The hours since John Harbaugh was binned in Baltimore have dragged comfortably into double digits and are easing towards actual days—not a long period of time by normal standards, but long enough that he has already been crowned the best available choice for whatever coaching vacancy you've got. Maybe there's a mourning period that needs to be honored, or maybe the six other owners with vacant coach offices are still busy trying to figure out how not to pay off the guys they just fired. After all, Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti had just extended Harbaugh's contract last year to take him through 2028, and now he wants his team to go in the chimerical "different direction." Figuring out what that direction might be beyond "later into the postseason" is the bigger challenge, but the more urgent one is negotiating a dimes-on-the-dollar deal for the remaining $54 million on Harbaugh's contract.
But Harbaugh will be hired again, and by week's end if the NFL's billionaire boys club is paying any attention. Based if nothing else on the pundit "desirability" scale, he's the only fired coach who should get a new gig, even though at the age of 63 he is well past the desired young (which is to say cheap) demographic of the young'un class best represented of late by Jacksonville's Liam Coen and Chicago's Ben Johnson. Beware the Ides Of Belichick, and all that. Even if Harbaugh isn't the right fit for every available job, he is indisputably the safe fit for an owner's comfort and public profile, not to mention preening rights at the next owners' meeting. "He likes me more than you" oddly works just as well in the halls of the league's wealthiest men as it does in 10th-grade study hall.
The predictable Gen X outrage over the decision to fire Harbaugh has died down now that the keepers of the secrets have introduced his apparent schism with The Locker Room, and more pointedly with quarterback Lamar Jackson, whose own contract runs for two more years at roughly twice Harbaugh's cost. This basic math problem—$54 million into $102 million equals So Long, Pops—will explain in considerable part why Harbaugh got eased out rather than Jackson, despite a glowing resume that not only proved itself with longevity with one franchise (18 years, fifth all-time) but success (a .614 winning percentage and one parade).
But that obscures a greater truth about coaching, which is that nobody gets out alive, no matter the results. You can pretty well name all the coaches who left a gig on their own terms on both hands and one foot, max, and we'll omit coaches who were also owners and so less likely to have negotiate a severance package with themselves. Vince Lombardi, John Madden, Bill Walsh, Bud Grant, Marv Levy, Joe Gibbs twice ... if we've forgotten any, we are sure you untethered gerbils will add to the list in your own slapdash way in the comments. Don't forget to resubscribe while you're at it.
Everybody else to get an NFL coaching gig knows that the weighted anvil and the map to the bridge comes with the introductory presser. This is a remarkable business model when you consider that people unqualified by either experience or aptitude to make football decisions hire the people who are supposed to make those decisions, and that those same people then fire the people they hired three years later when it goes bad, and then they do it all again. Here we will take note of Tom Brady, who either is or isn't calling the shots in Las Vegas, but in either event is working hard not to be connected reputationally with any of those decisions. The assumption that he will somehow fix this perpetual federal dumpsite simply by being All-Time Winner Tom Brady flies in the face of Michael Jordan's experiences getting his head kicked in as the owner of the Charlotte Hornets, and maybe Brady's reluctance to be public about the extent of his role with the Raiders hearkens to that. If his credibility is that important to him, maybe "being associated with the Raiders" isn't the gig for him, but hey, he got $350 scoots to talk on television just based on him being him, and say what you will, Brady is the only Brady we've got. And even at that, Brady lacks the only truly enduring quality there is in this nepo-sport—billionaire DNA. He may be Tom Brady to the Tom Bradyeth power, but he's still just bearding for Mark Davis, whose sole qualification for owning a NFL franchise is genetic. There isn't enough money in enough banks to make that seem like fun.
Which brings us back to Harbaugh, who next to Mike Tomlin had the most uninterrupted longevity in NFL coaching job, and who hilariously coached against him in what we shall henceforth refer to as The Tyler Loop Game. Had Loop not sliced what would have been a game-winning 44-yard field goal at game's end Sunday night, you could replace Harbaugh's name with Tomlin's and get this same blog, if that's your idea of Mardi Gras. Indeed, Tomlin is not necessarily out of the woods here either, as his continued employment in Pittsburgh may still hinge on beating Houston on Monday night; the same could reasonably be said of Matt LaFleur's seven-year tenure in Green Bay if the Packers eat it in Chicago Saturday night. Once the firing bug hits the ownership class, it becomes its own contagion. These rich men are more susceptible to peer pressure than the average brace-faced tweenager; none of them want to be the pathetic sap who's stayed with the same coach for four years and still hasn't gotten that jeweled hubcap on his pinky to shame the other kids in the playground. Other than the money part, they don't want to end up being Jerry Jones, who, amazingly for a megalomaniac who thinks he knows things he clearly doesn't, is one of the least trigger-happy owners in the league.
In all, Harbaugh may have stayed too long at the fair because ultimately, folks just get tired of the same old thing—a malady also suffered by Tomlin and Andy Reid and Kyle Shanahan, their respective C.V.'s be damned. Reid has had an absurdly good run in Kansas City and is no danger as far as we know, but he will also be 68 when the 2026 season begins, and his meal ticket, P.L. Mahomes The Younger, will be 31 and coming off a crumpled knee. Like we said, nobody is safe from the sell-by date, or in Harbaugh's particular case, the Kicker With A Sickle.
But if Harbaugh was rendered damaged goods on Tuesday, it is Wednesday now, and suddenly he is the shiniest toy in the box again. This is because the other just-discarded coaches either got their three years and the sack, or were interim choices who aren't considered viable replacements. The in-season replacements this year, Mike Kafka in New York and Mike McCoy in Tennessee, combined to go 4-14. You get our point.
All of which is to say that it's Coaches Carousel Time, the happiest time of the year for you ghouls, and that John Harbaugh is brand-new again and on the clock. He is part of the free market's rich pageant—firing folks to rehire them somewhere else days later and pass them off as a brilliant choice by the local oligarch, who if this were a just universe would have been consigned to monitoring the self-checkout aisle at their parents' Piggly Wiggly franchise long ago. It's a wonder anyone makes money doing this, and the blame for that lies not with these feckless and superannuated rich kids or the coaches they hire and fire, but all of you who revel in this cavalcade of misery. Hang your heads in shame and apologize to the baby Jesus, all of you. You did this to John Harbaugh, not Tyler Loop, and we hope you're happy with knowing that.
