Michigan Football: Staff moves could help with 4-star DB Dillon Tatum

While it’s hard to know how the new Michigan football staff will impact recruiting but it should help with four-star defensive back Dillon Tatum. 

One of the biggest questions coming out of the staff shakeup Michigan football experienced this past weekend as Brian Jean-Mary departed to coach linebackers at Tennessee.

Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh acted quickly and hired a guy in Matt Weiss that he’s familiar with. Weiss was the running backs coach last year for the Ravens and also worked with Harbaugh at Stanford.

He will be the quarterbacks coach with the Wolverines and Michigan officially announced the move on Monday along with the move of Ron Bellamy to safeties coach and George Helow from safeties coach to linebackers coach.

Here’s what Harbaugh said about Weiss:

"“I am really excited about reconnecting with Coach Matt Weiss,” said Harbaugh. “We have a great relationship from our time together at Stanford and he brings a great deal of experience coaching all three phases of the game in addition to his strength in the area of analytics and game strategy.”"

While we broke down the addition of Weiss to the staff, the biggest shift it caused is having Bellamy move from wide receivers over to the defense.

Yet, with one of Michigan football’s top recruits in the 2022 class, Dillon Tatum, a four-star athlete out of West Bloomfield, Michigan, it could make a positive impact, especially since Bellamy was Tatum’s coach last season as West Bloomfield won a state title.

Tatum is 5-foot-11, 190 pounds and one of the top recruits in the state of Michigan in this class. He’s currently ranked as the No. 13 athlete overall in 2022 and No. 5 in the state.

Just last week, the Wolverines picked up a crystal ball projection for Tatum, which was a positive sign for Michigan football after Michigan State had gained some momentum.

And even though the move of Bellamy to coach defense certainly wasn’t designed with Tatum in mind, it figures to help his recruitment. The fact that a bunch of former teammates are now Wolverines too, such as Donovan Edwards won’t hurt either.

In an interview with Sam Webb recently, here’s what Tatum said about his decision-making process: “We have some homework that we have to do. All these schools that are accepting commitments… when that happens, does that change your offer with a school?”

It sounds like Tatum could be making a decision sooner rather than later and now that his old high school coach would be his position coach, that has to help Michigan football’s chances.