Even if the 49ers keep winning, it doesn’t mean Jim Harbaugh will be their coach next season.
There’s too much smoke coming out of their camp about internal friction and Harbaugh’s future to believe the claims from the Niners and Harbaugh himself that there is no fire.
Fox Sports reported Sunday that Harbaugh wouldn’t return to San Francisco in 2015 even if the 49ers win the Super Bowl, and more than one executive around the league believes the same thing.
Contract talks between Harbaugh and the team were tabled by the latter in the offseason, and it’s believed Harbaugh and GM Trent Baalke — long an oil-and-water mixture — can barely co-exist at this point.
Indeed, the writing has been on the wall for Harbaugh’s exit since last February, when the Niners and Harbaugh reportedly entertained an offer from the Browns to trade for the coach. The subsequent denials from San Francisco management and Harbaugh weren’t exactly full-throated.
While Harbaugh appears all but gone after this season (there will be no shortage of suitors, either, on both the pro and college levels), Deion Sanders’ claim that Harbaugh also has lost the locker room isn’t really holding up.
Including Sunday’s 22-17 win over the Chiefs, Harbaugh’s team has rallied for back-to-back victories over good teams (they beat the previously undefeated Eagles the week before) and then publicly vouched for the coach afterward.
“I love Coach Harbaugh,” Colin Kaepernick said Sunday. “I’d go to war with him any day of the week. He’s a competitor. He wants to win. He’s going to do everything to put this team in position to win.”
Harbaugh’s response, not surprisingly, was vague.
“My destiny lies between these walls with these men,” he said after the Niners improved to 3-2.
Don’t believe it. Harbaugh is a modern version of Jimmy Johnson with the Cowboys — a successful but overbearing coach whose act eventually either wears thin with management and players or causes the coach to burn out himself.