Jedd Fisch, Wolverine

Jedd Fisch

Former Jacksonville Jaguars offensive coordinator, who was fired after the season, has taken a job as Michigan's passing game coordinator and will work with the quarterbacks.

Fisch - whose playing career appears either non-existent or too pedestrian to mention anywhere - began his career as a high school coach before moving on to be the New Jersey Red Dogs wide receivers coach in the Arena Football League. After that he became a grad assistant at Florida under Steve Spurrier from 1999-2000. He moved on to the NFL in 2001 for the Houston Texans and coached during their inaugural season in 2002, sticking around under Dom Capers until 2003.

Fisch then moved to the Baltimore Ravens, where he worked in a few different roles on offense under head coach Brian Billick. He helped to coach quarterback Steve McNair, wide receiver Mark Clayton, and wide receiver Derrick Mason, all of whom had solid careers in Baltimore. After spending four years with the Ravens, he moved to the Denver Broncos as their wide receivers coach in 2008, the year when Brandon Marshall had 104 catches, 1265 yards, and 6 touchdowns. Rookie Eddie Royal caught 91 passes for 980 yards and 5 touchdowns. Those numbers aren't bad when considering that Jay Cutler was the quarterback.

The next year, 2009, was his first college full-time coaching job. He spent it at Minnesota under Tim Brewster, where Fisch was the offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach, working with the Gophers' all-time career passing yardage leader, Adam Weber. Then it was back to the NFL for one season as the quarterbacks coach for the Seattle Seahawks and Matt Hasselbeck.

He returned to college in 2011-2012 to be the offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach at Miami-FL under Al Golden, and then jumped to the Jaguars with head coach Gus Bradley - whom he had worked with in Seattle - prior to the 2013 season.

Hit the jump for the other half of the profile.

Here are some career highlights from his time as a college coach, since NFL production is largely unrelated:

• Adam Weber went 191/367 (52%) for 2583 yards, 13 touchdowns, and 15 interceptions in 2009. The Gophers were #110 in total offense (306.5 yards/game) and #100 in scoring offense (20.9 points/game). The team went 6-7.
• Jacory Harris went 195/300 (65%) for 2486 yards, 20 touchdowns, and 9 interceptions in 2011. The Hurricanes were #47 in total offense (430.3 yards/game) and #62 in scoring offense (29.2 points/game). The team went 6-6.
• Stephon Morris went 245/421 (58%) for 3345 yards, 21 touchdowns, and 7 interceptions in 2012. The Hurricanes were #36 in total offense (440.2 yards/game) and #49 in scoring offense (31.4 points/game). The team went 7-5.

I did not include rushing statistics, really, since his job as passing game coordinator will largely leave him out of that aspect of the game. However, the rushing numbers were not impressive at Minnesota, whereas the gig at Miami got some pretty good seasons out of Lamar Miller and Duke Johnson.

I am not impressed with this hire, but not every hire on a staff can be a home run. Brewster did a terrible job at Minnesota, but Weber was a multi-year starter and still put up bad numbers. Harris was a multi-year starter, and Fisch did a decent job there. Morris was a mixed bag - lots of yards, low completion percentage, decent touchdown-to-interception ratio. Fisch just got fired from the Jaguars, who are a bad team in general and have been starting lots of young guys and vagabonds. Still, former 2nd round pick Chad Henne got benched in favor of #3 overall pick Blake Bortles, and neither of them could really do much of anything. I did not watch much of Jacksonville these past two years except for highlights, but from what little I saw of them, it seemed like Fisch liked to throw the ball down the field and did not use the short passing game very well.

The bright side is that Jim Harbaugh is not a CEO type and will take a hands-on approach when it comes to play calling, coach the quarterbacks, etc. I think this hire would be cause for alarm if someone like Brady Hoke were still the head coach, but Harbaugh is a different story. With a good run game coordinator (hopefully) in Tim Drevno, some downfield passing might be a good thing once you get the play-action aspect sucking up some linebackers and defensive backs. And with Fisch rarely seeming to spend more than two years anywhere, he'll probably be gone fairly soon.