College Football Coaches Usually Flop in the NFL. This One Won’t.

Jim Harbaugh left Michigan last week to take over the Los Angeles Chargers, finally ending a three-year saga in which Harbaugh annually flirted with the NFL but never went all the way with it. His introductory press conference in Southern California on Thursday comes a little over nine years after he had the same kind of press conference in Ann Arbor. He arrived there as an aspirational savior and became a real one. Harbaugh’s first six seasons saw Michigan climb out from the deep depths of losing under his two most recent predecessors, but the coach could not win the game Michigan fans cared about most: the one at the end of November against Ohio State. In his last three years, though, he flipped a switch, beating Ohio State three times and, just this month, winning a national championship. This final triumph came after two suspensions in his final season, one from the NCAA and another from the Big Ten. Taken together, the year encapsulated what made Harbaugh a singular college football figure, which he became because of the mass psychosis he inspired among both his haters and his admirers. Ohio State fans see him as a cheater and a charlatan. Michigan fans see him as the Messiah, more or less. Both could be true. In the former case, any sign-stealing discipline that Michigan faces won’t be Harbaugh’s problem. The Wolverines certainly kicked enough ass down the stretch to leave no doubt that they were the sport’s best team.

Harbaugh in the NFL will be a different beast. For starters, he will be less important. College programs are built around coaches, and the whole enterprise takes on the identity of the guy in charge. NFL organizations are built around quarterbacks, and the most important guy in the Chargers’ building won’t even be Harbaugh: It will be Justin Herbert, the quarterback whose development will be the biggest factor in whether Harbaugh gets the Super Bowl ring he craves. Harbaugh’s recruiting ability will not matter in the NFL—nor, really, will his ability to speak the love language of his team’s fan base. (The coach’s childhood and college years inside Michigan’s program gave him a preternatural understanding of its collective psyche.) Chargers fans could turn on Harbaugh, but it’s not as if they’ll start withholding the booster checks he needs to do his job. Harbaugh at Michigan led a nation. Harbaugh in Los Angeles will be a working stiff.

That might sound like a word of caution about Harbaugh’s ability to make it work in the NFL. For most college coaches making the leap, it would be. But Harbaugh is a great hire for the Chargers, not just because he has an existing NFL track record but because he’s the type of college coach who isn’t predestined to be a fish out of water in the NFL. Harbaugh won at Michigan because he is ideally suited to a job where he is largely a politician. He will probably win with the Chargers too, even though his glad-handing skills will now be almost meaningless. Harbaugh is the coaching industry’s unicorn, the one guy who’s already shown off a toolbox that makes him effective at both of football’s top levels.

The track record for college coaches in the NFL is infamous. The last guy to make the move was Urban Meyer, Harbaugh’s onetime tormentor at Ohio State, and Meyer was such a predictable and comprehensive failure that it’s still amazing the Jacksonville Jaguars ever gave him a chance. That Harbaugh is the next man up in the college-to-pro pipeline is ironic because Meyer’s move to the NFL may have played a critical part in Harbaugh’s late-stage revival at Michigan. (Meyer’s Buckeyes successor, Ryan Day, has not had Meyer’s juice to date.) Harbaugh couldn’t beat Meyer in college, but he’s way more suited to coach professional athletes. Meyer was an authoritarian who struggled with every aspect of NFL leadership. He wasn’t used to coaching players with union representation and some measure of power in the workplace. He was weirdly committed to pretending he had position battles when he clearly did not (a relic of college coaches trying to discourage players from transferring), which cost his rookie quarterback valuable developmental snaps. He gave jobs and roster spots to his buddies, even when it was obvious to everyone else that those pals weren’t good fits.

When Harbaugh coached the San Francisco 49ers from 2011–14, he was much more successful. He drafted Colin Kaepernick in the second round in 2011 and helped him become one of the best young quarterbacks in the NFL, and they reached a Super Bowl together in 2012. (Kaepernick, understandably not much of a fan of the NFL establishment these days, has only ever had good things to say about Harbaugh.) Harbaugh did not earn universal adoration; Randy Moss, who played for him at the end of a legendary career, thought Harbaugh treated his NFL players like college kids. But Harbaugh’s track record at Michigan suggests he’s grown and gotten comfortable coaching players who have a bit of agency. His Wolverines saw vanishingly few important players transfer to other schools, and he seemed more comfortable than his peers living in a world where players were gradually gaining power. He went further than anyone else at his level in advocating for schools to directly pay players. I think that in 2024 Harbaugh won’t have any problem relating to professionals who make millions of dollars and whose presence on the Chargers has nothing to do with Harbaugh recruiting them in their parents’ living room.

And at this point, there should be no doubt that on pure football coaching terms, Harbaugh is a savant. His cross-level success proves it, as does the fact that he just won a national championship at Michigan while barely feigning an interest in a downfield passing game. Harbaugh hires excellent coordinators: Michigan just replaced him with his offensive coordinator, Sherrone Moore, while defensive boss Jesse Minter is coming with Harbaugh to Los Angeles. (Jim Harbaugh’s previous defensive coordinator worked the past few years for his brother John with the Baltimore Ravens, leading maybe the best defense in football. He just became the Seattle Seahawks’ head coach.)* Harbaugh is even bringing Michigan’s strength coach, Ben Herbert, whom many around the program credit with turning the program into a physically overwhelming force over the past few years.

Harbaugh knows ball, knows how to hire people who know ball, and would rather eat glass than lose ballgames. It is also just a lot harder for head coaches to get in trouble with the law in the NFL, though Harbaugh should probably tell his staff not to get caught doing anything outlandishly stupid.

The coach has a golden ticket with the Chargers. He doesn’t have just an NFL job, but an NFL job with an elite young quarterback already attached. Herbert has dealt with injuries, some youthful inconsistency, and his team letting him down in recent seasons. But his right arm is incredible, he’ll be just 26 this season, and the Chargers already have him signed to a long-term deal that ensures that Harbaugh will never go into a season with a mediocre QB behind center. The Chargers are coming off a 5–12 year and a last-place finish in the AFC West, but it is damn near a stone-cold lock that Harbaugh and Herbert will make playoff appearances together.

Will they win the whole thing one day? Who knows, but this is at least one of those coach-quarterback tandems that make it seem possible. Harbaugh will need to get a little bit more comfortable with the concept of the “forward pass” than he was in Ann Arbor, and he will need to adjust to not being the center of the universe in Los Angeles the way he was as he molded Michigan in his image. If Harbaugh can do that, the road is more open than the ones he’ll drive on every day in SoCal.