Josh Gattis was all set to leave Alabama for Maryland, until he wasn't. As he explained on his official podcast Attack Each Day, Jim Harbaugh swooped in at the eleventh hour to pluck Gattis from Maryland like he would a 4-star defensive back.
"Found out through the grapevine that Josh was considering leaving Alabama to go to Maryland so we reached out and asked if he had any interest in Michigan. I called him at 10 o'clock in the morning and by 3:30 he was coming to Michigan with a signed Memorandum of Understanding," Harbaugh said in his first public comments since the Gattis hiring, via The Michigan Insider. "(Gattis) was on a plane here a day or two later. We've been working here the last couple of days in the office, through the weekend and today. Really, really excited."
For his part, Gattis all but confirmed he was set to go to Maryland -- and informed an unpleasant Nick Saban of his plans to do so -- until Harbaugh called.
"When Coach Harbaugh called, it kind of caught me off guard because I had just left a meeting with Nick Saban getting my butt chewed out for 20 minutes telling him I was leaving and he was trying to get me to stay. It did not go over well," Gattis said. If there was any band-aid to the bruise or whatever that he left on me, it was that phone call. It was exciting to hear his voice and to talk to him personally."
Guardian Caps: Got linemen? Pad them for inside run… “We have put them on all of the front seven defensively, mandatory, we've put them on everybody on offense but our quarterbacks and receivers.” – Lincoln Riley, OU. Get a quote for team pricing!
In addition to the chance to work at a more prestigious program and (almost certainly) more money, he gets something else he most likely wouldn't have gotten at Maryland -- the chance to run his own offense.
"Getting the right person on the bus. Someone who could coordinate our offense and run the whole offense. Very excited about that. We got better," Harbaugh said. "Started to think about that. The analogy of getting the right people on the bus. Looking at, we've had some coaches depart, that was an opportunity to our football team to grow and make ourselves better."
"Professionally and personally one of my goals was to be an offensive coordinator," Gattis added. "That's been a lifelong dream of mine. That's something with the input that I've had and the fingerprint I've been able to leave on a lot of programs has allowed me to continue to prepare myself to put me in this position."
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.