When Brian Baldinger started his Baldy Breakdowns a few years back, they were a source of entertainment. The former NFL offensive lineman continues to break down plays on social media in a way I wish could be a TV show.
Now he has a different breakdown: if starting from scratch, who would he hire as head coach? San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan or Los Angeles Chargers (and former 49ers) head coach Jim Harbaugh.
“I would take Harbaugh,” Baldinger said when answering the question on 95.7 The
Game. “Just because wherever he goes, he instills toughness in his team. For him to take a Brandon Staley team, which was as soft as tissue paper, and turn it around in one year, and get Daiyan Henley on the field. Like, why wasn’t he on the field his rookie year?”
Baldinger is right, Harbaugh makes his teams physical almost immediately. The issue is, we really haven’t seen him rebuild a team. The same can be said about Shanahan: We’ve seen him build a team from scratch and make them competitive.
That’s where it gets complicated. The question was starting an NFL team. And Shanahan has shown he can build a good roster.
Harbaugh came to the 49ers and inherited what was an underachieving roster. Names like Patrick Willis, Joe Staley, NaVorro Bowman, and Frank Gore were already on the team before Harbaugh arrived. A team that Mike Singletary, Harbaugh’s predecessor, led to a 6-10 record the year before. Harbaugh was the beneficiary of another subpar head coach when he went to the Chargers.
The difference is that Harbaugh did turn around those two rosters; I haven’t seen him rebuild a team. Both of his stops in the NFL had some great pieces in place.
Shanahan, on the other hand, inherited a roster that went 2-14 the season before his arrival, in 2016 under Chip Kelly. If you call that roster underachieving, then there probably wouldn’t have been a massive roster purge upon Shanahan’s arrival with John Lynch in tow. Very few names remained after. And Shanahan inherited a historically bad defense the year before, the opposite of the defense Harbaugh inherited.
Now, to be fair, Harbaugh also had to deal with Trent Baalke as general manager. And besides the 2011 draft, where the 49ers got Aldon Smith, Colin Kaepernick, and others, there were a significant number of whiffs in the years that followed. If you want to criticize Shanahan/Lynch for drafting, then my counterpoint will always be Baalke assembling the ACL All-Stars.
And I bring Baalke up because we’re talking about building a team, and Baalke rarely did Harbaugh favors. Sure, names like Jimmie Ward and Eric Reid can be fondly remembered, but then there are other names like Marcus Martin, Brandon Thomas, and the ACL All-Stars.
All of that said, when building a team, Shanahan has shown he can build a roster and maintain consistency (yes, he’s missed the playoffs the season following each of his Super Bowl runs). The debate surrounding Harbaugh centers on his three consecutive NFC Championships, which were followed by a playoff miss in his final year. Shanahan went to three straight as well, with a few issues in between, but it was on the merits of a roster he and Lynch built.
So that in mind, I’m starting from scratch, I’d take Shanahan.
Would you have Harbaugh over Shanahan to start an NFL team?
