.  🌝

Welcome Josh!

What does this mean for Pep?  I expect that Jimmy and Pep have had a handshake and wished each other good luck.   Jimmy won't go on record and say Pep has been fired before he has had a chance to find a new job.

• Reports are that Temple has hired N. Illinois coach Rod Carey.  The Don Brown watch should be over.   Unless Northern Illinois comes knocking. 

• Tate Martell OSU backup QB last year in now in the Transfer portal.  Jalen Hurts is also in the portal.

• Jimmy and DB also interviewed Boston College's Co-DC Anthony Campanile for one of their opening on defense earlier this week. 

Michigan Basketball beat Illinois last night 79-69

Its was a bit of a tough watch as Illinois was trying to make up for a lack of talent with a scraping defense.   Illinois got Michigan to speed up and dribble a bit too much, which caused 14 Michigan turnovers.   

Michigan was clearly the better team on the floor and that started to show in the second half as they kept a decent lead most of the half.   A couple of notes from the game, Jordan Poole struggled on both ends of the court and freshman big man Brandon Johns didn't even see the court.  

I love the balanced scoring last night:

Simpson 16

Brazdeikis 15

Matthews 14

Teske 13

Poole 10

Livers 9

from The BIG HOUSE Blog http://mbighouse.blogspot.com/2019/01/michigan-friday-jimmy-hired-offensive.html