Seahawks expected to hire Jay Harbaugh as special-teams coordinator
SEATTLE – Jay Harbaugh, the son of Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh, is expected to join the Seahawks’ coaching staff as special-teams coordinator, a league source confirmed to the Seattle Times.
SI.com and 247sports.com initially reported the move Monday.
Jay Harbaugh and new Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald have twice coached together – in 2014 with the Ravens (Macdonald as a defensive intern and Harbaugh as offensive quality control coach) and in 2021 when Macdonald was the defensive coordinator at Michigan and Harbaugh the tight-ends coach and special-teams coordinator.
Harbaugh was the safeties coach and special-teams coordinator for Michigan the past two seasons.
It had been assumed that Harbaugh would follow his father to a position with the Los Angeles Chargers. But a 247sports.com report over the weekend said the Seahawks had emerged as an “additional possibility.”
The Harbaugh hiring is the first to any of the three coordinator positions.
Larry Izzo has been Seattle’s special-teams coordinator the past three years. Izzo interviewed with the Giants last month, but New York hired Michael Ghobrial.
Jay Harbaugh, 34, also coached running backs at Michigan. And as running backs coach, one of his players was current Seahawk Zach Charbonnet, who began his career at Michigan before transferring to UCLA.
Charbonnet scored 11 TDs and had 726 yards in 2019 with Jay Harbaugh coaching running backs.
The Seahawks on Friday hired former Minnesota Vikings coach Leslie Frazier as assistant head coach.
Jay Harbaugh began his coaching career with four years as an undergraduate assistant at Oregon State under Mike Riley from 2008 to 2011. His duties during that time included assisting with the special-teams units.
He then spent three years as offensive quality control coach with the Ravens in 2012-14 under his uncle, John Harbaugh, before then joining his father, Jim, with Michigan in 2015. Throughout all of his Michigan tenure he was either assistant special-teams coach or special-teams coordinator while also coaching another position (tight ends 2015-16, running backs 2017-20, tight ends 2021 and safeties 2022-23).
He was named the special-teams coordinator of the year in 2021 by FootballScoop.com, a season in which Michigan was judged to have the best special teams in college football by Football Outsiders. He also coached kicker Jake Moody, who won the 2021 Lou Groza Award as the best kicker in college football, was a third-round choice of the 49ers in 2023 and will be San Francisco’s kicker in the Super Bowl on Sunday.
Harbaugh will have some big shoes to fill with the Seahawks, however, as Seattle’s special-teams units have ranked in the top six in football analyst Rick Gosselin’s special-teams rankings each of the past three years – third in 2021, second in 2022 and sixth in 2023.