Michigan football steals linebacker coach away from SEC

Sherrone Moore has passed his first test as Michigan football head coach. He was tasked with building an entirely new defensive staff after Jesse Minter, Jay Harbaugh, Mike Elston, and Steve Clinkscale all left for the NFL.

But Moore has delivered in a big way. He hired Wink Martindale, who Minter and Mike Macdonald worked under, as the defensive coordinator. He also hired Greg Scruggs away from Wisconsin, Stephen Adegoke away from the NFL, and now according to Sam Webb of The Michigan Insider, Michigan football has hired Brian Jean-Mary away from Tennessee to be the linebackers coach as well as the run-game coordinator.

Another great hire for Michigan football

Jean-Mary spent the 2020 season on the Michigan football staff. However, he was hired by Tennessee the following offseason. Moore was familiar with Jean-Mary from his time on the staff previously and one thing I love about Jean-Mary is that he's spent time as a recruiting coordinator (Texas) in addition to being a defensive coordinator for South Florida.

That gives Michigan football another coach with coordinator experience. Adegoke and Scruggs are both up-and-coming coaches who have spent time in the NFL recently, as well as in college. The fact that Moore was able to steal away coaches from a Big Ten rival, one of the better programs in the SEC, and the NFL, makes you feel good about each of these hires.

Wisconsin and Tennessee both tried hard to keep their coaches too, but Michigan football was more aggressive and Sherrone Moore did a spectacular job building a staff.

At this point, the only question mark is the running backs coach. We haven't heard anything from Mike Hart but that doesn't mean he won't be back. But we're still waiting for the announcement that he'll be back officially.

As long as that happens, you have to feel pretty damn good about this staff. Sherrone Moore deserves an A in my book for how he's handled the transition and with all the departures, I think things turned out as well as possible and that's a credit to the new head coach.