Why Chargers’ Jim Harbaugh is GOAT football coach across NFL & college | THE HERD w/ Colin Cowherd

Why Chargers’ Jim Harbaugh is GOAT football coach across NFL & college | THE HERD w/ Colin Cowherd

Welcome to the Herd’s official YouTube channel. Make sure to like and subscribe. Don’t forget to check out the Colin Coward podcast, all of our NFL instant reactions, and more football content. So, Jac, I was thinking about this driving in today, not driving, but taking the train in. I was thinking about this. It’s easy when you’re outside of a building to say, “Be patient.” Like, it’s very easy to say if you’re the Ohio State Buckeyes and Ryan Day goes on a two-game losing streak, be patient. Unless you’re in the building in Columbus, you can be patient at Miami of Ohio. You can’t be patient at Ohio State, right? You have their different strains and different pressures. Um, and I want to talk about that with JJ McCarthy. Dave Roberts wins a World Series, literally has a bad first half. Fans want him out and owners listen to fans and so do GMs. So, I hear this about JJ McCarthy, the Vikings young quarterback who in seven of eight quarters has been awful. And I’m hearing this. Hey, you’ve got to be patient. Not really. I hear that about CEOs. Be patient. See the vision longterm growth. Uh they have quarterly earnings calls with investors and shareholders. Yeah. Speed her up, champ, or we’ll find a new CEO. This Vikings team number one could lose their great defensive coordinator by the end of the season, Brian Flores, to a head coaching job. Number two, their amazing left tackle Christian Darasal is 26, but he’s already had one major surgery and several other injuries. Left tackles are hard to find, especially as good as him. And the roster is too good, so it’s going to get really expensive within the next year to two years. I mean, this team in the last couple years has won 13 and 14 games. Two out of the last three years. I know. I know patience is a virtue. I understand that. But you ever gone to an NFL practice? They don’t have virtue drills. Ready, set, virtue. Uh-uh. And Green Bay, your primary rival, is great right now, and because of the youngest roster, they’re only getting better. So, let’s be patient for three years and go 0 and six against your rival, right? I don’t buy it. this whole thing about people that preach patience. Patience is for parenting or training uh potty training a puppy or gardening, but the Packers can be patient. They don’t have an owner. The Vikings do and owners listen. They listen to people on the street and talk radio and they read columns and their GMs under pressure. This isn’t baseball where if you’re in a hitting slump, well, we’ll just send you down to the miners. This isn’t the NBA where yes, he’s struggling, but he’s only 19 years old. I mean, he’s only a year out of high school. JJ McCarthy’s last five years of coaching. Jim Harbaugh for three years and Kevin Oonnell now for two. That is world class coaching. Be good Sunday. Okay. Like it’s it’s different, too. Jared Goff when he got to Detroit, he’d been to a Super Bowl with the Rams and he was a number one pick and he was very good. Okay. I’m gonna wait a couple of years for Jared Goff because he’s proven he’s good. And if if you sold your first startup for a billion dollars, I’m gonna give you some time with your second startup. But like Bryce Young at Carolina, it’s three years. You’re not winning games. I got to move on. And quarterbacks in 2025 like JJ McCarthy have private coaching, seven on seven summer camps. Uh I mean, it’s just they have more uh information at their fingertips. I mean, they should be better. They have far more snaps early than they ever did. So, again, I will be patient potty training a puppy, but JJ McCarthy does not get to pee on the carpet. He’s got to be good in the next seven, eight weeks. I got to see something. And if you look at seven of his eight quarters, they’ve been terrible. And again, he was with Harbaugh for years. Kevin O, you there’s an argument. No coach in in the history of football is better than Jim Harbaugh. And I mean that and I’ll talk about that in a second. And then Kevin Oonnell, he’s called the tall Shawn McVey. Five years of that coaching. I’m not waiting. I’m not waiting any longer. So I just don’t I don’t buy it. I think gardening and parenting, but all these teams are owned by billionaires and they listen to fans and GMs are on the clock. You want me to be You want me to be I mean, Caleb Williams has Ben Johnson and Lincoln Riley the last four years. I got to see something fast. Football is back and for the first time, it’s on Wednesdays from Omaha Productions, NFL Films, and Vice TV. NFL Classics after further review relives the NFL’s biggest games with the legends who played them and the fans who never forget. Not just a rewatch, but the untold stories behind those plays. Kyle Branch the host, Bart Scott and Method Man for the 2010 divisional round Jets and Patriots. The underdog Jets stun Brady’s 14-2 Patriots. It was a huge playoff upset and a cap by Bart Scott’s unforgettable can’t wait postgame interview. So don’t miss NFL Classics after further review. It’s Wednesdays at 9 only on Vice TV. Speaking of Jim Harbaugh, I was thinking about this. So in basketball, they have the basketball hall of fame. You could be a Harlem Globe Troder and make a basketball hall of fame. Football’s different. There’s the Pro Football Hall of Fame and then there’s the College Football Hall of Fame. But I was thinking this morning that if you combined it like basketball and and it was just there was a football hall of fame, you could count college and pro, I would make an argument today the greatest coach in the history of football is not Bill Bichc or Bill Walsh or Vince Lombardi. It’s Jim Harbaugh, the greatest coach ever. Think about this. He’s never failed. He’s five for five at San Diego, Stanford, San Francisco 49ers, Michigan, and the Chargers. He’s never failed. Sabin and Urban, unbelievable college legends, struggled in the NFL. He’s also not tied to a single player. What’s Bellich without Brady? Not great. The only person that kind of compares to him is Jimmy Johnson. My friend and your friend, Jimmy Johnson. Great in college, great in the pros. But even Jimmy took over a Hurricanes program that had won a natty and they won after he left. And then he took over uh uh the Dolphins. And the previous two years they were like 10 and six and nine and seven before he got there. And then he left. And then Dave Wat took over and Dave got him to the playoffs. With Harbaugh, he’s taken over five messes. They’re all very good by year two, some by year one. And when he leaves, the the the ners were unwatchable for four years after he left. He went from Super Bowl to is this the worst team in the league? I mean, it it’s unbeliev. He left Stanford. couple years with Davis Shaw now Stanford not good not close for several years and so and I think a lot of it I mean it’s like Harbaugh take stuff and one one day it’s Bar Rescue and the next day it’s Michelin star and and and it’s it’s amazing to watch Justin Herbert we all knew Justin Herbert was good it wasn’t a matter of that but if you look at Justin Herbert’s last three seasons with Brandon Staley he become an average quarterback 93 passer rating if you look at the last two seasons 20 games, 19 games with Jim Harbaugh. He’s in a running for the best quarterback in the league. And now Jim was a quarterback, so he’s very good at that. But the defense was last. It’s now first. College and pro. Now it’s harder in college. Stanford and Michigan took some years, although they got very good very quickly. But like at Stanford, it’s hard to get players in and they were the worst program in college football when he took it over. But very quickly, he went to USC and Pete Carol as a 41 point underdog. and one in the Coliseum without many players Pete Carol even recruited. And I and I really think it’s very rare. He takes over messes. They’re good immediately. And when he leaves, they’re awful. And my question is why? I mean, as great as Jimmy Johnson is, he left the Cowboys, they won a Super Bowl. He left the Hurricanes, they won an Natty. He left the Dolphins, they made the playoffs. And the only thing I can wrap my brain around is that when Jimmy Johnson left, you lost a great coach. When Jim Harbaugh leaves, you lose the soul of the franchise. He is so authentic, such a unicorn, such a unique personality. Eric Manini years ago was in the offices of the San Francisco 49ers and he’s been around Bellichic and great coaches. And I asked him about Harbaugh and he said, “Yeah, I’ve never been around a coach like Jim Harbaugh.” And and he’s been around a lot of great coaches. He goes, “There’s nobody like Harbaugh. It’s not about the meetings. It’s the personality, the relentlessness, the obsession with football. He is obsessed with football. He leaves an organization. You don’t lose a good coach, you lose your personality.” And I I asked Julian Edelman yesterday. I said, “How how do you change a culture everywhere you go that quickly?” If you can get fundamentals down, not turn the ball over, not beat yourself with pre- snap penalties, uh that’s how you change a culture right away. Not with all the talking, not with this, not it’s it’s with the actions that they they’re showing that they’re doing. So, they’ve looked very good. And I think when when a coach comes in and establishes that if he wants to be a tough football team, tough football teams don’t beat themselves. And Herbert’s interceptions, Herbert’s turnovers under Staley go up. Under Harbaugh, they mostly disappear. So I mean, I think if you counted all coaches, usually there’s always been this sense that a college football coach has a certain personality. you know, he’s kind of glib. He’s got to talk to the donors. He’s got to be a great recruiter. But the NFL guys, they’re kind of academic. They’re miserable. They look all a little overweight and a little tired under the 13th cup of coffee. And there’s something that Harbaugh does that. And what’s most remarkable, Michigan was a mess. Stanford was a mess. The Niners were a mess. He makes him great. He leaves. There is a noticeable drop off overnight. Noticeable. And I think again he’s not a coach. He’s he is a soul of a program. And you’re just I mean it’s like when Steve Jobs left Apple, you didn’t just lose a smart guy. He was the soul of Apple. Phil Knight briefly stepped away from Nike years and years a couple decades ago. Like overnight stock plummeted. Phil’s the vision and fills the soul of Nike. So here we are. Uh you know what else? I I made sure I wanted to talk one more day J-Mack about a guy now now he’s a little bit of a gunslinger. He’s a little old school but Baker Mayfield. Oh yeah. Um there’s there’s a stat and I think this speaks well of Baker Mayfield. Uh the two quarterbacks in the league that have had the most interception worthy throws are Bo Knicks and Baker Mayfield. And and I was thinking as I was writing this morning, I was writing notes for the Harbaugh thing rant and I thought, you know what makes Baker great is that in Cleveland, his personality was seen as flammable. He’s kind of the same guy in Tampa, but it’s not a flammable franchise. But the fact that he’s leads the NFL right now in interception worthy throws, it speaks to who he is. He is a gunslinger. He is he is a lot of Favre. And I think that’s incredibly appealing to a lot of football fans. Totally agree. And and he actually ties into your earlier point about JJ McCarthy because just imagine if the Cleveland Browns has had had some patience with Baker Mayfield. They wouldn’t be cycling through a litany of quarterbacks every year looking for a guy. I I think that’s a great point. Baker has that gunslinger. It didn’t work in Cleveland, but it it necessarily wasn’t Baker’s fault, right? Because Baker is an excellent quarterback right now. I mean, he was one of the leaders in yards and touchdowns last year. I also think um Tampa is a different feel. I think Bakers matured. I think I think the Browns are just a flammable organization. Stfansky’s brought the temperature down considerably. But even with Stfansky, they guaranteed Deshun Watson a contract. They draft Shadur Sanders and nobody thinks Stfansky and Andrew Barry wanted him. So that’s just who they are. And when you combine Baker’s kind of raw personality with that culture, it just didn’t feel right. Now he’s kind of the same guy. Prime matured a little, but it feels perfect in Tampa cuz it’s not a flammable organization. It’s kind of it’s almost a sleepy organization. Yeah. I think if you’re doing top 10 quarterbacks, you cannot leave Baker out of the top 10. All right. Right now, he’s absolutely in it. Hey, I mean, and not just two games. Last season, he was incredible. The season before that, he was very, very good. He is playing out of his

Colin Cowherd reacts to the latest in NFL news. He starts with reacting to J.J. McCarthy’s injury and whether the Minnesota Vikings should be concerned with ANOTHER McCarthy injury. Next Colin explains what makes Jim Harbaugh different from other college and NFL coaches throughout his career with Stanford, the San Francisco 49ers, Michigan, and the Los Angeles Chargers. Will Harbaugh take LA and Herbert to the Super Bowl?

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