SAN JOSE, Calif. — On Sunday, Seattle Seahawks outside linebackers coach Chris Partridge will have an opportunity to fulfill every football coach’s dream: earn a Super Bowl ring. It will be extra sweet for Partridge if his team beats the New England Patriots, given another championship ring he earned but never received.
Partridge, 45, was the linebackers coach for Michigan’s 2023 national championship team. But for only the first 10 games. Weeks after Connor Stalions’ in-person scouting scheme blew up in the middle of Michigan’s season, athletic director Warde Manuel abruptly fired Partridge a day before the Wolverines’ Nov. 18 game at Maryland.
The Athletic reported at the time that “the school believes Partridge interfered with the NCAA’s investigation into Michigan’s alleged in-person scouting scheme, but hasn’t determined that he was directly involved.” Other outlets reported more detailed allegations that he “attempted to cover up evidence” and “pressured players to be untruthful or not to cooperate with NCAA investigators.”
Partridge waited until after the Wolverines’ win over Ohio State a week later to issue a public statement, insisting he had “no knowledge whatsoever of any in-person or illegal scouting, or illegal sign stealing. Additionally, at no point did I destroy evidence related to an ongoing investigation.”
— Chris Partridge (@CoachCPartridge) August 15, 2025
It took nearly two years for the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions to issue its final verdict on Michigan last August. It hammered Stalions (eight-year show cause) and former head coach Jim Harbaugh (10 years) and issued penalties to then-head coach Sherrone Moore and former staffer Denard Robinson.
But when it came to Partridge, the committee ultimately found “insufficient information to reasonably conclude that Partridge attempted to influence a student-athlete to lie about it to the enforcement staff.” It cleared him of two less serious allegations as well. His only transgression, per the report, was sending 77 text messages to a recruit before a permissible date. He received no punishment.
His vindication came far too late, though, for him to continue coaching in college.
Partridge, a former New Jersey high school coach who helped develop future Wolverines star Rashan Gary, joined Harbaugh’s original Michigan staff in 2015 and stayed for five seasons before becoming co-defensive coordinator for Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss from 2020 to 2022. He returned to Michigan before the 2023 season, only to be terminated less than a year in.
He says he interviewed for several college openings after the season but couldn’t escape the cloud of the Michigan scandal.
“The interview process went all the way through, where I got to the end, and it was like, ‘OK, great. Let me just get this signed off with the AD,’” Partridge said. “And then it was like, ‘Well, we can’t do it. They won’t let you get hired right now, until the investigation is over.’”
Meanwhile, Harbaugh’s Michigan team was completing its run to a 15-0 season and national championship behind a top-five defense he helped develop. He received no ring.
“It was hard to swallow.”
Partridge had already begun pivoting to a second career. He met with several coaching agencies about creating a position in which he could use his contacts to help place job-seeking assistants on head coaches’ staffs. He received positive responses and even an offer from one company to let him build out a staff.
But then, in February 2024, the new head coach of the Seattle Seahawks called.
“It was a no-brainer,” said Partridge. “I had to put (the agency) on hold.”
Mike Macdonald spent a decade with John Harbaugh at the Baltimore Ravens, but his first defensive coordinator job came in 2021, working for John’s brother at Michigan. That was the year Jim Harbaugh bounced back from his worst season in Ann Arbor to begin a run of three straight Big Ten championships and CFP appearances.
Macdonald, who returned to Baltimore in 2022, did not overlap with Partridge, who was at Ole Miss that season. But he worked for Partridge’s longtime boss and had already hired Jay Harbaugh, Jim’s son, as special teams coordinator.
And the Ann Arbor-to-Seattle pipeline doesn’t end there. Third-year defensive end Mike Morris played on Michigan’s 2021 and ’22 Big Ten title teams, and second-year tight end AJ Barner — who spent his first three seasons at Indiana — started for the 2023 title team. He is one of 17 members of that squad who began this season on an active NFL roster.
“All the coaches in the NFL now from that Michigan regime, and all the players as well, speaks to how good of a team that we had,” Barner said.
Partridge has bittersweet feelings about that period.
“My daughter was 14 years old, going to high school in Michigan, seeing all this stuff. And my wife,” he said. “Trying to explain to them I got fired and didn’t even know what I did wrong — it’s hard.
“… I just put my head down and got to work and just felt like good would come out of it. And I feel like it has. Shoot — I’m at the Super Bowl.”