Chargers HC Jim Harbaugh Slams ‘People’s Narrative’ for Being ‘Difficult to Deal With’ | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats & Rumors

Los Angeles Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh pushed back against the idea that his behavior could be off-putting to those around him as he makes his NFL comeback.

“The narrative that I’m hard to understand or whatever narrative there is, that’s just people’s narrative,” he told ESPN’s Kris Rhim. “Nobody’s ever questioned where my heart is, what’s best for the team that I’m on.”

Harbaugh led the San Francisco 49ers to an NFC title in his sophomore season in 2012. He was unemployed during the 2015 offseason. His firing came amid a long-running spat with general manager Trent Baalke and what sounded like a strained relationship with the locker room.

“I think he just pushed the guys too far,” former Niners offensive tackle Alex Boone said in an interview with HBO’s Real sports with Bryant Gumbel“He wanted too much, demanded too much, expected too much. You know, ‘We’ve got to do this. We’ve got to do this. We’ve got to do this.’ And you think, ‘This guy might be clinically insane. He’s crazy.'”

Joe Staley, another former 49ers tackle, offered a similar perspective when he spoke to Mojobreak Media in June 2023 (via Taylor Wirth of NBC Sports Bay Area).

“Obviously his personality rubs people the wrong way, he’s hard to deal with consistently,” Staley said. “If you’re a Harbaugh guy, you’re in his camp and if you’re not, you’re very much against him.”

He added that the drama between Harbaugh and Baalke had been “building” for two years before it reached a peak in 2014.

“When I look back at that era of 49ers football, I’d never had so many conversations with owners, with general management, with head coaches about things that didn’t apply to football. It was just, ‘Why am I talking about this? Keep it in football.’ That was the situation we were in.”

By descending to the college ranks, Harbaugh was able to rotate the roster every few years, reducing the chance of his players reaching breaking point. But his tenure at Michigan was not without controversy and clashes with school officials, mirroring his time in the Bay Area.

Harbaugh and the Chargers are now in their honeymoon and history shows that he will soon turn Los Angeles into a winning team.

However, the way things have gone at his last two stops raises concerns about the partnership’s survival.

For Harbaugh, accepting the job with the Chargers is an opportunity to show that he has evolved as a coach and that his old reputation no longer applies.