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The 49ers had a great coach in Jim Harbaugh. They didn’t find a way to make it work with him.
After four years that featured three NFC Championship appearances and one Super Bowl, the 49ers fired Harbaugh.
Sure, they called it a mutual parting. Harbaugh was quick to say it was not.
“I was told I wouldn’t be the coach any more,” Harbaugh said at the time. “And then . . . you can call it ‘mutual,’ I mean, I wasn’t going to put the 49ers in the position to have a coach that they didn’t want any more. But that’s the truth of it. I didn’t leave the 49ers. I felt like the 49er hierarchy left me.”
Now that Harbaugh is back in the NFL, the man that “mutually parted” him is saying all the right things.
“I congratulated them when they [Michigan] won the championship game,” 49ers CEO Jed York told Tim Kawakami of TheAthletic.com, via Joel Soria of NBC Sports Bay Area. “ We’ve texted back and forth. I think Jim is a hell of a coach. I think it’s a great spot for him. I’m excited for the Chargers. I think they will be very, very successful.”
He knows from experience that Harbaugh is a great coach. He immediately turned the team around. For whatever reason, someone was unable to coexist with Harbaugh.
York has moved past whatever prompted him to move on from Harbaugh.
“I think with anything, people mature, time passes and you tend to remember a lot more of the good things than maybe not-so-good things,” York said.
There should have been a lot more good than not-so-good for the 49ers and Harbaugh. But after only three years, things were fractured. The 49ers discussed trading him to the Browns after the 2013 season. After only one more year, it was over.
For the Chargers and Harbaugh, it’s just beginning.
“I think it is a team that had talent, that didn’t achieve what they hoped to,” York said. “I don’t want to speak too much about somebody else’s team, but it’s certainly a talented team. I think he has the chance to do really, really well…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/jed-york-chargers-very-very-061435394.html
Author : ProFootball Talk on NBC Sports
Publish date : 2024-02-04 06:14:35
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