Joel Klatt calls Sherrone Moore hire a no-brainer, says Michigan football got a rock star
There’s been a changing of the guard in Ann Arbor. Jim Harbaugh returned to the NFL, and Michigan football hired offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore as his replacement.
And if nothing else, Moore has one big fan in his corner: Fox Sports color commentator Joel Klatt.
Though Moore has big shoes to fill, Klatt believes the Wolverines made the right move, namely because of what he was able to do in the four games he coached for the maize and blue in 2023 when Harbaugh was suspended.
“Sherrone Moore is announced as the new head coach for the Michigan Wolverines. This was a no-brainer,” Klatt said. “That’s my first thought overall is that this is exactly what should happen and what was going to happen. And they superseded that law about the seven days and they’ve done that before. That’s why it was so surprising when that was a topic after Jim Harbaugh left for the Chargers, but they get it done. And Sherrone Moore is the new head coach. Everybody knew this was going to happen. You don’t do what he was able to do this year as the acting head coach and some of their biggest games and not get this job in particular with the culture that they’ve built. They built something so special at Michigan as the national champions, right? I mean, we didn’t think that was going to happen really, did we? And yet it did happen. And so you want to continue that. Jim Harbaugh has built something that has legs and is sustainable. And now that sustained effort is going to be handed to Sherrone Moore.”
Though there are pundits who exclaim Michigan should have perhaps done more of a national search, Klatt disagrees, saying this move the same as hiring Ryan Day was for Ohio State or hiring Lincoln Riley was for Oklahoma.
“So he’s going to get that five-year deal. He’s going to start about five and a half million. That’s absolutely in line with where he probably should be,” Klatt said. “It’s about what Ryan Day got when he first got the job at Ohio State right around Lincoln Riley when he first got the job at Oklahoma and even Steve’s first contract at Texas, down there with Steve Sarkisian. Now they’ve since got bigger deals, and rightly so because they had a lot of success. I do think Sherrone Moore is going to have a lot of success. But the first thought, as I already laid out is that this was a no-brainer. And the first element of that is that he did prove it. So we got to see this. He didn’t have to go into a job interview and say this is what I would do if I was the head coach. They got to see it in practice and they got to see it.
“And some of the biggest games that Michigan had in particular down the stretch. You look at the four games that he was the acting head coach Bowling Green early in that first suspension for Jim Harbaugh, and then later in the year, right when they are like up against it. Games in November are the ones we remember. And they went a road game against a top-10 Penn State team. They went a road game against Maryland. And then he beats the Ohio State Buckeyes. That’s the job interview. You didn’t have to have a job interview to look at what he was able to do and immediately know that he was going to going to be the coach and he did a great job in those games. Their game plans were terrific. His adjustment against Penn State was outstanding when he realized that they weren’t gonna be able to block the pass rush for Penn State and what did he do? He got big, put extra offensive linemen on the field and immediately ran the ball 32 straight times to close out the game. Incredible, incredible adjustment as the acting head coach and the play caller. More on that in just a little bit.
“The second part of me you know that looks at this from a no-brainer standpoint is the stability. If this offseason has proven anything, it’s that no program in the country is immune from the chaos that ensues with a coaching change. No program. Look at Alabama as the case study. Nick Saban walks away and retires as the greatest in the history of our sport, and immediately chaos ensued, even in Alabama. So the fact that Michigan could do this with a guy that has been in this program and helped build this culture that just culminated in the national championship is a must. And they needed to do it quickly, which is exactly what they did to avoid the chaos that naturally ensues in modern-day college football when you change your coach. I’ve had conversations with several guys, like for instance, Ohio State fans, there have been some that have clamored like, I don’t know if Ryan’s the guy you know, he lost against (Michigan) — what are you going to do? Change like, fire him so that you have to start from ground zero? That’s not what you want unless you absolutely have to. OK, what’s better is to just change — identify, what are you going to do to change and get better and then go do that, which is what Ohio State seems to have done this offseason.
“Michigan gets to avoid that because they’ve got the no-brainer right in front of them with Sherrone Moore. This guy is a rock star. I love Sherrone. I’ve loved meeting with Sherrone Moore. I think he’s going to be highly successful for a lot of reasons. And I’ll get into those here as we get there. But you look at the chaos, think about what happened at Alabama think about what’s happened at Washington some in some ways, Arizona with Jedd Fisch leaving or Texas A&M with the Jimbo move — like it just happens, man. It’s just like the churn effect gets going and everybody starts to come in and try to recruit those players away from those schools.”
Still, Moore is going to have a series of challenges beyond just retaining players and staff.
Moore has already lost defensive coordinator Jesse Minter and strength and conditioning coach Ben Herbert. Both are following Jim Harbaugh to the NFL. So, as Klatt sees it, Moore will need to establish himself as the head coach and then make the right hires.
And then, on top of that, be his own man instead of a facsimile of Harbaugh. These things are easier said than done. But Klatt is confident that Moore will deliver on those fronts.
“What is this going to look like now that Sherrone is going to be the head coach for Michigan? Well, it brings up the question immediately, like, is he going to call plays?” Klatt said. “Now, it’s a little bit different than let’s say, Ryan Day, or Lincoln Riley, when they got these jobs through kind of a similar way, almost a promotion from within. And the reason is that they had called plays for an extended period of time. And that was really their superpower. If you remember, this is actually the first year that Sherrone was the sole play caller from Michigan. So it’s not like he has an extended history, even though he did a great job. I’m not saying that he didn’t. But this is not something that has been in his DNA for even four years, or five years, or six years or 10 years. This is something that he just started doing last year. So it’s going to be easier for him to move into a CEO role than it would be those guys (who) in large part got their promotions because of their ability to call plays. That’s not necessarily why Sherrone got this job. Now, is he really good at it? Yes, obviously. And his adjustments in some of those games were really solid. But it’s a little different than those guys that had done it for an extended period of time before they got their head coaching job. So that’s going to help him if he wants to, to move off of it.
“And we’ve talked at length about this, I actually believe in college football, it might be too difficult for a coach to be a head coach and do it well, in this day and age with NIL and transfer portal and the crazy schedule that we have and be a play caller. I think it might just be too difficult. This is one of the reasons why I think Ryan Day has gone to the outside and hired Bill O’Brien as the offensive coordinator. And that’s the evidence that you need. Because this guy Ryan is one of the elite playcallers that we have in the sport. Why would he give that up? Well, it’s just too difficult. OK, so Sherrone’s going to have to battle with that from the beginning. If I were him, I would look to give that up, immediately set it up right away so that you can focus 100% on just being the head football coach, and give somebody else those duties as the play caller. I think that’ll be really important.
“And a likely candidate would be Kirk Campbell. He’s the guy that was the quarterback coach this last year. I like Kirk a lot, got to spend some time around him. He did a really good job with J.J. this year, J.J. took a step forward in his game, a pretty gigantic step forward in his game from a development standpoint, and Kirk was a big reason for that. And so I think Kirk could easily step in there and be the play-caller.
“And then the other question that I would have is what happens on defense, I expect Jesse Minter to go with with Jim Harbaugh. I think that’s that’s pretty likely. So who’s the extension of Mike Macdonald and Jesse Minter, like the defense in a large way is just as much a part of the identity of this program as the run game. And because of that, you’ve got to hold on to both, that’ll be difficult for Sherrone because he’s gonna have to find someone you can’t run a different defense — I think those players would look at you with their eyes crossed. What we’re not running is a different defense. Look at what this defense just did. We just beat Ohio State three straight times, right? Like, they’re not going to want to change defense. So they’re going to need to find who’s the extension of Mike Macdonald or Jesse Minter, that you can bring in and coordinate the defense and keep it on the rails in terms of how dominant they’ve been over the last couple of years, specifically, this last year, their defense was just incredible.
“That leads you to kind of the last thought on Sherrone, which is the difficulty for him personally. And he’s going to be caught in between these two things that are both true. He’s going to want nothing to change at Michigan, clearly, and yet, everything has to change at Michigan. How can both of those be true? Well, because Sherrone has to keep the culture, the systems and everything in place. And yet he cannot be Jim Harbaugh, nor can he try to be Jim Harbaugh. He’s got to be authentically himself.”
