The Los Angeles Chargers have struck a deal with Jim Harbaugh, hiring the 60-year-old as their new head coach just weeks after he won a College Football Playoff National Championship with the University of Michigan. A decade after departing the San Francisco 49ers’ head coaching chair, Harbaugh is back in the NFL.
Can Harbaugh guide the Chargers back to relevance? Here’s how we grade the hire.
Grading the Los Angeles Chargers’ Jim Harbaugh Hire
While there may be reasons to doubt whether Harbaugh will succeed in his second go-around as an NFL head coach (which we’ll get to shortly), he is without question one of the best coaches of his generation.
Harbaugh didn’t win a Super Bowl during his time with the 49ers, but he posted an absurd 44-19-1 mark over four years. He hit the ground running immediately, winning 13, 11, and 12 games, respectively, over his first three seasons while advancing to at least the NFC title game each year.
Harbaugh also helped construct one of the NFL’s best rosters. From top to bottom, San Francisco’s depth chart was regularly among the best in the league with Harbaugh at the helm with offensive and defensive line talent highlighting the 49ers’ assets.
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His winning percentage is even better in the college ranks, where Harbaugh went 144-52 at San Diego, Stanford, and Michigan.
The Cardinal went 1-11 the year before Harbaugh arrived; they were 12-1 in his final campaign. The Wolverines were flailing and had just finished 5-7 in 2014. Harbaugh got to Ann Arbor, Mich., the next season and hoisted an NCAA title trophy nine years later.
Harbaugh now gets to work with Justin Herbert, arguably the league’s most physically talented quarterback but one who’s been underserved by his offensive coordinators and surroundings. After helping resurrect Alex Smith’s career and develop Colin Kaepernick in San Francisco, Harbaugh can try to get Herbert and the Chargers’ offense back on track.
The NFL has changed in the 10 years since Harbaugh has been gone, but so has college football. The usual concerns about a college-to-pro transition — that Harbaugh won’t be prepared to manage a set of highly paid athletes after working with amateurs for the past decade — probably don’t hold water here.
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For one, Harbaugh already has a highly successful NFL HC stint under his belt. Furthermore, NIL deals — especially at a major program like Michigan — have blurred the lines between professional and amateur athletics.
Harbaugh has had to adapt to an entirely new generation of young players with the Wolverines. That experience will likely serve him — not hinder him — as he re-enters a far more player-friendly NFL than the one he left in 2014.
However, his departure from the 49ers does spark questions. Harbaugh was forced out as San Francisco’s head coach after sparring with general manager Trent Baalke. Despite Harbaugh’s sterling record on the field, Baalke won a power struggle.
Harbaugh got the last laugh after Baalke bottomed out with head coaches Jim Tomsula and Chip Kelly before being fired, but it’s worth wondering if Harbaugh will have the same type of interpersonal conflicts this time around.
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Of course, the Chargers haven’t hired a general manager. Los Angeles had been running dual searches for a new head coach and GM, but Harbaugh figures to have a say on the club’s next top personnel executive. If Harbaugh hires the Chargers’ next GM, it’s hard to imagine he’ll fall into the same trap he did with Baalke.
There’s work to be done in L.A. The Bolts have one of the NFL’s oldest defenses by snap-weighted age, a fragile roster in desperate need of depth, and a bloated salary cap that might take a season to fix.
But Harbaugh has been here before, and if his work with the 49ers is any indication, the Chargers’ turnaround might not take long.
Grade: A-
Who Else Did the Chargers Interview for HC?
- Brian Callahan, OC, Bengals
- Interviewed on 1/16
- Leslie Frazier, former DC, Bills
- Interviewed on 1/14
- Aaron Glenn, DC, Lions
- Interviewed on 1/20
- Patrick Graham, DC, Raiders
- Interviewed on 1/11
- Ben Johnson, OC, Lions
- Interviewed on 1/20
- Mike Macdonald, DC, Ravens
- Interviewed on 1/13
- Todd Monken, OC, Ravens
- Interviewed on 1/12
- Kellen Moore, OC, Chargers
- Interviewed on 1/9
- Raheem Morris, DC, Rams
- Interviewed on 1/20
- Dan Quinn, DC, Cowboys
- Interviewed on 1/19
- David Shaw, former HC, Stanford
- Interviewed on 1/9
- Giff Smith, interim HC, Chargers
- Interviewed on 1/18
- Mike Vrabel, former HC, Titans
- Interviewed on 1/18
- Steve Wilks, DC, 49ers
- Interviewed on 1/13
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