A troubling trend is following Sherrone Moore’s process with the Michigan Wolverines, and it isn’t encouraging for the future
Michigan’s hiring of Kerry Coombs is another point in a fairly worrying trend for Sherrone Moore’s tenure as head coach of the Wolverines
Last week, the Michigan Wolverines took a step forward from their 2025 season by parting ways with special teams coordinator JB Brown. Michigan’s special teams were an abject disaster this season, with kicker Dominic Zvada regressing, the punting falling off a cliff, and they basically got a complete zero out of their return game.
Michigan and head coach Sherrone Moore moved quickly to fill the role, bringing in a fairly surprising name. On Saturday, Michigan announced the hire of former Ohio State Buckeyes defensive coordinator Kerry Coombs as its new special teams coordinator.
The optics of hiring a coach that Ohio State fired aside, this is another fairly curious hire on an ever-growing list for Moore.
What was the point of the Kerry Coombs hire?
This is a puzzling hire from the get-go. Coombs was already out of football after not being retained at Cincinnati following the 2024 season, and that’s due to his age and the fact that he simply might not be a successful coach anymore. After being demoted at Ohio State in 2021, he coached special teams and cornerbacks at Cincinnati, and the Bearcats never rose above 98th in special teams FEI, 68th in beta_rank, and 65th in SP+.
The previous time he coached special teams (with the Buckeyes), the results weren’t better. Coombs inherited a unit that finished fifth in FEI in his first season, before cratering to 25th by the end of his tenure. Now, Coombs was a superb cornerbacks coach for the Buckeyes, but that doesn’t seem to be his role now with the Wolverines, though he will no doubt be involved throughout the program.
This search itself felt pretty problematic. Michigan fired Brown on Wednesday, Dec. 3, and announced Coombs less than three full days later on Saturday, Dec. 6. It either didn’t bother with an exhaustive search or already decided Coombs was their man (and isn’t that a discouraging thought). If the whole point was to improve Michigan’s special teams, why did it hire a coach who hasn’t improved a special teams unit in his entire career and was already out of the game? This is Michigan we’re talking about here.
This is a fairly odd trend for the Wolverines under Moore. Three of Moore’s five coordinator hires were fired from other teams for poor performances, and Moore has already fired the two that weren’t and probably should fire the current offensive and defensive coordinators. Are you telling me the Michigan Wolverines are the right spot for other teams’ castoffs leading the charge?
A program that has employed some tremendous coaches over the years shouldn’t be like this, and it’s a discouraging process all around. Maybe Coombs strikes gold, and Michigan turns this unit around, but the process and results haven’t panned out so far.
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