How Michigan football is managing with Greg Scruggs’ abrupt departure
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — In the category of things that should not happen, new Michigan football defensive line coach Greg Scruggs was arrested for drunk driving on the Saturday before the start of spring ball. The former Wisconsin assistant reportedly had a blood-alcohol content of nearly double the legal limit. The arrest led to his resignation on Thursday.
With spring practice having begun on Monday, the Wolverines needed to quickly shift gears to cover the fact that they suddenly were without a defensive line coach. On Thursday, about a half hour after the announcement that Scruggs was no longer with the program, new head coach Sherrone Moore shared his thoughts about moving on from Scruggs. He noted that, at the moment, it’s a group effort to ensure that defensive line duties are covered from a coaching perspective.
“We’ll move swiftly but carefully, and do what we need to do to get that (covered),” Moore said. “But we have a collective unit coaching D-line and super happy with these past couple of days while that was going on. The whole defensive staff will be all hands on deck as we all are coaching every position. So looking forward to keeping it moving.”
While Moore wouldn’t share much about how he’s dividing the responsibilities for coaching the defensive line at the moment, he said defensive coordinator Wink Martindale is among those working with the group and some of the newly hired analysts will also get involved.
“Right now we’re just working through — coach Wink’s definitely helping with that,” Moore said. “And we’ll work through the logistics of the analyst piece as we go through.”
So, again, Michigan football will have to look for another new member of the coaching staff. It’s not the first time Moore will have to look for a new addition after it appeared that the staff was set. Mike Hart ended up departing the program right as the new defensive staff was announced, and the Wolverines moved quickly to hire former Ohio State running backs coach Tony Alford as his replacement. So now the maize and blue are in the market for a new coach for the defensive line.
But even in the Jim Harbaugh days, in 2021, there were a couple of late departures. Just before spring ball, prodigal linebackers coach Brian Jean-Mary departed for Tennessee. After spring ball, cornerbacks coach Maurice Linguist took the Buffalo head coaching job. When Jean-Mary left, Harbaugh slid George Helow over from safeties coach to linebackers and hired Matt Weiss to coach the quarterbacks. When Linguist left, Michigan went out and hired Steve Clinkscale to oversee the cornerbacks. So while the drunk driving offense is out of the norm, the general situation is not.
We’ll see where Moore decides to go when it comes to replacing Scruggs.
