Michigan Football: Chris Partridge to Ole Miss is big loss for Wolverines

Michigan football suffered a big loss Thursday as Ole Miss announced Chris Partridge as its new defensive coordinator. Here’s the fallout.

It seemed inevitable that Chris Partridge was going to leave Michigan football once it was reported that Ole Miss wanted him as its defensive coordinator and Thursday, it became official.

Lane Kiffin and the Rebels announced a number of staff moves and among them was the hiring of Partridge as co-defensive coordinator, which is a huge blow to the Wolverines.

For one, many were holding out hope that Partridge could be an option to replace Don Brown. However, according to some inside info from Sam Webb of The Michigan Insider ($), that was never a possibility. Webb says that Partridge would not have gone for that.

It’s unclear if Michigan football made a serious attempt to keep him, either with a raise or any sort of promotion, but ultimately, you can’t blame Partridge for jumping at the chance to be a DC in college football’s premier conference.

But that doesn’t change the fact that it will leave a huge void on the staff for Jim Harbaugh to fill and at a time when it’s clear that Michigan football needs more talent, one of its best recruiters is walking out the door.

Over the years, Partridge has been essential in landing elite prospects like Rashan Gary, Daxton Hill and Aubrey Solomon, who ended up transferring. He’s been recognized as an elite recruiter by 247 sports and was ranked in the top 10 in 2019.

You were hoping that Michigan would find a way to elevate him to co-DC or something like that to keep him, but that only works if Partridge and Brown are both open to it.

This move doesn’t necessarily mean that Brown is coming back, yet, there has been no indication of a change. The search now begins to replace Partridge, who also served as special teams coordinator and safeties coach.

On the bright side, Harbaugh has done a good job of finding replacements for his staff. Josh Gattis proved to be a good hire as have others like Shaun Nua, Sherrone Moore, Ed Warriner and Anthony Campanile.

And the other thing is that Michigan has always done well in recruiting, in part, based on its history and tradition. Harbaugh certainly helps and Gattis is making a huge difference offensively.

But with a defense that lacks elite pass rushers and corners, recruiting more top-tier talent is vital to catching the elite programs and with Partridge now in the SEC, that only gets more difficult.