The hot coaching candidate, doggedly pursued by
many, Jim Harbaugh chose the 49ers. He floated in on a cloud of
joy. Captain Comeback was moving up from Stanford, bringing his
high-velocity personality.
Lurking beneath the euphoria, though, was an
undercurrent of trepidation.
Since most college head coaches fail to
successfully cross the bridge to the NFL, could this guy, with his
slogans and mottoes and rah-rah, bond with highly paid
professionals?
Harbaugh answered by guiding the 49ers to a 14-3
record and to the NFC Championship game.
Though football coaches often insinuate their
jobs are covert and complex, as if preparing for war, to listen to
these transformed 49ers is to realize Harbaugh’s formula is
astonishingly simple.
His approach, distilled, relies largely on five
Cs: Competence, credibility, candor, communication and
camaraderie.
“He talks with all of us, tries to get to know
us,” tight end Delanie Walker says.
Though running back Frank Gore says the coach is
“just a great leader” and quarterback Alex Smith says Harbaugh is
“authentic,” long snapper Brandon Jennings, the team’s
longest-tenured player, speaks to his competence.
“His passion and expertise (are) easy to
follow,” says Jennings, whose 12-year career in San Francisco
stretches from Steve Mariucci to Dennis Erickson to Mike Nolan to
Mike Singletary to Harbaugh.
“I’ve always had trouble remembering stuff that
doesn’t make any sense,” Jennings adds. “If someone’s lying, it’s
hard to remember what they said. But if something resonates as
true, it’s easy to remember. That’s where it’s easy to follow,
because it’s true. It works.”
When a team has not experienced a winning season
since 2002, competence and communication – traits also applied to
Harbaugh’s staff – are eagerly embraced.
“I’ve been on teams where coaches were asking us
to do stuff that didn’t work,” Jennings says. “We did it anyway,
because we want to be led. We want to do a good job. The difference
this year is it works.”
Says linebacker Parys Haralson: “All coaches pay
attention to detail, but it’s the way he presents it. He presents
things in ways so everybody can understand exactly what they have
to do.”
Following Harbaugh is made easier by the
credibility of his NFL past. Unlike other failed former college
coaches – Nick Saban, Bobby Petrino and Erickson, etc. – he spent
15 seasons as an NFL quarterback, making 140 starts before retiring
in 2002. He fully understands the modern NFL lifestyle. He knows
what today’s locker room needs and doesn’t need, what players want
and don’t want, what they will absorb and what they will tune
out.
“He’s a real player’s coach, not in the sense
that he takes care of us and makes practice easier or anything like
that,” tackle Joe Staley says. “He just really identifies with
players and does a good job of making us feel part of the football
team.”
Harbaugh talks football and brotherhood. He
takes a blue-collar approach to coaching, just as he did as a
quarterback who attacked with little regard for his health. He’s a
big kid, just turned 48, who loves being around the game and his
team.
“He doesn’t care what people are thinking around
him, especially outside this building,” Smith says. “And guys like
that a lot.”
Harbaugh’s greatest strength is his disdain for
trivial matters, something that has doomed many other former
college coaches – as well as some ex-49ers coaches. He’s utterly
unconcerned with his image. He’s not trying to prove he can coach
at this level, not worried about what he wears on the sideline or
with making dramatic impressions.
There is another factor here, though, and it’s
consistent among the players. Harbaugh has a remarkable staff,
easily the strongest in San Francisco since those assembled by Bill
Walsh, which led to the placement of numerous head coaches
throughout the league.
This group is all in, coaches and players,
convinced that Harbaugh asks nothing of them that he wouldn’t ask
of himself – or isn’t already giving.
Kicker David Akers compares it to a family-run
restaurant: “When somebody drops a plate (of food) and it’s all on
the ground, who gets the mop? It’s (the person) closest to the mop.
It’s the same mentality here.”
Harbaugh’s enthusiasm, which seems to remain at
the level of a testosterone-laced 20-year-old, has inspired a group
of grown men. They like him. They really like winning. It
works.
When the coach asks, “Who’s got it better than
us?” the team responds like a sugar-fueled Pop Warner squad.
When the players shout “NOOOObody!” you just
know everyone believes it.
