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The Los Angeles Chargers won three straight games to close out the 2024 regular season, wrapping up the top Wild Card berth in head coach Jim Harbaugh’s first season in LA. Harbaugh’s effect on the franchise cannot be understated has he’s helped the team rebound from an ugly 5-12 season in 2023 to finish with the Chargers' best record in six years.
Along the way, Harbaugh continued to distinguish himself as one of the strangest head coaches in the NFL. He lifted his team’s spirits after a disheartening late-season loss to the Kansas City Chiefs by quoting turn of the 16th century privateer Andrew Barton. He’s professed his love for starting quarterback Justin Herbert with effusive praise on multiple occasions. And he’s never lost faith in his team.
But most fans on the outside looking in wonder exactly what it’s like to play for Jim Harbaugh on a postseason-bound team. Well, the experience is unique. And Herbert can pinpoint the moment when he realized his coach was not like any other he has taken the field for. The fifth-year passer acknowledged that he knew something was different about Harbaugh when the veteran coach told the team he could remember the day he was born, according to ESPN’s Kris Rhim on X.
Only Jim Harbaugh could get away with saying something that outlandish and have his players find it endearing instead of off putting. But it’s very hard to argue with the coach’s results.
Jim Harbaugh has the Chargers ready for the playoffs thanks to his unique style
Harbaugh began his NFL head coaching career with the San Francisco 49ers in 2011. In four seasons at the helm he produced an excellent 44-19-1 record with three playoff appearances including a trip to the 2012 Super Bowl to play his brother John’s Baltimore Ravens.
After leaving the 49ers, Harbaugh spent the next nine seasons in the college ranks with the Michigan Wolverines. He capped that stint off with a National Championship and returned to the NFL for the 2024 season after signing with the Chargers.
He continued to find success as a head coach, leading LA to an 11-6 record and the top Wild Card spot in the AFC. Now, the Chargers will travel to Houston to take on the Texans in the first round of the playoffs.
Harbaugh’s instant success in Los Angeles makes him an obvious Coach of the Year frontrunner. And despite wild quotes about recalling his own birth or lengthy pseudo-medical explanations on how his players’ blood flow allows them to play in cold weather, Harbaugh clearly has the respect and admiration of his team.
The Chargers managed to avoid a nightmare scenario that would have matched LA up with the Baltimore Ravens in the Wild Card round in a rematch of the battle of the Harbaugh Brothers, taking on the 10-7 Texans instead.
The team appears ready to roll in the postseason. And the Chargers’ first-year head coach deserves a great deal of the credit.
