The Michigan Football coaching staff is set to look a bit different next season. Just a few days after head coach Sherrone Moore fired special teams coordinator JB Brown, news broke that offensive analyst Juan Castillo would be leaving the program to be the next offensive line coach at Syracuse. ESPN’s Pete Thamel was the first to report the news.
The veteran coach was only at Michigan for one season assisting Grant Newsome and the offensive linemen before taking this position at Syracuse. This was his second stint at Michigan, as he was also an offensive analyst back in 2019 under previous head coach Jim Harbaugh.
“I think any time you’re able to get someone with that kind of background, it’s awesome to be able to bounce ideas off of them and hear the way they do things,” Newsome said before the season. “I’m the most blessed offensive line coach in America.”
Castillo has been coaching football since the ‘80s, as he started out as a defensive coach at the high school ranks in 1982 before eventually switching over to the offensive side of the ball. Stops over the years for Castillo include the Philadelphia Eagles in various roles from 1995-2012, the Baltimore Ravens (2013-16), the Buffalo Bills (2017-18), the Chicago Bears (2020-21), the Washington Commanders (2022-23), and UCLA (2024). He has exclusively been an offensive coach since 2013.
Moore brought Castillo in last offseason to help Newsome coach up a young offensive line group which eventually featured three redshirt freshmen starters (Blake Frazier, Jake Guarnera, Andrew Sprague). He also left an impression on the older guys in the room.
“Juan is the best. We have been with him every day since January,” left guard Giovanni El-Hadi t0ld the media back in August. “It’s like he lives here. He always wants to just help us get better. We love him so much and we wish we had him sooner.
“He’s always active and wants to make you better. You want someone to care for you and have love for you like that. We want (the coaches) to talk to us like they all do. He’s just a little bit louder, but we love it.”
It’s never good news any time you lose a highly regarded coach, and that is exactly the case here with Castillo. I never heard anybody say a bad word about him, and given how much coaching experience he has, he was also someone for Newsome to lean on.
We wish Castillo nothing but the best at his next stop.
