Harbaugh's histrionics and other NFL thoughts

(1) After the amazing start to his NFL head coaching career, there is little doubt that Jim Harbaugh is one heck of a coach. The San Francisco 49ers have been one of the laughing stock of the NFL prior to Harbaugh’s arrival and he has them poised to be a division winner and possible a top-two seed in his first year. Unfortunately, Harbaugh has left little doubt that he has no use for class, protocol or anything else that professional football coaches extend to each other. His over the top post-game handshake with Jim Schwartz was just the latest example of his disdain for his opponents. Frankly, throughout his time as a head coach, Harbaugh has come across as a huge jerk that doesn’t care about the impact of his words or his actions. When he was first hired at Stanford, he made statements about Pete Carroll leaving USC within a year, which was an obvious tactic to hurt the recruiting machine that Carroll had built in Troy. He later made disparaging comments about the academic standards of his alma mater, Michigan, which were supported by fact but were nonetheless unnecessary. Finally, he made postgame remarks to his team, following last year’s 41-0 drubbing of the Washington Huskies, in regards to kicking the ass of the “highest-paid coaching staff around.”

Harbaugh’s supporters would say that these are examples of his ultra-competitiveness getting the best of him. In my opinion, that is only an excuse for a guy that makes these statements in a purposeful way to ruffle the feathers of his rivals. My advice to Harbaugh would be to shut his mouth and tone down his antics, so that the success of his football teams is the main attraction rather than the actions of the head coach. It is a shame that we are focusing on the infantile confrontation between two NFL coaches rather than an excellent football game played between the Detroit Lions and the 49ers. The focus today should be about San Francisco’s ability to take the Lions’ best shot and still come away victorious on the road. We should be talking about Frank Gore’s outstanding day on the ground and the stifling defensive effort led by Patrick Willis and NaVorro Bowman. Instead, we are talking about Harbaugh’s ridiculous attempt to show up his peer and Schwartz’s equally childish attempts to chase Harbaugh into the locker room and start a fight. Unfortunately, as long as Harbaugh continues to win, he isn’t going to stop his pompous routine because he doesn’t care about anyone that doesn’t work for the 49ers’ franchise. The only way to stop him is to beat him so badly on a regular basis that the York family has no choice but to fire him. Based on his track record, I think that is wishful thinking.

(2) The Washington Redskins are blowing an opportunity to take control of the NFC East because they have one of the three worst quarterback situations in the National Football League. It should come as no surprise that the Skins are struggling at the quarterback position considering the options that they started the season with, but their deficiencies at this key position have been magnified by the fact that their division is eminently winnable. The New York Giants have been beset by injuries and can be best described as up-and-down. The Dallas Cowboys are a disaster waiting to happen and the Philadelphia Eagles have failed miserably in their attempt to build their own fantasy football team. Unfortunately, Washington is blowing their chance because they foolishly decided to go all in with Rex Grossman as their starter and John Beck as the back-up quarterback. The Washington coaching staff wanted us to believe that they really liked what they had at quarterback, but everyone could see that their choice wasn’t going to work out well. It was amazing to me that the Redskins’ brain trust didn’t seem to remember that Grossman’s best NFL days involved riding an elite defense’s coattails to the 2006 Super Bowl. Other than a few good moments during the 2005 season and resulting playoff run, Grossman’s NFL career can be summed up in one word: bleh. They also didn’t seem to notice that Beck hadn’t had anything remotely close to a good day in the NFL. Nevertheless, the Skins rolled the dice that Sexy Rexy could rekindle his glory days when he tried to not make mistakes and allowed his dominant defense to win games. Instead, Grossman has turned the ball over 11 times in five games and has basically wasted a defense that is allowing only 16.6 points per game. He has saved his worst performances for the times that Washington has lost this year with over half of his turnovers coming in those two games. The Redskins lost by two points to Dallas and by seven points to Philadelphia, when Grossman threw three interceptions inside the Eagles’ 30-yard line, so it is safe to say that the Redskins have been just a Grossman away from being undefeated. Now, Mike Shanahan is in the unenviable position of having to choose between two flawed choices to lead his team into their next game. As a result of their huge disadvantage at quarterback, I predict that the Skins will be watching the playoffs yet again instead of participating in them.

(3) With the early success of Matt Ryan, Joe Flacco and Mark Sanchez and the impressive debuts of Cam Newton and Andy Dalton, I think it is time for the Minnesota Vikings to hand over the starting quarterback job to Christian Ponder. Honestly, I’m not sure why it has taken six weeks to even get to the point where Ponder is a viable candidate to run the show. Anyone that has watched Donovan McNabb play this year can see that he has lost his fastball completely, so he probably should have been replaced a couple of weeks ago when any magic that Ponder could have mustered might have been able to save the Vikings’ season. At this point, Minnesota has nothing other than pride to play for, so Leslie Frazier should make the switch to his rookie quarterback. He will be throwing his youngster to the wolves against the defending Super Bowl champs this Sunday, but a week eight match-up in Carolina and a week nine bye should allow Ponder to get better acclimated to being an NFL quarterback. In the best case scenario, Ponder has some early success a la Andy Dalton and the Vikings win a few games that they would have lost with McNabb short-hopping throws to open receivers. In the worst case scenario, Minnesota continues to lose but Ponder earns some valuable experience like Blaine Gabbert in Jacksonville. Either way, the Vikings are finding out what they have in the future right now instead of blindly handing the football to McNabb on a weekly basis as he kills the spirit of his teammates’ and fans’. The sad part is that a classy veteran like McNabb is going to finally have to face the facts that he is no longer a starting quarterback in the NFL. He has to decide whether or not he wants to hold a clipboard for the next couple of years and collect a few more checks or if he wants to hang up the cleats with his pride still intact.