Hypotheticaly Har Balling It......

I think you reward your employees when they do well. If the team succeeds, I don't see how you can fire Philbin without seeming like an even bigger dick than recruiting harbaugh before firing sparano.

 

Based on how persistent the Harbaugh rumors are becoming again, I think it's safe to say that Joe Philbin is toast if Harbaugh can actually be brought on board and Joe doesn't win 10 games / make it to the second round of the playoffs. Now that might not be good form to fire Philbin if we win 9 games and lose a wild card game, but I don't think Ross really cares about that.

I'd be okay with that. I'm pulling for Joe Philbin to turn this thing around, but he isn't a great coach.

 

If Philbin goes and our offense is as good as expected, I say give Lazor a shot. If not, then Gus Malzahn over Harbaugh for me.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Harbaugh is bat **** cuckoo bird. Think of how insane he must be if the 49ers are willing to get rid of him.

 

It'll say plenty about Harbaugh if he's available after this season.

 

I think Steve Ross will feel Harbaugh out on coming to Miami and if he's open to it, Ross will offer him everything he could want financially plus an ownership stake in the team. The only thing that could stop Ross in his tracks IMO would be if Philbin wins a playoff game.

But the fact of the matter is, Ross could send feelers out to Harbaugh and get a less than ideal response. We have no idea. Harbaugh was serious about joining Miami the first time around but something changed his mind around the day of the meeting he had with Ross and Ireland. I know some things that turned him off, but I don't necessarily know everything that turned him off. Could be that Harbaugh will tell Ross he's just not interested.

 

If it gets to that point, it won't matter. I think Ross takes Harbaugh and runs with it, even if it means Hickey is 'one and done' and we know that Philbin's situation is....fluid...

However, the one thing we need to keep in mind, no matter what else happens, if the OL isn't 'fixed', we'll be looking for a new HC come December...

 

The only thing that I question is that it seems that Ross is...cheap/doesn't like to fire folks/wants them to work thru their contract tenure/whatever you want to call it... I mean, he didn't even fire Ireland ?? You're right that if he wants Harbaugh he's going to have to overcome those 'hangin' on to folks' tendencies he's shown with Fist Pump, Ireland and to an extent, Philbin and just dump them and start over. Harbaugh may just be the one guy that could force his hand, but is that a given?? I don't know...

 

If Miami improves, I don't see how you can fire Philbin. If Tannehill looks really good, and improves, in Lazor's offense, you can't rock the boat.

I'm not a Philbin guy. I would love Jim Harbaugh. However, the most important thing is Ryan Tannehill. If he's playing well and thriving, I want it done in the same offense he did it in.

 

As for Lazor, I think that is a bridge that can't be crossed until we get to it. If the O can score more prolifically, then I'm not sure Philbin's job is in jeopardy...assuming the D doesn't completely fall apart...which there isn't really any indication that it will...

 

Harbaugh is a loonie.

But he's a damn good coach.

 

Doubt even Michigan can compete financially for Harbaugh. Money is the biggest issue in SF right now and I have no doubt that Ross would offer north of $8 million, maybe even up to $10 million per year, potentially along with an ownership stake as CK suggested.

I do believe that Harbaugh is one of the very few coaches that you would fire even a winning coach for. I remember when Joe Dumars hired Larry Brown for the Pistons, they were coming off two straight ECF appearances under Rick Carlisle (who ended up becoming a great coach) and Dumars famously said that "if you're going to fire Rick Carlisle, you better be hiring Pat Riley, Phil Jackson or Larry Brown"

 

When it comes to Harbaugh and the 49ers, what's more impressive the talent amassed on that team or coaching all that talent? To me, I think Harbaugh is a winner of circumstance cause that front office is amazing.

I can't explain why, but I feel like that team is barely held together leadership-wise and when it tears Harbaugh will not be able to pull them back. I think the players bought into him immediately but as the crazy surfaces it will harder and harder to hold them together. Again, I can't explain it and I could be wrong.

 

The Raiders were willing to trade Gruden. Now, you can say what you want about Gruden, but I don't think the Bucs would take that one back.

 

From people that actually have a fair amount of contact with Steve Ross, they say two things about him. 1) He'll stop owning the Dolphins when he dies, and 2) He's desperate not to die a loser.

Personally I think he will make a huge, perhaps even unprecedented (in football, has happened in basketball) offer to Harbaugh to try and bring him here. I think Ross will do that out of a combination of desperation and pride. Harbaugh was the first guy he picked out of a hat to go talk to as an owner, and maybe he didn't quite go about it the right way because he was so new as an owner and had some things he had to learn, but he'll get plenty of joy out of the thought that Harbaugh was his choice all along and he was right to go after him. The Michigan pride thing looms over that as well.

The big question to me is how much Steve Ross learned what not to do from the first experience. If he starts making overtures toward Harbaugh while Jim is in the middle of a playoff run and Philbin is still the coach of the Miami Dolphins, you could easily look at that from Harbaugh's standpoint and conclude that Ross is still clueless about how to go about things. It won't help if during the negotiations Ross keeps trying to shove people like Dennis Hickey, Dawn Aponte, Bill Lazor, Kevin Coyle or even Joe Philbin himself onto Harbaugh. Ross has hoarding tendencies when it comes to collecting people around him. He tries to make them all fit and just add a new personality to the room rather than make changes. I wouldn't put it past him to suggest to Harbaugh that Joe Philbin could be his OL Coach.

 

Yes, but Al Davis was firing on one cylinder.

 

Jeff Ireland wasn't fired. They wanted to give Jeff Ireland a new title and retain him in the personnel department. IIRC they also tried to retain Sparano as the o-line coach?

 

Who knows? Maybe.

But why don't we see how Lazor's offense works in an actual game, and what kinds of calls he makes in critical situations before we get worried about losing him.

 

Jim Harbaugh + Ryan Tannehill = Superbowl.

Doubt this ever happens though. Even if Harbaugh walks from San Fran, I have zero faith in Ross having the ability to get Harbaugh in Miami.

 

As for San Fran being willing to get rid of Harbaugh...success does funny things to you. Success is a team effort and every person on the team wants to see themselves as being integral to that success, and everyone else being just a puzzle piece.

As has been brought up the Raiders were willing to let go of Gruden. The Cowboys were willing to let Jimmy Johnson walk. In both situations you had other personalities who wanted to believe that the team's success had as much to do with them as anyone else. I believe the York who runs things in San Francisco is very active that way and he's surrounded by people like Trent Baalke and Paraag Marathe who probably feel the same way, and in fact are probably feeling frustrated with Harbaugh that he can't "win the big one" even when they give him such a great roster, etc.

As for Jim Harbaugh being willing to leave San Fran somehow being a bad reflection on him somehow, that doesn't even make sense.

It's definitely a possibility. In fact with Vegas handicapping the Dolphins to a rank of somewhere around #20 to #24 in the NFL, the median expectation right now should be a firing of Joe Philbin and an overture toward Jim Harbaugh.

 

I'm not at liberty to say.

 

So much this.

I don't understand why it's just being taken for granted that Bill Lazor is this great find. We know nothing about what he brings to the table. When he was the OC at UVA it's not like he was Gus Malzahn 2.0 or anything. We know he's importing over the form of Chip Kelly's offense from Philadelphia but we have no idea if he's bringing over the philosophy which fuels the offense...or the ability to teach it.

However, if Bill Lazor DOES impress, yes absolutely he's compatible with Jim Harbaugh. Very much so. They're both WCO coaches. Harbaugh coached against Chip Kelly's offenses at Stanford and he's very familiar with those elements, and has incorporated quite a bit of option of his own at San Francisco.

 

Hell the thing I wonder is whether Rex Ryan's good relationship with John Harbaugh could translate to Rex being willing to take a defensive coordinator position in Miami under Jim Harbaugh, if Rex ends up fired after this season (strong possibility).

 

Normally you would think that Rex Ryan would just go back to Baltimore but the defensive coordinator there is Dean Pees and he's got a lot of respect both within the organization and around the league. I mean they won the Super Bowl with Pees as the defensive coordinator. They'd probably just say the timing isn't right if Rex wanted to go back there (which he might, as everyone I've ever talked to that has been a part of the Baltimore organization speaks incredibly highly of it).

I don't think he's on the greatest of terms with Mike Pettine in Cleveland so I don't know about assuming he'd just be welcomed over there immediately. Though one could assume quite easily he would be a highly sought-after commodity as a defensive coordinator.

The real issue is whether Ryan would take the money from his remaining years under contract with the Jets and just not coach, go be a consultant somewhere or something like that. Thing is, I'm not sure that's really in his personality to do that. It would be hard for me to imagine.

Rex is the kind of guy that could be morbidly intrigued with the idea of coaching for the Dolphins after so many years of hating on each other.

 

I'm not really sure that there is that much discord between Harbaugh and the 49ers people. Sometimes it looks that way, but other times they do a good job either hiding it or making it known that those reports are false.

I think a big part of this is just posturing over a contract everyone knows is going to be big, and especially since Harbaugh probably knows that he'll have Steve Ross all over him.

 

I'd rather promote Bill Lazor and hire Jeremy Pruitt (UGA) to run the defense. Hes off the Saban/Fisher coaching tree and Athens doesn't have scenery that Miami does.

Bill Lazor the next Schula?

 

Wish I knew what Bill Lazor has done to deserve this kind of hero worship.