Who Harbaugh took with him when went from Stanford to the 49ers

Submitted by Reno Drew on January 29th, 2024 at 10:34 AM

I was sad to see Herbert following Harbaugh and that's a big loss for our football program.  However I have faith in Coach Moore.  He's going to create his own program culture and he's going to find the next man up. 

Looked back to see who Harbaugh took with him from Stanford to the SF 49ers in 2011.  From what I can tell on a quick wikipedia search, the list included (please correct me if I missed someone):

Greg Roman (Stanford Associate Head coach and 2010 Broyles Award winner)

Vic Fangio (Stanford DC)

Tim Drevno (Stanford OL)

Peter Hansen ( Stanford Defensive Assistant coach)

Stanford didn't drop off a cliff with the loss of Harbaugh and those important pieces.  Coach Shaw got them to 82-25 in his first 8 seasons with three Rose Bowl appearances and 1st place in their division 5 times. In their first three years after Harbaugh left, they had double digit win seasons. 

The model is there to lose your head coach and important pieces of the coach team but still succeed.  Under Coach Moore, I like our chances of this happening. 

Go Blue. 

 

 

 

 

RadOWon

January 29th, 2024 at 1:46 PM ^

Yeah, it's pretty sad, it drives people away I think. It's obnoxious and unnecessary. It seems like it's a few people with no lives flexing in the one place they feel they can. I guess it makes them feel better about their situation.

I dont live on this board so I appreciate when topics are revisited, such as this one. In fact, I was about to comment "thank you, I was wondering this" which, in turn, probably would have been met with some sort of attempt to school me in an effort to make them feel better about themselves. :)))

mGrowOld

January 29th, 2024 at 11:08 AM ^

Yes we did need a new one.   I'm not going to read 400 comments hoping to glean this information and candidly, this IS good news.

I had no idea he took that many assistants with him to the 49ers although I did know Shaw did pretty damn good for several years post-Harbaugh.  This gives me a lot of hope that the culture he installs is pretty damn permanent and to trust that things will be OK going forward.

BoFan

January 29th, 2024 at 12:04 PM ^

Most successful people need new challenges after a few years.  Minter, Herbert, and others were never going to stay forever. Same at Stanford.  Two of those guys went on to be NFL coordinators at multiple stops.  One was an NFL head coach.

Blaming Harbaugh for “gutting the program” at Stanford or Michigan is ridiculous. That is a really selfish view.  That’s the equivalent of being a manager that doesn’t want their top employees to move on because they’re making him or her successful. Those are the worst most selfish kind.  

Harbaugh can be credited for giving guys opportunities for the next step in their career.  

NYWolverine

January 29th, 2024 at 12:05 PM ^

It’s good news to the extent Coach Moore takes the culture, schemes, and winning formula perfected over the past three seasons and institutionalizes it with his own key coaching and staff hires, in recruiting, in S&C, in football practices, and in game plans/management. 

Coach Moore’s story isn’t that much different from Ryan Day’s. Everyone at OSU wanted/demands to see the continuation of Meyer football, or better. Harbaugh’s access to elite coaching and recruiting talent, illustrated by the ability to continuously reload, set the ceiling for Michigan’s success. Compare Day to Moore. Michigan will need more than a SMASH hashtag to keep it going.

Same as Day, Coach Moore will need to show tremendous prowess and connectedness, the ability to continue to win football games against top-10 teams, and the ability to convince Michigan to pay up for a winning standard.

RadOWon

January 29th, 2024 at 1:49 PM ^

I agree, this was new to me because I dont live on this board.

And yes, I had no idea he took as many as he did. I was okay with Minter but Herbert gets my blood boiling for some reason. I guess because its the NFL, players do their own thing and often disregard the team strength staff.

Mineral King

January 29th, 2024 at 10:38 AM ^

How can we possibly stress about this stuff. Football is a business. Smash the Idols, focus on the Lord #1 and enjoy the fun things like seeing a team you like to watch win a National Championship. The whining of Harbaugh, Herbert etc is strange. 

goblu330

January 29th, 2024 at 10:47 AM ^

I think what is happening is that there a few people really upset about it and they are essentially posting in an echo chamber which makes it seem as though the fan base is in a funk.  But in actual life, I have not spoken to one Michigan fan who is really stressing about it.  General sentiment is "we knew he was gone we are rolling with Moore Lets Gooooooo."

BlueKoj

January 29th, 2024 at 10:53 AM ^

I guess it depends on what you mean by stressing. Have you talked to any Michigan fans who don't think Harbaugh, Minter, Sherrone and Herbert were the 4 most important non-players to the championship? Have you spoken to any Michigan fans who don't think attrition is more likely now that coach Herbs is leaving? It's not the end of the world and all is not lost, but this is likely negatively impacting next season and beyond in ways it was reasonable to hope wouldn't happen. That's a bummer for the players and for the fans.

goblu330

January 29th, 2024 at 10:59 AM ^

To me it is not a bummer because it was 110% expected.  I assumed that 2023-24 was going to be Harbaugh's last year before sign-gate and national championship, so there was a 0% chance this was not going to happen after the kind of season it ended up being.  So what is happening right now is, to me, what I knew was going to happen since January, 2023.  Only we have a national title which I was not expecting.

BlueKoj

January 29th, 2024 at 12:08 PM ^

You 110% expected to lose Herbert? Why? If so, no one but Feldman and you did. Harbaugh and Minter were expected. Moore being promoted was expected. Retaining Herbert, much of the rest of the staff, and therefore most players, was expected. Now, a lot of that seems in jeopardy.

Honker Burger

January 29th, 2024 at 10:55 AM ^

You’re wrong. It’s clear this has been a 15 year plan orchestrated by our enemies. 
 

1) Make our championship winning coach old forcing him into retirement
2) Replace with an up and coming coach, but make it as hard as possible for him to succeed
3) Hire a horrible AD who thinks he’s smarter than everybody else, who hires a guy not ready for prime-time   
4) Fire said AD, bring in interim AD who makes most important coach hire in a decade and nails it 
5) Have 9 years of some of the best football in Michigan’s history, capped by winning a National Championship
6) Have coach leave to pursue other endeavors and he takes coaches with whom he has a good relationship to help him achieve those goals, leaving the fan base it absolute misery, having to celebrate that all they did was win a National Championship

Plan executed to perfection. Damn it’s tough being a Michigan fan. 

Kinda Blue

January 29th, 2024 at 10:40 AM ^

I agree.  People are losing their minds.  If you pay attention to the transitions other schools are facing, look at how many coaches AND players were lost by Oregon State, Arizona and Washington.  They took as many coaches to their new programs and took a lot the best players.   Jim can't take players to the NFL.

I am still grateful for the Natty and think there are still good things here for SM to build upon.

m9tt

January 29th, 2024 at 1:41 PM ^

The difference is that when Jim left Stanford, college football was an unrecognizable landscape to what it is today. There was no NIL, no transfer portal, no open tampering when a coach left...

Case in point, David Shaw got to keep Andrew Luck and Coby Fleener for his first season. That would never happen in today's college football landscape. Meanwhile, we now have Texas and Oregon knocking down Kenneth Grant's door as we speak with real pay-for-play offers and a solidified coaching staff. 

m9tt

January 29th, 2024 at 1:45 PM ^

If Sherrone can keep Will and Mason and Kenneth and Rod and Donovan, then Michigan should be setup to succeed next year. But with a stepdown in coaching (Harbaugh and Minter), scheme (based on the DC candidates floated out), and now S&C (Herbert), it's not hard to see a scenario where the bottom falls out. 

Jkidd49

January 29th, 2024 at 10:41 AM ^

There's a difference between losing the DC and OC (which feels very typical).. vs the S&C coach whom is widely regarded as the best in the industry 

jmblue

January 29th, 2024 at 10:50 AM ^

Well, if he's the best in the industry, we're apparently promoting his assistant (Justin Tress) which is as close as you can get.

I don't think any of the assistants is necessarily irreplaceable, but my concern is that Moore, a first-year HC, may not have the same pull that Harbaugh did.  It probably wasn't hard to convince good assistants to come here and learn from a legend.  Here's where we need to open the wallet and use that money saved on the HC salary to spend on assistants.

Mr Miggle

January 29th, 2024 at 11:25 AM ^

Is Herbert widely regarded as the best in the industry?

While we have been very happy with his work, I've never seen any such claims made outside of those from Michigan sources. I hadn't heard that about his work at previous stops.

I think the truth is somewhat more muted. Michigan can rightly point to the results from their S&C program as an important ingredient in their recent success. But the most successful programs all have highly regarded S&C programs. And surely some of the recent strong performances late in games can be attributed to their superior depth and light workloads on defense.

The Mayor

January 29th, 2024 at 10:43 AM ^

I’ll bite… 2 different eras. USC was reeling after the Bush/Carrol thing. Who was Stanfords main competitor in the Pac12? This B1G conference does not afford us the luxury of maybe 1 tough team. We have OSU reloading up preparing for Armageddon plus adding USC, Washington and Oregon… Yeah, not the same.

Hensons Mobile…

January 29th, 2024 at 11:12 AM ^

Fair and true.

To me the greater point is people come and people go. When you're good, people move on for new opportunities. A school can be successful without Ben Herbert or Jesse Minter.

That's not any type of guarantee of success just because it can happen. It just means I'm not abandoning all hope.

I think with losing JJ and the schedule, even if Harbaugh and the whole staff came back, we were still going to be looking at a step back. The step back now is probably bigger than it would have been. But hopefully enough is still in place that we don't completely fall off next year.

The long term success of Moore was never going to be with Minter and I guess not Herbert. Either he can build it or he can't. We'll find out eventually.

Eat Your Wheatlies

January 29th, 2024 at 10:47 AM ^

The one tricky thing for Moore is that he doesn't have the same connections/relationships around the coaching circles that Harbaugh did. If Jim needed to fill a spot, he could probably call about 2 dozen coaches to find names of potential fits. Sherrone won't, so he's going to need to find guys that he can grow and mold.

goblu330

January 29th, 2024 at 10:51 AM ^

He does have a Harbaugh connection though, and Harbaugh also has a Harbaugh connection too.  It may seem at the moment like Harbaugh is having a complete divorce from Michigan but I don't think that will end up being the case.  Jim Harbaugh just does not do sentimentality.  He does not have that channel on the dial.  That does not mean he is not invested in seeing the program, or Moore individually, continue to succeed.

RobM_24

January 29th, 2024 at 11:48 AM ^

Harbaugh did a lot better after he started hiring outside of his tree though. The early years of Harbaugh rehires didn't go well. 

One huge advantage that Harbaugh had (and Sherrone won't) is a line of guys out the door willing to work as analysts or whatever menial positions just to get themselves in the Harbaugh tree. That included up and comers, and guys who overqualified but between jobs.