New Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh brings plenty of excitement to a Michigan football program in need of resuscitation this season. The hiring of Harbaugh comes with great expectations on the field, whenever it may be realistic to expect such results from the Wolverines. One question that may be fair to ask is how long the honeymoon will last for Harbaugh in Ann Arbor. Harbaugh’s former boss, San Francisco 49ers CEO Jed York believes strongly his team had the ingredients in place to win a Super Bowl, but the team got away from the basics under Harbaugh.
Simply put, the divorce between Harbaugh and the 49ers was not a pretty one, but we pretty much knew that. Recent comments from York will bring that mutual parting back to the surface. While an interview focused mostly on the new stadium the 49ers call home, York also dropped what can only be seen as a thinly veiled shot at the former head coach of the 49ers, Harbaugh.
“We are trying to win a Super Bowl... And I think what we’re trying to do is build a team that focuses on our core strengths, like any other company that you are going to talk to,” York said in his interview with Bloomberg. “You want to focus on your core strengths. And I think we got away from (that and turned into) something that we weren’t, just get back to the basics and get back to letting our players go out and make plays.”
Getting back to basics is pretty much what Michigan needs to do under Harbaugh, starting this spring. As is the case in football, basics will only carry a team so far. Having the right players in place is crucial. Michigan may not have all of the pieces in place for Harbaugh to succeed, but the turnaround should not take too long. As for Harbaugh’s previous job, York says the pieces of the puzzle were in place.
“You look at our offense last year. It wasn’t I think where it should have been,” York said of the NFL’s 20th ranked total offense in 2014. “I think we have better talent than what our results showed. And again, I am not the expert in terms of calling x’s and o’s, and writing plays and doing things like that, but I know that our players are equipped to go play the game and compete for championships.”
Real subtle there, Jed.
On the one hand, San Francisco did fall a little shy of some expectations last fall. On the other, what else is the CEO of a team supposed to say? Of course, Harbaugh did take the 49ers within a play of winning a Super Bowl and went farther than the team had been since Steve Young, Jerry Rice, Ricky Waters and Deion Sanders were on the team.
Advantage, Harbaugh?
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