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At least in 2022, the Michigan football head coach is finally getting some love from a national outlet.
Jim Harbaugh went from much maligned to getting national praise, and almost jumping ship to the NFL. However, the Wolverines head coach is staying in Ann Arbor, and now 247Sports is listing Harbaugh as the No. 6 college football coach heading into the 2022 season — higher than Ryan Day (No. 8), James Franklin (No. 13), and Kirk Ferentz (No. 15) — making him the top-rated coach in the Big Ten.
No coach in this ranking saw a bigger jump from the 2021 season to now than Jim Harbaugh, who is coming off the most notable showing of his tenure at Michigan after winning the Big Ten and reaching the College Football Playoff. He took out Ohio State for the first time, humiliated Iowa in the league title game and earned national coach of the year accolades from the AP after his program’s first conference championship since 2004. His flirtation with the NFL seems to have led to a somewhat rocky return to Ann Arbor in recent weeks with coordinator changes, but Harbaugh expects to be back in the thick of the playoff hunt in 2022 and beyond with a talented roster.
Whether or not that holds true depends heavily on how the maize and blue react to the shifts in coaching, with new coordinators on both sides of the ball. There’s more continuity on the offensive side, as quarterbacks coach Matt Weiss and offensive line coach Sherrone Moore will serve as co-offensive coordinators, and have a lot of talent returning. The defense, however, will have to replace half its starters and will have to adjust to a new coordinator in former Baltimore Ravens defensive backs coach and Vanderbilt defensive coordinator Jesse Minter, who will reportedly run the same system as Mike Macdonald.
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