San Francisco 49ers: Harbaugh Needed to Go
By Marc Grandi
One year ago at this time, the San Francisco 49ers were making headlines for all the right reasons: beating the Green Bay Packers in frigid Lambeau Field and taking care of business against a good Carolina Panthers team in order to set up the NFC Championship game against the Seattle Seahawks.
This season, however, the 49ers are making headlines for all the wrong reasons: parting ways with Jim Harbaugh, one of the most successful coaches — record wise — the NFL has seen over the last four years. The split was reportedly “mutual,” but whether it was or not is beside the point. The only angle that matters is if the 49ers made a mistake letting him walk unburdened to Ann Arbor, Michigan.
It was not a mistake; the time for Harbaugh to move on and start anew somewhere else — just as he did at the University of San Diego and Stanford — had come.
There is something about Harbaugh’s nature that forces him to bounce around from place to place quite often. Albeit difficult to pinpoint exactly what this trait is, it is relatively clear that after a given amount of time (somewhere around four or five years) Harbaugh experiences tension with higher-ups, fellow coaches, or perhaps even players.
In fact, I remember hearing that certain people within Stanford’s football program were somewhat relieved after learning Harbaugh was leaving Palo Alto for San Francisco.
Perhaps it is all just a big coincidence and maybe Harbaugh has always been paired with particularly volatile coworkers, but there does seem to be a trend in places Harbaugh has been.
From the outside, it sure seems as if the sole reason Harbaugh will not return to the red and gold next season is because of issues between himself, owner Jed York, and general manager Trent Baalke. I guarantee tension was present between those three, but that is not unusual in NFL front offices; there are always disagreements and very rarely is the relationship between the heads of organizations exactly as described in their press conferences.
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Of course, some organizations have better relations than others. Perhaps the 49ers are near the league’s cellar in that category, but that is not what I am arguing. I doubt York and Baalke based their decision to split up with Harbaugh solely on relationship issues — they know better than that. They must believe that Harbaugh and his staff did not produce the best football team with the given talent. I agree.
However, in order to agree with the monumental decision, one had to have been ready to fire Harbaugh before this past season even started — right after the 49ers’ loss to Seattle in the NFC Championship. Early in the year, a report spearheaded by Fox Sports’ Jay Glazer stated that even a Lombardi Trophy would not keep Harbaugh with the 49ers.
Operating under the assumption that the reasoning behind the split was a combination of personal issues and on-the-field issues, one can assume that the 49ers’ performance in the 2013-2014 season was reason enough to the rid San Francisco of the coach who brought the back into the national spotlight.
Current offensive coordinator Greg Roman, who spent time with Harbaugh at Stanford as a tight end and offensive line coach and followed him to the 49ers, has received most of the blame for offensive struggles. While he has been under much more fire this past season than in previous seasons (which is a result of the record), many have been discontent with Roman for the past few years, believing that the 49ers’ offense is not performing as well as it should given the talent on the roster.
December 28, 2014; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh (left) and offensive coordinator Greg Roman (right) before the game against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi
Once again, I agree. Under Harbaugh and Roman, San Francisco’s offense never performed as well as expected. However, what is important to understand — and what many seem to forget — is that Harbaugh had the ability to override any and every offensive call by Roman. Roman was the offensive coordinator, but Harbaugh could technically call every single play of every single game if he so desired. With that, it is nearly impossible to blame only Roman for offensive struggles; instead, both deserve to be blamed and perhaps Harbaugh, as the head coach, deserves the brunt of the blame.
In recent memory, the 49ers’ offense was one-sided — and for good reason. Harbaugh and Roman inherited a team with lots of talent, particularly on defense and the offensive line. With Frank Gore in the backfield, creating a power run-game was one of their few choices.
That approach worked for some time. The 49ers would consistently be towards the top of the league in rushing yards per game and near the bottom in passing yards per game, no matter the quarterback. San Francisco’s offense did experience an awakening when Colin Kaepernick became the official starting quarterback and led the 49ers to Super Bowl XLVII. This jolt, however, was not ingenuity on Harbaugh or Roman’s part; instead, it was simply Kaepernick’s unreal speed and unique ability to run the read-option (which defenses have since adjusted to and weeded out).
Football — like many sports — is a game of adjustments: a new, seemingly unstoppable offense is introduced into the league, defensive coordinators everywhere plot to stop the new scheme, and eventually the new offense is as rare as it was before it was introduced.
The next natural step would be to adjust back. Under Harbaugh, San Francisco has not been able to exploit the extra man devoted to stopping Kaepernick’s running ability. Instead, Roman and Harbaugh continually called plays not suitable to Kaepernick’s skill-set. While he has as strong of an arm as any other quarterback in the league, he struggles with accuracy, especially on throws of 20 or more yards.
He is not particularly adept at reading defenses and scanning the whole field at this point in his career, but he is one of the best at throwing on the run — even when scrambling to the left and throwing across his body. He is also particularly jumpy in the pocket, but much of his eagerness to escape the pocket is a result of how depleted his offensive line was this season. Either way, he is always hesitant to plant his feet and make throws from the pocket.
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Instead of calling long-developing plays such as the multiple deep passes seen over the past few years, Kaepernick needs plays where his receivers are ready for the ball quickly, so he does not feel as if he has to move out of the pocket before he releases the ball.
These plays occurred very rarely for the 49ers in recent memory. In fact, I may be able to count the number of times a screen was called on one hand (well, maybe not, but you get my point).
While Harbaugh needs to be credited for bringing a winning culture back to San Francisco, he inherited quite a bit of talent.
Many of the players that helped lead the 49ers to the playoffs and beyond during Harbaugh’s tenure as head coach were in the organization during Mike Singletary‘s time at the helm. I credit Singletary for turning Vernon Davis‘ career around by benching him during a game, but other than that, Singletary failed as a head coach — especially when considering how talent-filled the roster was (as evidenced by the success San Francisco had in the years after his departure).
The 49ers had the talent to be “winners” under Singletary like he promised but were not. They were equipped with a stellar defensive front, a game-managing quarterback in Alex Smith, and the best running back in San Francisco 49ers’ franchise history in Gore.
The pieces were all there, but missing was someone with the ability to tie everything together and instill confidence in the organization as a whole.
That guy was Harbaugh. And he did just that.
Three consecutive NFC Championship Game appearances (and one Super Bowl appearance) is quite a feat, but with the talent on the roster, multiple coaches could have accomplished what Harbaugh did. A coach is considered good when his team succeeds — not when he takes a depleted roster to mediocrity.
Here we have a case of the chicken and the egg: was it a talented 49ers’ roster that made Harbaugh seem successful, or was it Harbaugh’s supreme coaching ability that made the 49ers successful? It would be difficult to prove to anyone that Patrick Willis, NaVorro Bowman, Justin Smith, Joe Staley, Mike Iupati and Anthony Davis (all of whom were 49ers before Harbaugh) were not talented. With that, one sees Harbaugh is a result of his talent — at least while on the 49ers’ staff.
Harbaugh took an underperforming team and made them realize their potential; he transformed the culture and for that I give him credit, but why is losing him — the guy that failed to win a Super Bowl in four tries with one of the league’s most talented rosters — considered the biggest Bay Area sports blunder since, perhaps, the firing of Golden State Warriors’ head coach Mark Jackson (take a look at Golden State’s record to see how that faux pas has worked out)?
Harbaugh’s preachy style — his in-your-face aggressiveness — can slide for a few years, but after that things start to fall apart. His inability to grasp his offense’s strengths certainly does not help, either.
Realizing this, he must know college football is the best place for him, because players come and go just as rapidly as he does. With fresh faces every year, his style cannot wear people down; when tired of his nature, they graduate to the NFL.
Harbaugh was the right coach to make his team realize their potential, but he is not the right guy to coach up an offense led by a quarterback as unique as Kaepernick.