Turnaround king Jim Harbaugh has playoff-bound Chargers dreaming big
NNot long after Jim Harbaugh was hired in January to coach the Los Angeles Chargers for a cool $16 million per season, he picked the strong players from his roster. Tough people is not a typical football term, but Harbaugh likes tough people – those who are really committed to the cause.
The Chargers were coming off a 5-12 season that saw head coach Brandon Staley fired with three games to play, so it would appear that the maverick Harbaugh’s tough-guy safari wouldn’t be too fruitful. But he found maybe fifteen loyal people, and there would be a great place to start.
“And it’s grown since then,” Harbaugh said of all his loyal players at a news conference Saturday after the Chargers (10-6) clinched a berth in the AFC playoff with a 40-7 win at New England.
Harbaugh, the 61-year-old former NFL quarterback, has been exceptional at turning football teams around, from the University of San Diego to Stanford University and the San Francisco 49ers to the University of Michigan, last year’s undefeated college national champions.
The Chargers would be a tough challenge. In the ten seasons prior to his arrival, they had played just three play-off games, losing two of them. The team had moved to Los Angeles from San Diego in 2017, where they had built a fan base tough fanbase – over 56 seasons.
The Chargers play at the beautiful SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, but they share the venue with the Rams, who are also their landlords and who started playing in LA in 1946 (although they lived in St. Louis for 21 years). The Chargers don’t tend to drive NFL conversations.
Those things didn’t matter to Harbaugh. First, he had a very good quarterback, Justin Herbert. After the Chargers got Harbaugh, they hired Baltimore’s Joe Hortiz as general manager, and then Greg Roman, Harbaugh’s old friend, as offensive coordinator.
The Chargers were 2-2 in their bye week, but won five of their next six games and won their last two games after losing three of four. Harbaugh, the son of a down-to-earth coach who loves tough football, is pleased with the team’s attitude.
“There is no coach who could do a better job than coaching these players,” he said Saturday.
“Nobody,” he added, before thinking about it for a second or two and then saying, “Maybe.” The only one would be the future us [who] could have it better than us.”
Harbaugh laughed at the way that sounded. As remarkable as his first season with the Chargers has been, they all say he still has things to work on. Harbaugh tries to downplay his role — “I have little to do with it,” he said — but with Hortiz’s help, Harbaugh has put together a talented, not to mention formidable, team.
Referring to Harbaugh and Hortiz, Herbert said, “They’ve done a great job of getting the right people here. If you look in the locker room, everyone is playing for each other.”
Herbert called Harbaugh “a competitor, and he wants to win, whatever it is. It certainly shows, and it’s the way everyone fights for him, wants to play for him and respects him.” Harbaugh called such teamwork “a powerful thing.”
Herbert, the five-year veteran out of Oregon, was considered one of the NFL’s elite quarterbacks, especially after leading the Chargers to a 10-7 record and the playoffs two years ago. But his 2023 season ended four games early and in rather ignominious fashion: He broke his finger trying to make a tackle after throwing an interception.
Herbert has had a fantastic season, with 21 touchdown passes against three interceptions and a 99.9 quarterback rating. The Chargers strengthened their offensive line and added a productive free-agent running back, JK Dobbins, who was barely used in Baltimore. Rookie receiver Ladd McConkey, a second-round pick out of Georgia, has 77 catches for 1,054 yards.
Khalil Mack, the devastating and punishing 33-year-old linebacker (not to mention one of Harbaugh’s stalwarts), returned for a third season to anchor LA’s defense, which is the toughest to score against in the NFL , and only gave up 17.6 points. per game.
“I feel like we’ve been doing it the right way all along, and we’re starting to see results from the work we’ve put in,” Chargers safety Derwin James Jr. said. “We know a new season is just starting. We are not satisfied with just being in the play-offs. We know where we want to be, what kind of team we want to be. Man, we just want to keep going.”
The Chargers have lost twice to NFL royalty, the Kansas City Chiefs, albeit by a combined nine points. Six of the Chargers’ 10 wins have come against opponents eliminated from the playoffs. A 40-17 loss on December 15 to Tampa Bay was a low point.
But Harbaugh has become the fifth coach in NFL history to win 10 games in his first season with two teams — the eighth coach in NFL history to make the playoffs in his first season with two teams. (The 49ers were 13-3 and made the NFC Championship Game in 2011.)
Harbaugh said Saturday, pointing upward, that “the hand of God” was on the Chargers, but this, he added, was a team effort. He promised that they would keep grinding. Maybe they’ll play Baltimore, coached by his older brother John, in the playoffs. That would be a wonderful, juicy repeat coaching matchup of Super Bowl XLVII, won by the Ravens.
This has not been a carefree season for him. Harbaugh experienced an irregular heartbeat in an October game against Denver and missed some plays in the first quarter. He said he would drink less Diet Coke, but he also said football is a tonic that keeps him feeling young.
That seems like a good thing, because Jim Harbaugh still has four years left on his big contract. He’s moving forward, but part one identified some strengths in last year’s team, the foundation for the “future us.”
“It is their leadership that has motivated us and kept us going,” he said.
“And also,” he added, “it is the antidote to complacency.”