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Michigan will be looking for a new defensive lines coach.
Per Yahoo’s Pete Thamel, Michigan d-line coach Shaun Nua is accepting a job at USC to become their next defensive line coach.
Sources: USC is hiring Michigan’s Shaun Nua to be the defensive line coach. Nua coached Aidan Hutchinson and David Ojabo, who project as Top 15 picks in the NFL draft.
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) January 5, 2022
Nua would be joining Lincoln Riley’s revamped Trojans staff. Riley departed from Oklahoma to USC before the end of the regular season. Nua’s defensive line performed quite well in 2021 along the interior and of course along the edge with pass-rushing maniacs in David Ojabo and Aidan Hutchinson. The production of Michigan’s line aided Nua’s stock.
2021 marked Nua’s third season in Ann Arbor after previously serving as the d-line coach at Arizona State in 2018 and in the same position at Navy from 2012-17. Nua, from American Samoa, has strong ties to the west coast and he’ll be part of a USC program trying to get back to prominence after finding itself in the gutter in recent years.
For Michigan, the easy connect-the-dots speculation would be that defensive analyst Ryan Osborn, who’s well liked by the players, could take over for Nua. Osborn previously served as an analyst at Florida and as d-line coach at UT Martin.
This is a developing story.