ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Football teams often have to deal with sudden change, but perhaps the change was even more sudden for special teams coordinator Kerry Coombs.
The former Ohio State defensive coordinator was the final hire by former head coach Sherrone Moore, having ousted JB Brown at the end of the season. Coombs was in Ann Arbor for just a few days before Moore, himself, was out. Thus, his head was somewhat spinning, as he got a new job and then suddenly, the person who hired him was gone.
On Thursday, Coombs recalled the tumultuous December and how he found himself wearing maize and blue.
"It's quite a story," Coombs said. "There's a great book in there somewhere. I got hired, officially hired, on Saturday. Coach asked me if I could be up
here on Sunday, which I packed my boxes and came on up and said we've got practice on Monday. We did. That was our first bowl practice. Coach was sitting in the front row. We started with a special teams meeting. I was installing things. We practiced the first day. Same thing for the second day. Then the third day, Coach got up in the middle of the meeting and left. Then we ended up having a full meeting after that. We were notified that there was going to be a change made.
"For me, I give Biff and those guys that were here a lot of credit for holding things together. They embraced me. I knew some guys in the building because the guys were here, like Dave and Phil Bromley. Those guys were here when I was bringing my high school team up here years and years ago. I knew some people. Tony is the only guy I knew on the staff. It was an incredible month. My wife would tell you that. I couldn't be more excited to have survived that and be here right now."
Coombs was ultimately retained by Kyle Whittingham as part of the new staff, but he had an incredible audition process, having shown how quickly he can turn around a unit.
Michigan had the 111th special teams unit to finish the season, according to ESPN SP+, but against Texas in the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl, it appeared as if it had completely reversed from being a moribund outfit to one making plays. Special teams suddenly had a return game and even forced a turnover -- the opposite of what had been seen previously.
Even so, Coombs refused to give himself credit for whipping that side of the ball into shape, and more so said it was a group of hungry players who wanted to prove themselves.
"I think our kids did it," Coombs said. " I think our kids had some resolve about them. They wanted to show some things, improve some things. We made changes, but I think it was all based on how the kids performed. I love these kids. They took to what we were asking them to do and just did everything with as much energy as they possibly could. I think that's really a credit to them in the bowl game."
It's early enough in fall camp where there are no obvious returners, but Coombs did say that there is a difference between what he wants from the kick returners (he wants bigger bodies returning there) and on punt return. It's likely that Pitt transfer Trey Butkowski gets the nod as the starting kicker, and Cam Brown as the starting punter.
This article originally appeared on Wolverines Wire: Kerry Coombs reflects on his wild start at Michigan
