This is such a Vikings stunt….But the timing doesn’t feel right with the team’s current state. The persona also doesn’t jive with the culture and collaboration rhetoric….maybe Harbaugh has an about face and changes his stripes. Yeah….no.
I was interested in Ryans, don’t know enough about O’Connell, Raheem feels like a really strong fit. Harbaugh would be a wild ride and storylines plenty, but in the end it is hollow entertainment. I was really looking forward to rebuilding and buying into young guys before they become stars/winners (not guaranteed) - it would make a SB run years from now so fulfilling…that is what made 2017 so fun.
I shouldn’t be surprised this happening. I don’t like that to me it feels like this pushes chance of Kirk staying up to 50%. I’ll embrace it if it happens but with the sobering thought this has a 95% chance of ending up in flames. Maybe by then rebuild won’t feel so scary to ownership.
To start off; I agree that Harbaugh would be a wild choice and a risk... but I don't entirely get why so many people think that having Harbaugh has such a high chance of being a disaster. I mean, the guy left Stanford in a better place than he found it. He also left Michigan in a better place than he found it. The only place that was ugly when he left was the Niners, where he left after a public feud with Baalke, who became the GM right when Harbaugh became the coach. Baalke has since revealed himself to be an extraordinarily toxic influence, such that I don't think that it is out of the question that Baalke was far more to blame for the explosion than Harbaugh was. Beyond that, the vast majority of their players loved Harbaugh and were sad to see him go. Many said that he was crazy, yes, but also said that it was a weird and positive and enthusiastic version of crazy; nothing like the fear-based organization that we have. It was far more of a bittersweet parting than, say, the Zimmer parting was. Go ahead and read some of their quotes:
Also, remember that Kwesi was there to see this. If his recollection was that Harbaugh had a persona wouldn't clash with what our Vikings players have said that they want, then I will trust him.... but I certainly hope that Kwesi does his due diligence.
This year's performance was not good/close to good; getting outscored on the season is irrefutable. It's far less clear whether this roster should have been materially, especially given the talent on offence. Just because a team was outscored doesn't mean it should have been.
There is considerable room for improvement in roster management and allocating cash/picks towards valuable positions, without kicking cap hits down the road. Those things need to happen. Otherwise, though, the singular lesson from these playoffs: get in and hope for some breaks. Everyone but the Eagles (who beat zero winning teams this year) has been in every game. Run the club intelligently, but don't turn down a good coach or punt on a season--the NFL moves too quickly for that to make sense.
Great article Mathew but this very well could be flirting with disaster. I'm to the point I just want to see a Super Bowl before it's time to die. I'm old enough to have witnessed all 4 Super Bowl losses. Don't know if you saw Buffalo's 4 losses but it was very difficult and the Vikings had very good terms and just died in all 4.
Exactly... Harbaugh would be great if we were near the hump and had a 2-3 year window... But we are not near a hump (more likely we are about to get humped badly)... I don`t dislike him, he is damn impressive... But too many warts and wants too much control.
My preference would be Morris but O`Connell could be good as well
On DN I wrote my thoughts on Harbaugh (very influenced by PI) and in a couple of minutes had several people just say... Harbaugh is god....
Sometimes a good coach gets a great roster and does well..... Does not mean they will do so well with a mediocre roster (I would not say we have a bad roster....mediocre though is fair).
Matt - I am a huge fan of your work having followed you since the 1500ESPN days (and I think at least one stop before that). I've found yourself and Arif Hasan (no offense Sam, still getting to know you!) to be the top beat writers for the Vikings and its not close for me. I am a frequent listener to the pod as well as it has become my "go to" sports pod for breaks during the work day.
I finally broke down and subscribed here (usually against paid news) for the purpose of leaving this (and more comments).
I'm a bit surprised by your hesitance / (little bit of) negativity around the Harbaugh hire. Among other things you've argued:
-Harbaugh inherited a stacked roster and deserves less credit for the 9ers turnaround than he is given
-Harbaugh is likely to want to "win now" and not be a responsible steward of a rebuild barring a "Jon Gruden contract" which you are not an advocate of ("look how that turned out")
-Vikings would be better off with a young guy to build around who can strip team down to studs and do a full rebuild beginning with the QB position which has outsized importance etc.
Harbaugh is a proven and successful NFL head coach who is likely to serve as a "spark" that this team seemingly needs. Starting over with O'Connell or Graham is a lottery ticket. A risky proposition that you don't take a bet on if you have a Harbaugh alternative.
How do we know that Harbaugh is going to choose "win now" vs. "rebuild"? I understand a shorter contract would provide that incentive but Harbaugh doesn't strike me as the type to panic and race for short-term results. He has proven he can build a winner and - if he chooses win now - that tells me that perhaps the media isn't giving this roster or this QB enough credit.
I also cringe a little bit at the frequent dismissal of the possibility that this team could be re-tooled / tweaked and become a contender after playing like one for much of the year. Bill Barnwell does an article every year (as you likely know) regarding teams likely to turn around and "record in close games" is usually the top predictor (along with turnover ratio). In a small sample, variance rules, and the Vikings could have easily won 11-12 games this year. Some dismiss that as sour grapes / whiny fan talk but I think its an objective fact that they played well enough to win that many games. There wasn't a single team they played against where they looked overmatched, all year. Even down Danielle Hunter and Everson Griffen against the rolling Rams in Week 16, it was a competitive game. They played the Bengals toe to toe. They should have beaten the Cardinals if not for a short missed FG. They beat SD, GB.
I think its reasonable to suggest this team could be a contender next year if you can believe in two things: 1) they can make the cap work (big if) and 2) aging stars on defense can hold up another 1-2 years.
Lastly, I think its important to mention that my feelings on Kirk and the team would be vastly different if we had gone 8-9 because of Cousins historic pattern of faltering late in games. I personally thought a under-discussed narrative this year was that he seemed to turn it around and actually did well in potential game-winning drives and late game situations. It was the defense that faltered consistently. Whether that changes with healthy Hunter/Griffen/Pierce, we'll never know.
Anyway, my long two cents. Thanks for all that you do!
I am extremely torn on this. As Matthew excellently lays out, this team is not exactly on the precipice of the superbowl as currently constructed, such that bringing in an elite coach that wants to go all-in in 2022 clearly isn't logical. Further, if Kwesi isn't able to convince Harbaugh to move on from Cousins, this could be setting ourselves up for just a more startling version of mediocrity than what we have already had over the last few years, given the obvious holes we have across this team.
That said, that Niners team was worse than our team when they brought Harbaugh in, yet in their first year with Harbaugh they went 13-3 before losing a heartbreaker in the NFC championship game by 3 points in overtime (against the eventual superbowl champion Giants, as it were). That Niners team ranked 20th in offensive DVOA and 24th in defensive DVOA before Harbaugh showed up. Further, while our team had obvious issues this last year, I personally think that Matthew is being a bit aggressive in suggesting our defense was awful - I prefer volume stats per drive rather than total. Per drive, the Vikings are "only" 23rd in yards allowed and 22nd in points allowed. If you do total volume stats rather than drive stats, you are punishing the defense for being paired with an offense that doesn't sustain long drives regularly (such that the defense has to face a higher-than-average number of drives). For example, the Lions were 32nd in yards allowed per drive by a wide margin, but ranks better than MN by total yards allowed, by virtue of the Lions facing 20 less drives than the Vikings. Being as a defense will face 10 drives in an average game, that means that comparing using total yards on the season it is like you are comparing how many yards the Vikings gave up in 17 games vs how many yards the Lions gave up in 15 games, which gives you wonky totals (like the Vikings being ranked 30th). To use a different set of stats entirely, by DVOA the 2021 Vikings defense was 16th, and by EPA it was 21st. I would argue that the stats show that the Vikings had a below average defense, not a bottom feeding defense.
For another example, this Vikings team is better than the Bengals were last year. The Bengals were 29th in offensive DVOA and 27th in defensive DVOA in 2020 (or 26th in offensive EPA and 23rd in defensive EPA), winning only 4 games. And it isn't like that team only had Burrow for 2 games either - he played 10 games, getting injured in the 10th after he played over 70% of the snaps. And sure, that team had super poor luck in close games (including that infamous Randy Bullock missed FG pulled hamstring kick), but we either have to ignore that for BOTH the Vikings and the Bengals or account for it in both; we can't say the Bengals were better than they looked cuz they were unlucky in close games, but say that the Vikings were just as bad as they looked cuz we are going to ignore how they went in close games.
Or put differently, if we bring in Harbaugh, his most recent NFL experience is taking a team worse than ours to 13 wins and the NFCCG. If we look at this current superbowl, we see a team that was worse than ours last year (and had easily as many holes as our team currently does) playing for a ring. Frankly I think that sometimes we discount the value that an elite head coach can bring to a team. It isn't JUST the roster and the coach. If you have one of the scant handful of coaches who can both legitimately scheme and align players, that can make a significant difference.
THAT SAID, the obvious massive difference is that the Bengals have Burrow, and the Niners had what I would say was a higher ceiling player in Alex Smith (Smith was a #1 overall pick, after all) in addition to having Kaep waiting in the wings. If we stick with Cousins all of this goes out the window, as a team with Cousins can't have any holes, IMO. The only way this works is if we move on from Kirk and take a stab at one of these rookie QBs.
As a last note, back in 2015 or so I thought that Harbaugh was toxic based on how he left the Niners, such as with arguments over player personnel as Coller noted. However, remember that Harbaugh's issues were largely with Trent Baalke, who has since revealed himself to be one of the more toxic people in the NFL. The guy is so bad that Byron Leftwich made getting rid of Baalke a requirement for accepting the job in Jacksonville, and Leftwich is renowned for being one of the more agreeable people in the NFL. More importantly, Kwesi was there for the meltdown between Harbaugh and Baalke, such that if Kwesi is fine with Harbaugh (and he seemingly is; he is the one that introduced Harbaugh into the mix), then I am fine with Harbaugh when it comes to getting along with the front office.
I guess I want Harbaugh because the Vikings are my hobby, and I want my hobby to be interesting, and it seems far more likely that my hobby will be wildly fascinating with Harbaugh than with other coaches, lol.
This is such a Vikings stunt….But the timing doesn’t feel right with the team’s current state. The persona also doesn’t jive with the culture and collaboration rhetoric….maybe Harbaugh has an about face and changes his stripes. Yeah….no.
I was interested in Ryans, don’t know enough about O’Connell, Raheem feels like a really strong fit. Harbaugh would be a wild ride and storylines plenty, but in the end it is hollow entertainment. I was really looking forward to rebuilding and buying into young guys before they become stars/winners (not guaranteed) - it would make a SB run years from now so fulfilling…that is what made 2017 so fun.
I shouldn’t be surprised this happening. I don’t like that to me it feels like this pushes chance of Kirk staying up to 50%. I’ll embrace it if it happens but with the sobering thought this has a 95% chance of ending up in flames. Maybe by then rebuild won’t feel so scary to ownership.
Buckle up.
To start off; I agree that Harbaugh would be a wild choice and a risk... but I don't entirely get why so many people think that having Harbaugh has such a high chance of being a disaster. I mean, the guy left Stanford in a better place than he found it. He also left Michigan in a better place than he found it. The only place that was ugly when he left was the Niners, where he left after a public feud with Baalke, who became the GM right when Harbaugh became the coach. Baalke has since revealed himself to be an extraordinarily toxic influence, such that I don't think that it is out of the question that Baalke was far more to blame for the explosion than Harbaugh was. Beyond that, the vast majority of their players loved Harbaugh and were sad to see him go. Many said that he was crazy, yes, but also said that it was a weird and positive and enthusiastic version of crazy; nothing like the fear-based organization that we have. It was far more of a bittersweet parting than, say, the Zimmer parting was. Go ahead and read some of their quotes:
https://www.ninersnation.com/2014/12/29/7459371/49ers-players-react-to-jim-harbaughs-departure
https://www.nbcsports.com/bayarea/49ers/vernon-davis-explains-how-jim-harbaugh-changed-49ers-culture
https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/news/justin-smith-49ers-players-loved-jim-harbaugh-jim-tomsula-not-a-meathead/a9auzaujhw2z1krphs2nr2e0s
Also, remember that Kwesi was there to see this. If his recollection was that Harbaugh had a persona wouldn't clash with what our Vikings players have said that they want, then I will trust him.... but I certainly hope that Kwesi does his due diligence.
This year's performance was not good/close to good; getting outscored on the season is irrefutable. It's far less clear whether this roster should have been materially, especially given the talent on offence. Just because a team was outscored doesn't mean it should have been.
There is considerable room for improvement in roster management and allocating cash/picks towards valuable positions, without kicking cap hits down the road. Those things need to happen. Otherwise, though, the singular lesson from these playoffs: get in and hope for some breaks. Everyone but the Eagles (who beat zero winning teams this year) has been in every game. Run the club intelligently, but don't turn down a good coach or punt on a season--the NFL moves too quickly for that to make sense.
Rebuild, it’s what’s needed.
Great article Mathew but this very well could be flirting with disaster. I'm to the point I just want to see a Super Bowl before it's time to die. I'm old enough to have witnessed all 4 Super Bowl losses. Don't know if you saw Buffalo's 4 losses but it was very difficult and the Vikings had very good terms and just died in all 4.
I think Harbaugh wants to prove he's still got it in the NFL and is mad at Michigan for that pay cut
Exactly... Harbaugh would be great if we were near the hump and had a 2-3 year window... But we are not near a hump (more likely we are about to get humped badly)... I don`t dislike him, he is damn impressive... But too many warts and wants too much control.
My preference would be Morris but O`Connell could be good as well
On DN I wrote my thoughts on Harbaugh (very influenced by PI) and in a couple of minutes had several people just say... Harbaugh is god....
Sometimes a good coach gets a great roster and does well..... Does not mean they will do so well with a mediocre roster (I would not say we have a bad roster....mediocre though is fair).
Matt - I am a huge fan of your work having followed you since the 1500ESPN days (and I think at least one stop before that). I've found yourself and Arif Hasan (no offense Sam, still getting to know you!) to be the top beat writers for the Vikings and its not close for me. I am a frequent listener to the pod as well as it has become my "go to" sports pod for breaks during the work day.
I finally broke down and subscribed here (usually against paid news) for the purpose of leaving this (and more comments).
I'm a bit surprised by your hesitance / (little bit of) negativity around the Harbaugh hire. Among other things you've argued:
-Harbaugh inherited a stacked roster and deserves less credit for the 9ers turnaround than he is given
-Harbaugh is likely to want to "win now" and not be a responsible steward of a rebuild barring a "Jon Gruden contract" which you are not an advocate of ("look how that turned out")
-Vikings would be better off with a young guy to build around who can strip team down to studs and do a full rebuild beginning with the QB position which has outsized importance etc.
Harbaugh is a proven and successful NFL head coach who is likely to serve as a "spark" that this team seemingly needs. Starting over with O'Connell or Graham is a lottery ticket. A risky proposition that you don't take a bet on if you have a Harbaugh alternative.
How do we know that Harbaugh is going to choose "win now" vs. "rebuild"? I understand a shorter contract would provide that incentive but Harbaugh doesn't strike me as the type to panic and race for short-term results. He has proven he can build a winner and - if he chooses win now - that tells me that perhaps the media isn't giving this roster or this QB enough credit.
I also cringe a little bit at the frequent dismissal of the possibility that this team could be re-tooled / tweaked and become a contender after playing like one for much of the year. Bill Barnwell does an article every year (as you likely know) regarding teams likely to turn around and "record in close games" is usually the top predictor (along with turnover ratio). In a small sample, variance rules, and the Vikings could have easily won 11-12 games this year. Some dismiss that as sour grapes / whiny fan talk but I think its an objective fact that they played well enough to win that many games. There wasn't a single team they played against where they looked overmatched, all year. Even down Danielle Hunter and Everson Griffen against the rolling Rams in Week 16, it was a competitive game. They played the Bengals toe to toe. They should have beaten the Cardinals if not for a short missed FG. They beat SD, GB.
I think its reasonable to suggest this team could be a contender next year if you can believe in two things: 1) they can make the cap work (big if) and 2) aging stars on defense can hold up another 1-2 years.
Lastly, I think its important to mention that my feelings on Kirk and the team would be vastly different if we had gone 8-9 because of Cousins historic pattern of faltering late in games. I personally thought a under-discussed narrative this year was that he seemed to turn it around and actually did well in potential game-winning drives and late game situations. It was the defense that faltered consistently. Whether that changes with healthy Hunter/Griffen/Pierce, we'll never know.
Anyway, my long two cents. Thanks for all that you do!
I am extremely torn on this. As Matthew excellently lays out, this team is not exactly on the precipice of the superbowl as currently constructed, such that bringing in an elite coach that wants to go all-in in 2022 clearly isn't logical. Further, if Kwesi isn't able to convince Harbaugh to move on from Cousins, this could be setting ourselves up for just a more startling version of mediocrity than what we have already had over the last few years, given the obvious holes we have across this team.
That said, that Niners team was worse than our team when they brought Harbaugh in, yet in their first year with Harbaugh they went 13-3 before losing a heartbreaker in the NFC championship game by 3 points in overtime (against the eventual superbowl champion Giants, as it were). That Niners team ranked 20th in offensive DVOA and 24th in defensive DVOA before Harbaugh showed up. Further, while our team had obvious issues this last year, I personally think that Matthew is being a bit aggressive in suggesting our defense was awful - I prefer volume stats per drive rather than total. Per drive, the Vikings are "only" 23rd in yards allowed and 22nd in points allowed. If you do total volume stats rather than drive stats, you are punishing the defense for being paired with an offense that doesn't sustain long drives regularly (such that the defense has to face a higher-than-average number of drives). For example, the Lions were 32nd in yards allowed per drive by a wide margin, but ranks better than MN by total yards allowed, by virtue of the Lions facing 20 less drives than the Vikings. Being as a defense will face 10 drives in an average game, that means that comparing using total yards on the season it is like you are comparing how many yards the Vikings gave up in 17 games vs how many yards the Lions gave up in 15 games, which gives you wonky totals (like the Vikings being ranked 30th). To use a different set of stats entirely, by DVOA the 2021 Vikings defense was 16th, and by EPA it was 21st. I would argue that the stats show that the Vikings had a below average defense, not a bottom feeding defense.
For another example, this Vikings team is better than the Bengals were last year. The Bengals were 29th in offensive DVOA and 27th in defensive DVOA in 2020 (or 26th in offensive EPA and 23rd in defensive EPA), winning only 4 games. And it isn't like that team only had Burrow for 2 games either - he played 10 games, getting injured in the 10th after he played over 70% of the snaps. And sure, that team had super poor luck in close games (including that infamous Randy Bullock missed FG pulled hamstring kick), but we either have to ignore that for BOTH the Vikings and the Bengals or account for it in both; we can't say the Bengals were better than they looked cuz they were unlucky in close games, but say that the Vikings were just as bad as they looked cuz we are going to ignore how they went in close games.
Or put differently, if we bring in Harbaugh, his most recent NFL experience is taking a team worse than ours to 13 wins and the NFCCG. If we look at this current superbowl, we see a team that was worse than ours last year (and had easily as many holes as our team currently does) playing for a ring. Frankly I think that sometimes we discount the value that an elite head coach can bring to a team. It isn't JUST the roster and the coach. If you have one of the scant handful of coaches who can both legitimately scheme and align players, that can make a significant difference.
THAT SAID, the obvious massive difference is that the Bengals have Burrow, and the Niners had what I would say was a higher ceiling player in Alex Smith (Smith was a #1 overall pick, after all) in addition to having Kaep waiting in the wings. If we stick with Cousins all of this goes out the window, as a team with Cousins can't have any holes, IMO. The only way this works is if we move on from Kirk and take a stab at one of these rookie QBs.
As a last note, back in 2015 or so I thought that Harbaugh was toxic based on how he left the Niners, such as with arguments over player personnel as Coller noted. However, remember that Harbaugh's issues were largely with Trent Baalke, who has since revealed himself to be one of the more toxic people in the NFL. The guy is so bad that Byron Leftwich made getting rid of Baalke a requirement for accepting the job in Jacksonville, and Leftwich is renowned for being one of the more agreeable people in the NFL. More importantly, Kwesi was there for the meltdown between Harbaugh and Baalke, such that if Kwesi is fine with Harbaugh (and he seemingly is; he is the one that introduced Harbaugh into the mix), then I am fine with Harbaugh when it comes to getting along with the front office.
I guess I want Harbaugh because the Vikings are my hobby, and I want my hobby to be interesting, and it seems far more likely that my hobby will be wildly fascinating with Harbaugh than with other coaches, lol.