Jim Harbaugh’s Next Stop If He Leaves Michigan for the NFL
Report> Jim Harbaugh finally moves to chicago bears
Nate, I’d say the chances that Bears president Kevin Warren wants to remake the football operation, and maybe be more intimately involved in it after the season, are strong. So I think it’d probably take a late-season surge from the team to get Matt Eberflus a third season in Chicago.
If he’s gone, the Bears would be out of their minds not to at least explore Harbaugh, who’s built a distinctive style of team everywhere he’s been—his groups at Stanford looked like his groups at San Francisco and Michigan—and was wildly successful in his four years running the Niners. Whether he’d mesh with Warren is the real question. Warren was at odds with the Big Ten coaches en masse three years ago, and as the conference commissioner, he tried to cancel the football season.
But, I do think there’d be a match there.
Nick, I’d say the biggest question is how he’d fit with an owner and front office wherever he lands—though I think recent evidence would show that maybe some of those issues were specific to his situation in San Francisco. He’s got a pretty unified operation at Michigan, and he’s in his ninth year there, which would counter what’s been a long-held perception that he’s tough to work with.
His on-field track record, obviously, is fantastic. His NFL winning percentage of .695 is fifth all-time, behind only Guy Chamberlain, John Madden, Vince Lombardi and George Allen.
Cam, I don’t know that anything is 100%, but I’d say Mayo is the clear front-runner. He signed an extension in January that kept him from taking an interview for the Panthers head coaching job, and Mayo and the Krafts did discuss his future with the organization as part of those negotiations. You can’t, of course, write into a contract that a guy is your coach-in-waiting because of the Rooney Rule. But I do believe Mayo has a good idea of where he stands with the Patriots.
On the Titans end of it, I think there are two things to consider. The first is that owner Amy Adams Strunk loves Vrabel. She made a point of telling people that after firing ex-GM Jon Robinson last year, and included Vrabel in the GM search after the season. The second is there’s GM Ran Carthon, who Vrabel has fewer natural connections to than he did Robinson, who came up in New England while Vrabel was playing there.
So I’d say Vrabel’s the coach moving forward in Tennessee unless he doesn’t want to be.
Scribby, it’s a fun idea, and you know how much I love Marvin Harrison Jr. I just don’t know if they’re in position to spend a first-round selection on the Ohio State receiver when there’ll be a top-end tackle, edge rusher, and, yes, quarterback prospects available where Harrison should go—inside the top five picks. If they’re picking first or second, they almost have to take USC’s Caleb Williams or North Carolina’s Drake Maye. If it’s after that, then Penn State OT Olu Fashanu or Notre Dame OT Joe Alt, or Alabama OLB Dallas Turner or Florida State DE Jared Verse could be options.
And there’s a balance to this, for sure. Harrison might be the best receiver prospect to come into the NFL in a decade. The problem, to me, is that it looks like a ground-up rebuild, and it’s really hard to start one of those with a skill player—it almost always makes the most sense to build on the line of scrimmage first. So do you pass on a truly generational prospect for a really good one that would make more sense for the stage you’re building?
To me, that’s why, if New England has the third pick (and a lot can happen between now and then) in this scenario, it’d probably make sense to trade down a spot or two with a team that wants Harrison. That is, assuming one of the other quarterbacks doesn’t ascend into Williams–Maye territory.
Mike, I wouldn’t speak in absolutes on that. Staley and the Chargers still have eight games left, and they’re one game out of the final playoff spot. Their next five games—against the Packers, Ravens, Patriots, Broncos and Raiders—are very manageable. In fact, with the Baltimore game factored in as a loss, they probably should go 4–1, which would put the team at 8–6 heading into a Christmas weekend home game against the Bills.
So don’t close the book on Staley yet.
