Getty Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh contemplating some important football matters before a contest.
Jim Harbaugh was sold on becoming the Minnesota Vikings‘ next head coach.
However, the Vikings were not so sold on the veteran head coach.
In a move that was a head-scratcher to Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio, Minnesota passed on Harbaugh and instead plan to hire Los Angeles Rams offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell.
Florio, a longtime Vikings fan, called out the team for the move, saying Minnesota was too cautious in its decision and head coach and urged the Vikings to correct the move before it’s too late.
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Florio Blasts Vikings for Passing on Harbaugh
Florio addressed the Vikings missing their chance to secure Harbaugh, one of the winningest coaches in NFL history, in an opinion piece written in the aftermath of Harbaugh’s interview with the team on Wednesday, February 3.
From Florio:
Fortune favors the brave, they say. The Vikings ultimately weren’t brave enough to roll the dice on a guy who has generated plenty of sevens (when sevens are good),” Florio wrote. “Instead, they’re opting for the predictable unpredictable, plucking the latest product from the Sean McVay assembly line and hoping that a guy who never was a head coach (and who never has called plays) will be able to effectively do a job he has never done.
Meanwhile, Harbaugh has been an effective head coach. FOR NINETEEN YEARS.
I would have hired Harbaugh. If it didn’t work, there would have been the next flavor-of-the-month, lather-rinse-repeat, cookie-cutter candidate from one of the Super Bowl teams. Like there is every year.
Florio’s knock on O’Connell never calling plays is a bit irrelevant considering Cincinnati Bengals coach Zac Taylor, a position coach for the Rams before the Bengals hired him in 2019, led Cincinnati to a Super Bowl appearance in just three years with no play-calling background.
However, the decision pass on Harbaugh came down to the veteran coach seemingly thinking he had the job locked up, while the Vikings were discerning in their interview process and found O’Connell to be a better candidate through interviews.
Whether that decision proves right on the field remains to be seen, and O’Connell has his work cut out for him with Harbaugh boasting the fifth-best winning percentage of .695 in NFL history with a 44-19-1 record in four seasons with the San Francisco 49ers.
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‘There’s Still Time’
A rumor that Harbaugh still needed to be sold to Vikings ownership seemed ludicrous at the time, with all the steam in the team’s head coaching search centering around the Michigan coach.
That rumor proved to be true, as general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah‘s connection is what brought Harbaugh into the building.
“The Vikings hired Kwesi Adofo-Mensah to serve as the team’s G.M. Adofo-Mensah wanted to hire Harbaugh,” Florio wrote. “They should have let him. Instead, Adofo-Mensah and Kevin O’Connell will have to find a way to form a critical partnership, even though both know that O’Connell wasn’t the first choice. (Good luck.)”
While Adofo-Mensah was lobbying for Harbaugh to become a candidate, the Vikings search committee, including Adofo-Mensah, was “blown away by O’Connell’s second interview, The Athletic’s Chad Graff reported.
But when Harbaugh visited the Vikings for his second interview on Wednesday, the search committee’s warm feelings toward the coach dissipated.
“The Vikings had some hard questions to ask. They wanted to know more about his style and ability to work with others. They wanted to know more about how things ended with the 49ers. They wanted to hear his vision for leading this team back to the Super Bowl for the first time since 1977,” Graff wrote. “Sometime around 3 p.m., for reasons that are not exactly clear, things started to take a left turn. The tenor started to change, and if there was any momentum at Harbaugh’s back as he tried to secure the job, it disappeared.”
Bur despite Harbaugh’s rough edges that, unlikely many in NFL leadership positions, he’s been forthcoming about, his results speak volumes.
Florio believes there is still time to change course back toward Harbaugh, especially with rumors swirling that Sean McVay could take a broadcasting job after this season, leaving a void at the head coach position in Los Angeles that O’Connell may want to fill instead of leaving for Minnesota.
“There’s still time to fix it. O’Connell hasn’t been hired. The deal isn’t done until it’s done,” Florio wrote. “Even if the interview was an abject disaster, it’s not about who gives the best interview. It’s about who is the best option to lead a team that has never won a Super Bowl, and that supposedly wants to.
“Do the Vikings really want to win a Super Bowl? Or is ownership concerned that things may not work smoothly in the building, given that they don’t live and work in Minnesota and thus aren’t there to monitor and/or mediate? If the Wilfs lived and worked in Minnesota, would they have hired Harbaugh? (Unfortunately, there’s a chance the answer to that question is “yes.”)