The San Francisco 49ers - A Year in Review: Part 1 - The Quarterbacks

Colin Kaepernick broke free for a 90-yard TD in Week 16
Source: Kirby Lee  |  USA Today Sports

Jim Harbaugh is a Wolverine. Mike Iupati, Michael Crabtree and Frank Gore are free agents. Justin Smith is pondering retirement. Vic Fangio & Greg Roman have both interviewed for positions different for the ones they held for the 2014 49ers. This weekend marked the official end of an era. (Jim) Harbaugh was seen on the Ravens sideline sporting Baltimore gear last night. With the end of 2014 comes a review of not just the season, but of where the 49ers currently stand and the potential offseason moves for the future. This kicks off a multi-part review of the 49ers on a position-by-position basis (except special teams, I doubt an in-depth look at gunners and the long snapper is needed).

Quarterback                      2014 Review: C+                                                               2015 and Beyond: B

                             The Players                        2014 Cap Hit                         2015 Cap Hit
Starter                                  Colin Kaepernick              $3,767,444                           $15,265,753
Backup                                 Blaine Gabbert                  $2,011,587                           N/A (Unrestricted Free Agent)
Third String                         Josh Johnson                     $    335,294                          N/A (Unrestricted Free Agent)

Last season, Colin Kaepernick signed what at first appeared to be a massive contract--$126 million. In actuality, it was more of a “pay as you play” contract, wherein Kaepernick has de-escalators if the 49ers, or Kaepernick, are not successful. This season was thoroughly not a success. All is not lost, however, as Kaepernick’s season was only a failure when compared to the lofty pre-season expectations for him. I myself even said in the preseason that Kaepernick had way too many weapons to have any more excuses. After the season did not live up to expectations, many fans were clamoring for Alex Smith, claiming they preferred Captain Checkdown to the young gunner. Please, for a moment, review these season-long stats:

                                                          Player A                               Player B
Completion Percentage               60.5%                                    61.3%
Total Passing Yards                       3,369                                     3,144
Touchdowns                                  19                                           17
Interceptions                                  10                                           5
Yards/Attempt                               7.0                                          7.1
Sacks                                                52                                           44
Rushing Yards                                 639                                         179
Yards Per Rush                                6.1                                          3.4

These two players are pretty similar except Player B has only 5 interceptions and Player A is a much more effective runner. Player A is 2014 Colin Kaepernick with his “disastrous” 2014 and Player B is 2011 Alex Smith—the last full season he had as the starting QB for the 49ers. I understand that fans are frustrated, and I was frustrated right alongside them. There are fans calling for the 49ers to bench Kaepernick or bring in a vague, theoretical quarterback as “competition.” Fans are getting a little ahead of themselves, as 2011 was Alex Smith's best full season he had with the 49ers. As you can see, Colin Kaepernick is essentially the same player (if not more frustrating because instead of 2 completions for 7 yards, it's a completion for 13 and a completion for 1 yard).

Here’s the simple fact of the matter: If replacing a quarterback was so easy, then a lot of QBs would not have jobs right now. There are less than 100 NFL quality QBs in the world (factoring in age and eligibility), and the cliffs of elite, to great, to good, to mediocre, to awful comes very quickly, well within the first 30 or so quarterbacks in the entire world. The 49ers should stick with Colin Kaepernick, but the pocket passer experiment should smartly be over. He works best on the run and improvising. He is not Peyton Manning or Tom Brady, and he never will be. That doesn’t mean he can’t be a fine quarterback for the 49ers in the future, and it certainly doesn’t mean he’s a bust or a fraud.

Kaepernick received a C+ for this season because he performed poorly by our expectations, but he produced the most passing yards since Jeff Garcia in 2001, the second most touchdowns (to himself) since Garcia’s 2001 and the most rushing yards by a 49ers quarterback ever. The offense was uninspired, disastrous and moved in fits and starts, but by and large, Colin Kaepernick was a perfectly good NFL quarterback, especially by the standards the 49ers have had at QB since Jeff Garcia.

Kaepernick’s backups, Blaine Gabbert and Josh Johnson, will likely not be with the team next year. Gabbert was dreadful in his time as a starter with the Jaguars, and is an unrestricted free agent. If he is back, it is likely for his same salary—roughly $2 million. If all goes according to plan, he never sees the field, and the backup QB is a moot point. The third string QB, Josh Johnson, was a Jim Harbaugh disciple, playing under Harbaugh at SDSU. Johnson is 28 years old and at this point, he is complete as an NFL product. He is likely gone as it is unlikely he fits into the new head coach/offensive coordinator’s plans.

The 49ers quarterback situation was slightly better than mediocre in 2014, but I have hopes for Kaepernick in 2015 and beyond. He gets a B rating for the future since we’ve already seen what he can do when the offense is properly schemed for his talents. The rest of the QB situation will be different in 2015. It’s likely the 49ers draft a project QB late (like BJ Daniels) and bring in a solid backup veteran (if the cap allows, otherwise it’s more of the Blaine Pain Train).

This marks the end of part one of the multi-part series taking an in-depth look at the 49ers and what went wrong (and right) with 2014. I hope you all enjoyed it and I will be back with Part 2 – The Running Backs. 

49ers Positional Grades, Part One—Quarterback

The pain of the Super Bowl has mostly passed, and I‘m back in a position where I can actually talk about sports again. I understand that to this point, I have done mostly general posts about sports that can be consumed by anyone who has a tangential interest to any sport. However, there are only so many of those topics that can be covered. They will return, but I want to start taking a good look at what happens on the field (or on the court). I’m sorry if I lose some of you, but I really enjoy making posts like “Why Do We Love Sports?” so stick around, there will be more like that.

After doing a year in review a while back just to splash something up on a page, I thought I would do a position-by-position breakdown of each position grouping on the 49ers, assign grades, and give an outlook on the position in 2013.

Quarterback, A-, Key Players: Colin Kaepernick, Alex Smith
Here we go, this one is a doozie. Coming off his first full decent season, Alex Smith was turning in a solid, not great season. He had become a reliable cog in the 49ers system. He’d take more sacks than risks on shots downfield, throwing mostly safe, short passes.  The week prior to losing his job due to a concussion, Alex Smith was the NFC Offensive Player of the Week, completing 18 or 19 passes for 232 yards and three touchdowns. Pro-football-reference.com breaks down his statistics from the game, and only two of his 19 passes went “deep” (20 or more yards in the air). In fact, about 20% of Smith’s production for the day came on a short right pass to Moss, who took it 47 yards for the touchdown. Smith didn’t put the ball in a great position, but with some good moves and better downfield blocking, Moss was able to score. The same thing happened on a 30 yard pass to Michael Crabtree, wherein he made several moves to make much ballyhooed Cardinals defensive back Patrick Peterson look entirely lost. It was the most Smithian of games. He made short, smart passes and was putting the ball where it was safest, not necessarily where it needed to be to score. His playmakers made moves downfield to give him his impressive day. According to 49ers insider Matt Barrows, 131 of Smith’s 232 yards came on YAC (yards after the catch) that game, or 56.4%. More than half of Smith’s yards that game, and two touchdowns, came from the playmaking skills of players on his team, not from his arm.

The following week young Colin Kaepernick took the reins after Alex Smith was concussed prior to throwing  a touchdown to Michael Crabtree. Kaepernick looked exactly as inexperienced as he was. He had come in solely for trick plays or the veiled threat of the deep bomb to that point. He had no serious experience running the offense. He rallied the 49ers back from a 14-7 deficit to a tie. The glorious reign of the Kap began with a tie to a division rival.

The week after, however, was a Monday Night Football tilt versus the Chicago Bears and their Defense of Destiny.  They had been playing at a clip that had people whispering about the 1985 Bears and their all-time great defense.  Colin Kaepernick tore them apart. He was an unknown commodity as a play caller, and as the focal point of the offense. He threw for roughly the same amount of yards as Smith the game before, but with a couple of long bombs to Kyle Williams and Vernon Davis, many more of his yards came on his own merit. He yanked the job out of Smith’s hands and never looked back.

Kaepernick had his ups and downs, the deepest downs coming a couple weeks later against the Rams, when his youth and decision making was on full display in an overtime loss to St. Louis—which almost tied again.  With impressive wins over the Bears, Saints, Patriots, Dolphins and Cardinals, Kaepernick developed a stranglehold on the job. The full range of CK7’s ability was on display in consecutive weeks—Week 14 at home against the Dolphins and Week 15 at the Patriots. In Week 14, he took a read option 56 yards to the end zone, untouched. In Week 15, he passed all over the questionable Patriots secondary.

In the playoff bye week, Jim Harbaugh and Offensive Coordinator Greg Roman fully installed the pistol formation and the zone read plays that the 49ers ran from the formation. This led them to the Super Bowl. Kaepernick gashed the Packers for the most rushing yards by a quarterback ever in the Divisional Round, and in the NFC Championship Game, the Falcons sold out against Kaepernick. This led to two rushing touchdowns by Frank Gore, a third by LaMichael James and receiving touchdown by Vernon Davis.

Colin Kaepernick’s poise in his tenth start really shown through, and raised the overall QB ranking for the 49ers from a B+ to an A-. In his tenth start, Kaepernick was down 28-6 after a huge return touchdown by Jacoby Jones against the Ravens.

Did I forget to mention the Super Bowl was his tenth start? In this start, Kaepernick led the 49ers back to a 31-29 deficit on a 15 yard rushing play. After this, the 49ers were within striking distance with about two minutes left. Questionable play calling, questionable no calls by the referees and lack of execution caused the rumbling comeback to fall short. However, Kaepernick’s poise on the biggest stage, orchestrating a 20-point comeback solidified him as a starter in the NFL.
Colin Kaepernick showed that he was the polar opposite of Alex Smith this year. While his yards per attempt were almost identical (about 8 yards per attempt), his yards per completion was higher (about 11 YPC for Smith, about 13 for Kaepernick), and many of Kaepernick’s passes came without significant YAC. He is a stronger downfield passer than Smith, and I don’t even have to explain the completely different dimension he adds with his feet. He’s about halfway through his first season as a starter, by games, and he already has people asking if he is going to be an elite quarterback. That’s a pretty good future for some kid from Turlock.
For 2013:
It is obvious that Colin Kaepernick is the 49er’s quarterback of the future. Ravens super All-Pro & potential future Hall of Famer Terrell Suggs said of Kaepernick, "When you go in there and you're playing a guy like that, I hate quarterbacks, but that kid is the truth and I have the upmost respect for him. I don't think he needs to hold his head down at all because he's going to play in a few (Super Bowls)."

The only question for 2013 is the future of Alex Smith. It was made abundantly clear over the last couple of years that Smith, given the right system and expectations, can be a starting quarterback in the NFL. With Kaepernick on the 49ers, however, he can’t be that in San Francisco. Rumors swirled that he would request a release prior to a trade, but it is likely that Trent Baalke can squeeze a mid-round pick or two out of a team to guarantee Smith’s services. I did a full write-up of the likelihood of Smith’s destinations in 2013.

The question then becomes: who is Colin Kaepernick’s backup?

Some would point to free agents like Jason Campbell or JaMarcus Russell (just kidding) as potential backups for Kaep. I submit that Kaepernick’s backup is already on the roster, and that the third string QB played for us this preseason.  Scott Tolzien lit up the 49ers two preseasons ago before he was cut by the Chargers and subsequently snapped up by the 49ers to be their third-string QB.  He’s pretty much what you want out of a backup QB. Solid, nothing spectacular, and with a low likelihood of vomiting all over himself. I can see him as an easy in-house option at professional clipboard holder next season.  Who becomes the third string QB? That would be Colin Kaepernick 1.0; Josh Johnson. Johnson was Harbaugh’s first real mobile quarterback option when he played for him at the University of San Diego. Johnson  was brought in last season to compete with Tolzien for the #3 gig. I think he will be brought back in a clear #3, break glass in case of emergency role.

Questions for 2013: 
Outside of the above question about who will be Kaepernick's backup, there is a question that will plague NFL Defensive Coordinators this offseason: how do you stop the read option? The play, wherein the QB acts as though he will hand the ball off and does or doesn't, depending on his read of the defense, devastated defenses this season. Not only Kaepernick, but young guns Russell Wilson and Robert Griffin III ran the play to perfection. If the read option/zone read can be shut down, CK7 will be forced to become a pocket passer, using his feet mostly for scrambling. This is precisely what happened for most of the Ravens and Falcons games, and they worked out pretty well.

Kaepernick's decision making will also be on display. He started off horrid, with too many burned time outs and delay of game penalties. However, he seemed to shed all that nonsense in the playoffs. Which Kaepernick shows up in 2013 will determine the 49ers' fate. They won't have Alex "Steady Eddie" Smith to fall back on anymore if Kaepernick struggles out of the gate next year.

2013 Outlook Grade: A

Well, there you have it, the first of the positional reviews for the 49ers. I was hoping to somehow cram all the offense into less than 1500 words, but its clear that won’t happen. The goal of 1k a day is to rip off the amounts in manageable chunks; no manifestos here. Given that I’m very far behind, I’ll likely be shooting for 1500 or so words a day, but that’s where I currently stand anyway, so that shouldn’t be a huge problem.  Next up will be, by far, the 49ers’ deepest position, the Running Back position.


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A Season in Review—2012 San Francisco 49ers

With the Super Bowl upon us in ten days, I wanted to take a look back on the year that was in the City by the Bay. This was my first year as a season ticket holder and it definitely adds a different element to the proceedings.
The season started off pretty electric. The 49ers had a chip on their shoulder thanks to the way their 2011 season ended; a wholly disappointing effort by the offense and special teams that led to a loss in the NFC Championship Game. They addressed this hard. They ensured their defensive 11 would all be coming back, and bolstered it with some depth. They used their “big gun” moves on offensive talent. They brought in free agents Mario Manningham, Randy Moss and Brandon Jacobs (who ran something like 10 times for a quarter of a yard or something before getting cut). They brought Leonard Davis out of retirement to provide another big man to ram into their big men.  Rounds 1 and 2 of the draft were used on a project Wide Receiver in AJ Jenkins and the versatile speedster LaMichael James.  There was a ton of buzz entering the season because the Niners were poised to make a run. They addressed their weaknesses, except what some people would say was their greatest weakness in Alex Smith at QB.

The season started off to script for the Faithful, as the Niners started 2-0 with road wins over Green Bay and a blowout of Detroit (before people knew detroit was a dumpster fire). They then fell apart in Minnesota, losing to a team they very well should have beaten. Minnesota exposed a weakness in the 49ers—shut down the run game, shut down the offense. They were able to contain Frank Gore & Kendall Hunter and the 49ers offense shriveled and died. Alex Smith simply did not have the ability to “take over” a game. People again began questioning Alex Smith’s ability to handle that offense. Then they got to take on two of the worst teams in the AFC.

The next two weeks saw the 49ers absolutely dismantle the Bills and Jets, winning by a combined 79-3. People starting calling them the best team in football. Those two games were ridiculous; Jim Harbaugh put the NFL on Madden Rookie Mode. The thing that stood out about those games, later in the season, was the poise and intelligence shown by a little known second-year quarterback by the name of Colin Kaepernick. In the early part of the season, 49ers Offensive Coordinator Greg Roman sprinkled in plays here and there where Kaepernick would replace Smith in an effort to run, or threat at the run, to add a wrinkle to the offense.  At the end of the Jets game, with the 49ers up 34-0 and very little time remaining, Kaepernick broke free. He had a long run that would have surely ended with the 49ers up 41-0 in an absolute stomping of the Jets.

Kaepernick didn’t score, however; he slid down at the one yard line. When asked about it after the game, he related that he did not want to risk any injuries as the game was already out of hand. In a stretch where the team outscored their opponents by 76 points, the young QB’s poise and presence of mind ended up being the story at the end of the season.

In a pattern this season that only finally broke in the playoffs, the 49ers lost to the Giants after winning two in a row. The 49ers offense stagnated again against the Giants; the second time in two meetings in calendar year 2012. This was an inkblot game for people. Alex Smith supporters said that they were the world champs, and there is no shame in losing to them. Colin Kaepernick supporters, bolstered by his recent success in “one-off” plays as in the Giants game, said it was time for a change. Harbaugh stuck with his man.
Alex Smith rewarded Jim Harbaugh’s decision by leading them to victory over division rivals Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals. The latter of these two games earned Alex Smith Offensive Player of the Week Honors as he completed 18 of 19 passes picking apart the Cardinals defense for 232 yards and 3 Touchdowns, with 0 interceptions.

The 49ers had their bye, and Alex Smith likely staved off a larger role for Colin Kaepernick thanks to his performance against the Cardinals. A first quarter concussion in a home game against the St. Louis Rams knocked him out of the game, and it was time for Kaepernick to rise to the occasion. Which he did, sort of. He took over for the injured Alex Smith and lead the team back, snatching a tie from the jaws of defeat. Candlestick was speechless. There is no feeling that can describe the dissatisfaction that comes from driving home without an answer. No win, no loss. Everyone just goes home. Nobody is happy, nobody is sad.

The next week Alex Smith failed his concussion test and the Colin Kaepernick Era was upon us. They were playing the stout defense of the Chicago Bears and the so-so offense. Especially so, since the Chicago Bears were also playing their backup QB, Jason Campbell. This was the Monday Night Football game that week, so a national audience was privy to the Kaepernick outbreak in the Backup Bowl. Kaepernick gashed the Bears defense, passing for 243 yards, 2 TDs and 0 INTs. He added 4 runs for 10 yards, which is pretty unimpressive given what he would do in future games.

San Francisco made their first trip to New Orleans this season and the hoopla was around whether or not Alex Smith had been “Wally Pipped,” a term referring to the outfielder who was injured and lost his job to All-Time Legend Lou Gehrig. Jim Harbaugh decided to stick with the young QB, citing Alex Smith not passing his concussion tests until late in the week. The classic controversy began. Kaepernick did enough to not lose, which is all that was asked of Alex Smith, with a few impressive runs. The defense did all the work with the 49ers running back interceptions for touchdowns on consecutive Drew Brees passes (one at the end of the second half and one with his first pass of the second half).

The Niners travelled to St. Louis to avenge their overtime tie. As with the other 49ers non-wins this season, nothing went right. The Rams did whatever they wanted, with Stephen Jackson destroying their vaunted run defense and Kaepernick looking very much like it was his third start. They continued the Win-Win-Loss/Tie pattern and dropped the game to the Rams (with it almost being a tie again).

Controversy swirled around San Francisco. It was easy to understand sticking with the hot hand in Kaepernick when he won against two of the biggest games of the season for the 49ers. Conventional wisdom would dictate going back to the “Steady Eddie” who had lead them through the first half of the season. If there’s anything about Jim Harbaugh, it’s that he is anything but conventional.  He stuck with his guns and the young gun. He continued the pattern, with wins against Miami and a highly impressive road win in Foxboro before dropping a road game to Seattle. The 49ers rounded out the season by winning their last game against the Cardinals at home.

They then sat and watched, as the Minnesota Vikings hit a last-second field goal to seal the 49ers first-round bye and much needed rest. This turned out to be a difference maker in the post-season.

The offense that the 49ers displayed this offseason is unlike anything they ran all year. The Read Option had become a minor part of the offense under Kaepernick, but they used the week off to perfect this. Kaepernick gashed the Packers in every sense of the word. He ran for an NFL QB record on the ground and picked apart the offense through the air with precision, speed and touch. The game was never in doubt in the second half.  Nothing better exemplified the stomping of the Packers than the Greg Jennings touchdown late in the fourth quarter that was met with no reaction in the crowd. No cheers, no groans. It wasn’t even close.

The NFC Championship Game, Mr. Kaepernick’s ninth start of his career, showed the measure of the man. The 49ers couldn’t get anything right, and ended up down 17-0 before they got their act together on either offense or defense. Greg Roman, rather than airing it out, stuck with his guns, and fed Frank Gore. The run game got the 49ers back into it. The Read Option rendered the Falcons defense useless as the 49ers used the threat of Colin Kaepernick to lead to a big day on the ground.  The defense tightened up against the best WR duo—and the greatest TE of all time—to hold them to 7 points after they went up 17-0. A Frank Gore run on a Read Option play put them ahead for good.

Special Shout Out goes HERE for NaVorro Bowman stopping the Falcons on fourth down in the red zone, saving the game. Yes, he got away with a shove, but they had been shoving all day on both sides. He knew the refs would swallow the whistle, and he was right.

The 49ers currently sit on the precipice of greatness, they are going for their sixth Lombardi Trophy in as many times. A win will tie them with the Steelers for the most Super Bowl wins. Whatever happens on February 3, 2013 at 3:30 PM Pacific (not that I’m counting), it’s been a crazy season.

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1K A Day–365,000 words in 2013 / No Guts, No Glory

I started this sports blog to have a place where I can articulate my thoughts and opinions about things going on in the NFL, NBA and MLB. The only problem was I didn’t know where to start. There has been enough happening in my sports world to have a place to start.

Two places, in fact.

A bit of a background on me, I am from Sacramento, CA and I currently reside in San Jose, CA. You can guess my teams. The Giants, The 49ers and the (Sacramento) Kings. I think you can see the two storylines I could really attack here. Sunday was one of the best and worst sports experiences of my life. The 49ers rallied back from a 17-0 deficit to punch their ticket to New Orleans, and as I drove home, my ESPN ScoreCenter app let me know that the Maloofs finalized the deal to transfer majority ownership to a Seattle-based group whose intent was relocation to the Grunge Capitol.

Instead I decided on kicking off with an idea that I’ve had for a while now, to have a simple goal: average 1,000 words a day written to get to the lofty goal of 365,000 written in a year—1,000 a day. That may seem like a daunting task at first glance, but I think it can be reasonably done.

Will it all be good? Probably not. This is called My Stupid Sports Opinions, not My Extremely Insightful and Well Thought Out Sports Opinions. The goal of this is merely to write, to put though through keystrokes to web space.

Obviously the major first hurdle is that I’m already 22,000 words behind pace. Well, this isn’t a precise science. This isn’t Twitter, I’m not capped. Hopefully across the pieces remaining this year, I can make up the 22,000. If not, expect some entries padded worse than an eighth grader’s essay on the American Revolution.

With that out of the way, today’s entry is about one simple issue: guts. As the cliché goes, “No Guts, No Glory.” This is also the story of two sets of brothers: The Maloofs and the Harbaughs.

The Maloof brothers inherited an empire from their father; they were successes before they even tried. The Maloof brothers inherited George Maloof, Sr.’s Coors distribution empire and promptly drove the whole thing into the ground. They listened to the people around them and threw all their cash into the Palms casino, which promptly cost them all their money. They sold off their various holdings in order to fund their primary toy, which became their majority holding: The Sacramento Kings.

For years, it has been apparent that they are not fit to run the franchise, especially financially. Since the Kings last made the playoffs in 2006, they have become increasingly conservative and close to the vest with their acquisition of talent in Sacramento. They are concerned only with reaching the cap floor, and not with putting a competitive product on the floor. They were so afraid to overspend their means that it ended up costing them in the end.

Fans left in droves. Ask Kings fans, and their reactions will be the same: love the Kings, hate the Maloofs. This came about due to their inability to display guts, the central theme of this post. Their gutlessness caused them to retract in the face of potential adversity, rather than embrace it and make the best of it.  They were adamant that the team was theirs rather than cutting bait on their final holding, retreating to nurse their wounds, and moving on. Instead they put increasingly terrible products on the floor, flirted with several different cities, backed out of a deal to keep the team in Sacramento and eventually became the villains of the city.

They were adamant for years that they were not going to be selling the Kings; it was their team. The first opportunity to purchase the team was not even given to a Sacramento-based organization. The Maloofs could not even envision a post-Maloof Kings. What if they were suddenly good, because they had ownership that would pay for talent? The losses would be blamed on the Maloofs. They couldn’t have that. They were afraid.

They simply did not have the intestinal fortitude to look within, admit they were wrong, cut bait and move on.  Because of this they are universally reviled in Sacramento and currently on their way out of town. They were too scared about what might happen that they made a deal with a group who has designs on destroying the Sacramento Kings name. They will become the Seattle Supersonics, a team that hasn’t existed in the half decade since the city lost the original Supersonics to Oklahoma City—they subsequently became the Thunder. They took the chicken’s way out; the Kings will cease to exist. They will get a hefty payday and in exchange, there’s a cloak of separation between the organization they ran into the ground and the phoenix rising in Seattle in upcoming years.

The Maloofs had no guts, and subsequently, are on the receiving end of no glory.

Contrast this with Jim and John Harbaugh, the brothers who will face off in the Super Bowl as the head coaches of the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens, respectively. They came from simple beginnings; they never had much money, but their parents instilled in them something that cannot be bought: guts. Jim Harbaugh took over a team that had seen a long stretch of mediocrity after their dynastic years in the 1980s and 1990s. When he came to the NFL from Stanford, he was the hot commodity. Everybody wanted Coach Harbaugh. He could have gone to a myriad of teams but he chose the misfits down the road from Stanford and Palo Alto: The San Francisco 49ers.

The rally cry of the 49ers was first uttered by their father, Jack Harbaugh. They understood that every benefit is a blessing. He asked his family, “who’s got it better than us?” His family would respond, “nobody!”
The 49ers had seen years and years of rotating head coaches, coordinators, GMs, and even quarterbacks. Only a few years removed from the 49ers starting JT “Just Touchdowns” O’Sullivan at quarterback, they brought in a former QB who vowed to turn the franchise around. How did he do it? Guts. More on that, later.

Jim’s brother John has been the head coach of the Baltimore Ravens since 2008.  He succeeded Brian Billick who had constructed a winning team in 2006, but that floundered in 2007. John Harbaugh took the reins knowing he could put a great product on the field. He’s done just that; the Ravens are, year in and year out, considered one of the top teams in the AFC.

The coaches taking over floundering organizations isn’t what took guts; most head coaches take over because their predecessor failed to meet expectations. The guts the Harbaughs displayed this year is from unconventional and controversial decision made this year. They each made a change that, if asked, I guarantee most NFL coaches would say they would never do.

Jim Harbaugh switched quarterbacks mid-season, which, except in the case of injury, is unthinkable. He went from the “steady Eddie” of the past season and a half (the much maligned under previous coaches) Alex Smith to the “New Hotness” Colin Kaepernick. John Harbaugh did something even more unthinkable: he fired his Offensive Coordinator, Cam Cameron. Cameron was a “steady Eddie” in his own right. He was steadily feeding the offense a series of terrible, but safe, playcalling.

In the 49ers home tilt (ding!) against the Rams this year, Alex Smith suffered a concussion. He failed his concussion tests headed into their contest the next week against the Chicago Bears. Young Colin Kaepernick, the Turlock Tornado destroyed the Bears and continued the 49ers Curse (more on that in another post).  When Alex Smith was set to come back, conventional wisdom would have given him another opportunity. After all, in the game prior to the Rams game, he was the NFC Offensive Player of the Week. Who would have the guts to bench that person? Jim Harbaugh. He knew that Colin Kaepernick was his guy. His dual threat of a QB who can run as well as he can throw—two things he does extremely well—was the future of the organization. He had to bench the suddenly popular Alex Smith. Many people, myself included, hated the decision. They thought he was playing for the future of the franchise rather than the present, a present that had seen them reach an NFC Championship game in the same calendar year.

It worked. I was wrong. Colin Kaepernick in the Pistol Formation is extremely dangerous. When he is up for a contract, Kap’s agent only needs to pull roll from two games: the NFC Divisional Game and the NFC Championship Game. These games, one wherein he rode roughshod over the terrible Green Bay defense and one wherein he was down 17-0 on the road, in a super loud dome, and lead a storming comeback to victory IN HIS TENTH START. He showed the poise and confidence of someone in his tenth year, not his tenth game. Jim Harbaugh had guts, and he was right.

John Harbaugh made another gutsy decision that is paying huge dividends; he fired his Offensive Coordinator for years, Cam Cameron. They started off 9-2 on the back of their defense. After dropping 3 games thanks to a stagnant offense, they cut ties with Cam Cameron and promoted their QBs coach to OC. Jim Caldwell had previously overseen the fall of the Peyton Manning Era in Indianapolis.

Very few coaches would fire the man who designs, runs and executes their offense 14 games into a 16 game season. Even fewer are successful. Fewer, even, and without even looking this up, make it to the Super Bowl. John Harbaugh had the guts to roll the dice, and it is paying dividends. Huge dividends.
“Is Joe Flacco Elite?” echoed on every sports news outlet after he claimed he was a top-five QB. He showed he is; he’s thrown 9 touchdowns and no interceptions this offseason, and the Ravens offense is flourishing.

This post has been the stories of two sets of brothers raised two different ways. The Maloofs were raised in the lap of luxury and never taught to fend for themselves. As a result, they were gutless, and they are currently reviled and considered to be terrible ownership. The Harbaughs were raised in the lower-middle class; the sons of a football coach themselves. Their fortitude was forged in iron and they showed resolve in the face of adversity and will face off in the Super Bowl, the ultimate goal for any NFL player or coach.

Sometimes “No Guts, No Glory” has merit. The Maloofs and Harbaughs prove this. Plan accordingly.

- JK

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