Brian Jean-Mary will allegedly return to teach linebackers for Michigan football.
It looks like someone you know is headed back to Ann Arbor. According to 247 Sports, Brian Jean-Mary, the former linebackers coach for the Michigan football team, is coming back to assume his old role and manage the run defense.
In 2020, 48-year-old Jean-Mary led the team under former head coach Jim Harbaugh. Prior to moving to Tennessee, where he spent the previous three seasons coaching linebackers, Sherrone Moore was in his last year as the tight ends coach.
After George Helow, who was let go in February 2023; Chris Partridge, who was fired in November for violating a university policy prohibiting him from discussing an ongoing NCAA investigation; and Rick Minter, the father of former defensive coordinator Jesse Minter, who currently works under coach Jim Harbaugh as a defensive analyst for the Los Angeles Chargers, he is now the fourth linebackers coach at Michigan in the last 14 months.
Jean-Mary, a 24-year-old head coach, was formerly a linebacker at Appalachian State in the 1990s. She has also had coaching positions at Georgia Tech (2004–09), South Carolina (2001–02), North Alabama (2003), Louisville (2010–13), Texas (2014–16), and South Florida (2017–19).
The NFL provided Moore with his first two defensive hires: defensive coordinator Don “Wink” Martindale of the New York Giants and defensive backs coach Stephen Adegoke of the Houston Texans, who took Steve Clinkscale’s post in 2021 and has ties to the school as a former graduate assistant.
All that’s left for the Wolverines to do is close the gap left by Mike Elston, the former defensive line coach.The U-M football fan base, which usually numbers over 100,000 at home games and at volunteer games, was not exactly well-received by Jean-Mary, who had recently been hired by Tennessee, back in 2021.
According to Jean-Mary, the University of Michigan crowd is more like a tennis crowd than a terrible one, and that’s something the good crowd there won’t say. “The University of Tennessee has more of a gladiator stadium crowd.”