NFL Honors 2012: Jim Harbaugh Only Choice for Coach of the Year

Jim Harbaugh deserves to be honored as the NFL's Coach of the Year at the NFL Honors on Saturday night. It's an argument so obvious it almost doesn't need to be made.

In fact, this isn't the first time I've pushed for Harbaugh to win Coach of the Year. I first proposed the idea way back on Thanksgiving.

That article was poorly timed, as Harbaugh's San Francisco 49ers went out and got destroyed by John Harbaugh's Baltimore Ravens. At the time, I remember thinking I spoke too soon.

The Niners redeemed themselves by winning four of their last five games, and then they beat the New Orleans Saints in the playoffs in one of the greatest games any of us has ever seen. All told, the 49ers won 14 games this season and lost just four.

The record is a big reason why Harbaugh looms so large in the Coach of the Year race. In 2010, the Niners won just six games and were a dysfunctional mess from start to finish. Harbaugh stepped right in and made them one of the best teams in the NFL.

The impressive part is that the Niners didn't completely overhaul their team after Harbaugh was hired. They kept the team largely intact, a decision that included bringing back much-maligned quarterback Alex Smith.

Harbaugh got them to win seven more games during the regular season, and Smith had his very best season under his watch.

In addition, let's not forget that Harbaugh didn't have much time to whip this Niners team into shape. The lockout left him with just a couple of weeks, and in those couple of weeks he managed to install his schemes and cultivate a winning culture.

Whatever Harbaugh did, it worked. His players played hard for him, way harder than they ever did under Mike Nolan or Mike Singletary. In many ways, they were an extension of Harbaugh's personality.

Occasionally, Harbaugh's personality manifested itself in his play-calling. You can't attribute every play the 49ers ran during the season to him, but certain ones stand out. 

The most notable example was the design run that Smith ran against the Saints in the Divisional Round. It was third-and-8 and the 49ers needed a touchdown to take the lead, and Smith went untouched down the left sideline for 28 yards and the go-ahead score.

Make no mistake, you need some serious guts to call a play like that. That was all Harbaugh. You can count on one hand how many other coaches in the league would have called a play like that.

There are even fewer coaches who are actually in the Coach of the Year race with Harbaugh. You could make a case for Mike McCarthy, but Aaron Rodgers made his job a little too easy. The same is true of Sean Payton and Drew Brees.

Gary Kubiak is a possibility, but the Houston Texans really tailed off after they lost Matt Schaub and Matt Leinart. Jim Schwartz got the Detroit Lions to the playoffs for the first time in over a decade, but he didn't do the best job of controlling his team throughout the course of the season.

We could go on and on, but in the end the case for Harbaugh is quite simple: nobody did more with less than he did.

Kinda makes you wonder what he could do if he had more.