When former Michigan Wolverines running back Tyrone Wheatley was officially named Michigan football's new running backs coach on Saturday, it represented a homecoming for one of the program's most respected and revered halfbacks of the modern era.
Wheatley's prep and collegiate career read like a laundry list of awards, starting with being named Michigan's 1990 High School Player of the Year. The bruising 6-foot, 235-pound tailback only kept the hits coming when he accepted a full scholarship offer to UM before the 1991 season.
After an impressive freshman campaign, Wheatley blossomed as a sophomore, gaining 1,502 all-purpose yards and scoring 16 total touchdowns en route to being named to his first of three all-Big Ten teams and being honored as 1992's Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year. Wheatley punctuated his dominant campaign in the Rose Bowl against the Washington Huskies, rushing for 235 yards and three touchdowns on a scant 15 carries in Michigan's 38-31 victory.
He followed that up with two more 1200-yard plus seasons in 1993 & 1994, cementing his legacy in Ann Arbor before being drafted by the New York Giants with the 17th pick of the 1995 NFL Draft. Wheatley would spend four years with the Giants (1995-98) before finishing his ten-year NFL career out with the Raiders (1999-2004). The best two years of his pro career came in his first two years in Oakland, when he gained a combined 2,334 all-purpose and scored four of his seven career touchdowns.
After a two-year hiatus, Wheatley found his calling in coaching with Dearborn Heights (MI) Robichaud High School in 2007. From there, he would move up the collegiate coaching ranks with running backs coach stints at Ohio Northern (2008), Eastern Michigan (2009), and Syracuse (2010-12).
Placed in a high-visibility role at Syracuse, Wheatley caught the eye of the NFL's Buffalo Bills and then-new head coach Doug Marrone, who hired him to work with Fred Jackson, CJ Spiller, and the rest of their running back corps before the 2013 campaign. The move immediately paid dividends, as the Bills finished 2nd in the NFL in total rushing before injuries tested their depth in 2014.
Now, with eight years of coaching experience to his credit and almost two decades of prep-to-pro playing experience to fall back on, new head coach Jim Harbaugh as tapped Wheatley to be the man who take the Michigan Wolverines' running game back to the heights of the program's heyday.
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