The tone is definitely a little different now, which is wholly logical, because five years is a long time even for the most bitter of breakups. Jim Harbaugh sounds more expansive and conciliatory about the 49ers hierarchy these days, Jed York started on that path talking about Harbaugh a few years ago, and it just makes sense to calm the waters anyway.
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The 49ers have hired three head coaches since York fired Harbaugh in December 2014. Harbaugh has put in five seasons at Michigan since then, watching York stumble through the Jim Tomsula and Chip Kelly tenures before finally firing Trent Baalke, Harbaugh’s nemesis, and hiring two men Harbaugh clearly respects, Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch, in February 2017.
Shanahan and Lynch helped get the 49ers to the Super Bowl in February, taking a journey — and suffering an agonizing Super Bowl loss — that had some similarities to what Harbaugh’s 49ers went through in the 2012 season. Harbaugh absolutely understands the connections and isn’t running away from them. It would be silly to do that, and Harbaugh is not silly.
So when I noted that York has said he’d like to sit down with Harbaugh at some point and asked him if he’s talked to York lately, Harbaugh didn’t at all brush it off.
“No, we haven’t talked,” Harbaugh said on my podcast this week, “but almost ran into each other one time. But talked to John (Lynch), I’ve talked to Kyle and a lot of folks in the organization.
“I’m sure we’ll cross paths. Jed York gave me a tremendous opportunity to be coach of the 49ers and we had some great years. It’s all good.”
OK, on its face, those words don’t quite scream out that a cease-fire has occurred and hostilities have ended. But if you understand the dynamics of what happened in 2014 and of the emotions between the two sides ever since then, you can tell that things have changed. Maybe many 49ers fans don’t care that they’ve changed and I understand that. In some ways, the Harbaugh era is ancient history.
But a 49ers franchise that has reshaped and reformed itself in a way that he can respect is something to acknowledge. And if Harbaugh has, through his time in Ann Arbor, Mich., softened his views of York and everything that happened back in 2014, then that feels significant, too.
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Here’s another element: In 2017, York relayed to Peter King that John Harbaugh had recently suggested that York and Jim sit down for dinner.
“I said, ‘I’d love to do that.’ I’d love to get together,” York told King back then. “And I think enough time has kind of passed where you can let whatever issues were there be buried and just truly be thankful for three great years when nobody expected us, certainly in 2011, to beat the Saints the way we did, to get close and, you know, be two muffed punts away from going to a Super Bowl in ‘11.
“And just all the things that happened, and I’d love to sit down with Jim. Not in front of cameras, not in front of anybody else, but just share an evening with him and truly say thank you and wish him the best of luck. Not obviously when he plays Notre Dame, but for the rest of the season, wish him the best of luck.”
This week, I asked Harbaugh if the 49ers’ run last season evoked memories of the 2012 season.
“Yeah, it sure did,” Harbaugh said. “It was outstanding. Really well-coached players. At such a high level in all phases. You love watching good football, and they played great football.”
So how does a team push through a devastating Super Bowl loss like the 49ers absorbed in those two Februarys, separated by seven years?
“Just keep pushing and keep driving,” Harbaugh said. “I think you can tell the 49ers are a high-drive team. You saw it all season and through the playoffs and in the Super Bowl. Just keep having at it. They’re a high-drive team. They look like a heck of a team to coach, and Kyle’s doing a great job. The whole organization’s doing a magnificent job.”
That was just one part of our 25-minute conversation, which ended, quite naturally, when Harbaugh had to jump off to take a recruiting call. Here are some other highlights:
• I asked Harbaugh how he’d summarize his five years at Michigan so far, which include no conference titles, no Rose Bowl berths, no trips to the College Football Playoff and no wins against Ohio State but which also encompass a 47-18 record, major bowl bids and never fewer than eight wins a year for a program that had won eight games or more only twice in the previous seven seasons.
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“It’s been years of just completely pouring myself and my heart and soul into this job and coaching guys and developing players and graduating players,” Harbaugh said. “It’s been great years, been great years.
“Always want to do better. Striving to be the best. Right now, I think our team, we’re kind of on the cusp. We haven’t gotten it over the top into the playoffs and to championships, and that’s what drives us and motivates us every day on the field and every day working toward that goal.”
Harbaugh was able to achieve greater success much more quickly during his tenures at Stanford and with the 49ers, so I asked him if the Michigan situation was tougher than he expected.
“We’ve been to the New Year’s bowl games, and we’ve had success on the field,” Harbaugh said. “But you’re right, winning that championship, making the playoffs, that’s something our players and our coaches are pouring our hearts and souls into. And we’re determined to get there.”
• Harbaugh released an open letter to the college football community earlier this week, proposing far greater freedoms for players to transfer or to retain their eligibility if they declare for the NFL Draft and then go unselected. He said these are issues he’s been contemplating for a while; with sports shut down, he’s had more time to put the thoughts down for others to see.
“It has been on my mind for a while, more than a couple years anyway, and then also that there was time to really write that out and put my thoughts down and get input from other coaches and my dad, our athletic director, our president, quite a few people,” Harbaugh said. “Mainly putting the decision on when to go pro in the hands of the players and their families. Make their own career decisions. But also the demand of the NFL, the NFL’s gonna pick or they’re not going to pick you. … Make it more factual based.
“This proposal is all designed … lets the player be able to have a shot at a college career, also a shot at a pro career if he’s good enough, but make sure they also have the ability to get their degree.”
• In 2011, his first year with the 49ers, Harbaugh faced many of the same things the 49ers and all teams are dealing with now — back then, due to the long lockout, players were not allowed at team facilities and coaches could not meet with players during the offseason. Then the lockout was lifted late in the summer and teams had to rush into training camp. It’s unclear when and how teams will assemble this year for training camp, but it’s clear that the pandemic restrictions will basically wipe out most or all offseason in-person work.
“I think there’s some real similarities to it with the facilities being closed, etc.,” Harbaugh said. “It was (about) daily going through alternate plans and not knowing but planning for every contingency day by day, week by week. It was into months. And then flexibility when you finally got the word that we’re getting back to starting training camp. Being ready.
“And then the other biggest thing was the players. It was Alex Smith, it was Justin Smith, it was Patrick Willis and those guys, they were also organizing team activities and workouts and being prepared. Just really comes back to that. Being prepared, being productive, being creative, being flexible and being ready. Because I know we’re in strange times, but time is not going to change. You’ve got to prepare for the season that’s coming up. It will start when it starts. …
“You didn’t really know anything for sure, but contingencies and thinking through all the different possibilities. The one that eventually did happen was one that we had prepared for. You do the best you can and (as his then-defensive coordinator) Vic Fangio likes to say, be ready to ‘I-and-A it,’ improvise and adjust.”
• When did Harbaugh know that the 2011 team, which would go on to a 13-3 record, could be very good only a year after Mike Singletary’s 6-10 swan song?
“Probably knew it … had an inkling about it at halftime of the Cincinnati Bengals game,” Harbaugh said of the 49ers’ Week 3 game that year. “In a tight ballgame with them, things weren’t going great offensively, but you could still see that team was together, there was no bickering and stuff like that that sometimes goes on. Then they ended up gutting out that game in Cincinnati and then turned around and played a back-to-back East Coast game against Philadelphia. We were down, I think, 24-3 (actually, 23-3), and came back and won that game on the road in Philly. Getting on the plane and flying home with that team, that was, ‘We’ve got something here, we’ve got something special.'”
• Harbaugh watched the recent ESPN documentary that gave an inside and at times hard-to-watch look at Smith’s grueling rehabilitation after nearly losing his leg after a November 2018 in-game injury.
“It was beautiful,” Harbaugh said of the documentary. “Watched it with my wife Sarah, and she had tears in her eyes and so did I. Alex, just have the greatest respect for him. As I’m watching, I’m (seeing) humility with a competitive edge; that’s who Alex Smith is and that’s why he’s had the tremendous amount of success that he’s had throughout his life. That mindset, I just really believe, allows anybody, person to be the most successful that they can be. Humble, and that competitive edge that drives them. The documentary, to me, that just resonated so loud and clear with exactly who he is as a person.”
• I asked Harbaugh about his other 49ers quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, who has been out of the NFL for three seasons after he began his protests during the national anthem while playing for the 49ers in 2016 (long after Harbaugh had exited for Michigan).
“I love Colin, did then, do now, always will,” Harbaugh said. “I hope he gets a shot. I hope that he has a chance to play again and that he does play. Just my personal view on it. Don’t know all the ramifications, but I keep in touch with both Alex and Colin. I’d love to see Colin get another shot at playing, I love watching him play football. And I hope Alex can come back, too. …
“Both class guys and great competitors and just wonderful to be around. Enjoyed coaching those guys and all those guys so much. One of the great joys of my life.”
(Photo: Randy Litzinger / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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