Michigan Football: What Don Brown’s dismissal means for Wolverines

In a move that should have happened a year or two ago, Michigan football reportedly let go of defensive coordinator Don Brown.

While there is still no word on what will happen with head coach Jim Harbaugh, Michigan football will at least have a new defensive coordinator next season according to reports.

Bruce Feldman of Fox Sports was the first to report that Michigan football was moving on from Don Brown and then Adam Rittenberg of ESPN also added that Brown was out and that others were going to follow.

This is a move fans have wanted for some time and it was clear a change was needed. At the same time, Brown was a class act and did put together a number of highly-ranked seasons on defense. Plus in 2016 and 2017, his defenses played well enough to beat Ohio State.

As far as what this means in the grand scheme of things for Michigan football, it has to be a sign that Jim Harbaugh is going to be back. In fact, it’s probably the most clear sign to date.

If Harbaugh wasn’t going to return, why would he fire Don Brown? It makes absolutely no sense. But as John Bacon and others have reported, if Harbaugh was to return, there were going to need to be changes and many assumed they started with Brown.

On Tuesday, that idea was confirmed.

We’ll see where things go from here as far as who else could be out, but I would expect more assistants on both sides of the ball to go.

Defensive assistants such as Shaun Nua (defensive line), Brian Jean-Mary (linebackers) and Mike Zordich have all been rumored as being on the hot seat and part of that might just depend on who the new coordinator is.

The safety job also appears to be open and there has been a hint of Michigan being interested in Tim Banks who is the safeties coach and co-DC at Penn State.

On the offensive side of the ball, it seems like Josh Gattis will be back, but you wonder if Michigan will bring in someone to be a co-offensive coordinator or someone new to coach quarterbacks.

As far as Brown, the move simply needed to be made and the Wolverines need to spend whatever it takes to get a big-time coordinator, although Derek Mason of Vanderbilt does have ties to Harbaugh and is thought of highly in defensive circles.

At the very least, this might be the most concrete evidence yet that Jim Harbaugh will be the coach at Michigan next season.