San Francisco 49ers Football: Harbaugh Not the Problem, Shouldn't Be Fired

It has been a rough season for Jim Harbaugh and the San Francisco 49ers.  Way back on September 7, the day of the 49ers' first game, NFL.com's Ian Rapoport reported that Harbaugh was beginning to lose the locker room.  

Harbaugh dismissed those reports as "a bunch of crap" to Lindsay H. Jones of USA Today Sports, but the 49ers are playing their worst football of the Harbaugh era.  Their record sits at 7-5, putting them third in the NFC West.

To make matters worse, the 49ers hit rock bottom on Thanksgiving Day against the Seattle Seahawks, getting dominated in every facet of the game en route to a 19-3 defeat.

After the game, 49ers CEO Jed York tweeted an apology to the 49ers fans, saying he was sorry for the bad showing against the Seahawks.  If management is going to publicly criticize the team, it should be willing to accept some of the blame and not place it all on Harbaugh.

The offense was the worst part of the performance, as Colin Kaepernick recorded his lowest passing output of the season with only 121 yards.  The offense as a whole gained only 164 yards of total offense—its season low.

The 49ers are probably not going to make the playoffs, and speculation is rampant that Harbaugh will be fired after this season. 

But is it really fair to blame Harbaugh to the point of firing him for the 49ers' struggles?

On the surface, it is absolutely crazy.  Every team has rough seasons, and there is no way that Harbaugh should be on the brink of losing his job just because he has had one bad season. 

Obviously, it’s not all about Harbaugh’s production on the field.  There has been much talk about his sour relationship with ownership and the front office, and that stems only from clashing egos.

Harbaugh took the 49ers to the NFC Championship Game in each of his first three seasons in San Francisco, making it all the way to the Super Bowl in his second season, where the 49ers lost a nail-biter to the Baltimore Ravens.

Sure, it’s been a disappointing season, but it has not been as bad as 49ers management is making it seem.  The team has a winning record, and even though it hasn’t been pretty even when it has won, it doesn’t really matter.

NFL coaches are paid to win games, not to look good. And winning by a wide margin is just a bonus. 

The 49ers' front office is so worried that Harbaugh is stealing its thunder that it can’t see how successful Harbaugh has been.  He is the only coach in NFL history to reach the conference championship game in each of the first three years, but the 49ers are acting like he has underperformed.

Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press

There are questions about the play-calling, with running back Frank Gore not getting as many carries as in the past. But it makes sense that they don’t want to overwork their horse. 

The front office is taking Harbaugh for granted, and it needs to realize how hard it truly is to make it to three consecutive conference championship games.  It is only natural in the sports world for a team to regress a little every so often, and that needs to be taken into account.

Kaepernick is still very young and relatively inexperienced, but he hasn’t been terrible in 2014.  His passer rating of 87.8 is unimpressive, but he ranks ahead of some pretty solid signal-callers, including Matthew Stafford, Cam Newton and Nick Foles.

San Francisco needs to chalk 2014 up as a bad year and move on to next season.  Firing Harbaugh would be an egregious error.  The 49ers need to appreciate what Harbaugh has done, how difficult it is to sustain success after setting the bar so incredibly high and try to make a Super Bowl run in 2015.