****, lost all I typed. Cliff notes version.
14 starters in 49'ers SB were on the team before Harbaugh arrived. Not winning before means, basically, two things 1) poorly coached or 2) didn't know how to play. #2 is a ridiculous position. Winning under Harbaugh vs. no winning before does not, necessarily, mean Harbaugh good/great, just that the previous HC was not very good at HC (although I wouldn't say so to his face).
OK, but your stance - that Harbaugh just inherited awesome players and therefore couldn't help but win - requires a pretty ridiculous conclusion: that the entire core of that team just magically got better simultaneously and instantly. The fact that they went from a bad team to one of the league's best IMMEDIATELY - as in, during Harbaugh's first season - speaks pretty loudly to me.
Consider that the 49ers floundered horribly under THREE coaches before Harbaugh arrived. They never topped .500, never found anything close to a franchise QB, never finished higher than 18th in scoring, only finished higher than 16th in defensive scoring once. Enter Harbaugh, and everything changes instantly. As in, his very first season. They finished 11th in scoring in each of Harbaugh's first three seasons; defensively, they finished 4th, 4th, and 3rd. Harbaugh re-energized the team with a new franchise QB - no, Kaepernick isn't amazing, but he's QB'd in back-to-back title games and a Super Bowl and sits 27-12 as a starter. Harbaugh has
clearly gotten
much better play from that core of players than Singletary did. (Not just average play, or "better than Singletary" play - they've been an elite team for a few years now.)
I know that stats are frowned upon by many here, but while they're not infallible, comprehensive stats CAN paint a picture as well as just about anything else. Pro Football Reference uses a stat called Simple Rating System (using margin of victory/defeat and strength of schedule) to come up with some stat-based idea of a team's performance. Again, it's not perfect, but I'd say margin and strength of schedule paint a pretty solid picture of a team. Certainly more so than just noting "Team A finished 10-6 and Team B finished 9-7, so Team A is clearly awesome and far superior."
An average Simple Rating is 0.0. Before Harbaugh, the 49ers were wayyyyy in the negative in six of the previous seven seasons - their only positive season was a 0.1, and they finished 8-8. When Harbau
Without some of those players (Bowman and willis probably most important) the good coach has his team in the same position as an incompetent coach.
Again, you're assuming the 49ers had a roster full of future superstars who just magically flipped the switch at the exact same time, through little/no doing of their head coach.
JH should finish his 4th season with 1-1.5 more wins per season than MT. Harbaugh stepped into some pretty ******* good talent and was able to win with them. Doesn't make him good and/or great. In season 8, we might know for sure. One thing we DO know is that, if Tomlin is as incompetent as we are led to believe and Harbaugh is "good", the gap should be bigger.
The gap is enormous, as I'll discuss below.
Unless you want to simplify everything down to "team wins = coach is good, team wins = coach is bad." Obviously, that's an incredibly short-sighted way of evaluating a coach. There are so very many factors as to whether a teams wins or loses over a short period of time. Lots of bad coaches win for a period, then lose like crazy. Lots of good coaches struggle, then find their way. Which way is Tomlin's team trending, at 22-20 over the last three seasons with no playoff appearances?
There's a lot more in telling the story of a coach's performance than looking at his W/L record, unless you feel Tomlin is the 23rd-best coach in history (and Jim's little brother John is the 20th-best). Then you've gotta rank Barry Switzer, Mike Martz, Mike Smith, and Jim Caldwell ahead of Chuck Noll, since all have/had a better win%. There are reasons beyond the team's record over a small sample size, and/or a Super Bowl win from 6 years ago, that make most feel Tomlin is a weak coach and Harbaugh is superior.
Harbaugh didn't step into a team with a bunch of losers and build it from the ground up. He took some good players and put them in a position to win.
He took a promising yet unproductive roster - one that hadn't topped .500 in seven years - and made them elite overnight. They didn't gradually build to relevance; they immediately became an elite team. They didn't become a solid team; they became a perennial contender that dominated the league for long stretches.
JH's current team isn't so far behind MT's in penalties/game. I'm told that the penalties demonstrate MT's inability to discipline his team.
They do, as part of a bigger picture. Penalties alone don't prove anything. Penalties plus our many, many other long-term issues that haven't been corrected all is a different animal. If your commute to work is a pain in the ***, that's one thing. If your commute is a pain in the *** AND so is your boss AND so is your pay AND so are your hours... that's a ****** job.
There are many, many other factors of "control" and "discipline" that Harbaugh crushes Tomlin in. Harbaugh's 49ers are an insane +60 in turnover margin since he arrived; we are -29 over that span. His 49ers are 23-3-1 sub-.500 teams, with an incredible +427 point differential - and that includes this season. We are 17-9 over that span with a +142 differential. We consistently lose must-win games to keep our playoff hopes alive; the 49ers usually don't play in any of those. Harbaugh is 5-3 in the playoffs since he arrived, with three NFCC appearances and a Super Bowl appearance. He's never missed the playoffs. We're 0-1 since then.
JH's player (only one that I know of but it was a first round pick) was suspended 9 games for some off-the-field issues (one of which was very serious) and, I think, missed some previous season games due to rehab. I'm told that these kinds of issues demonstrate MT's lack of control and discipline of his team.
I don't know who thinks that, but it doesn't really make sense to me. I don't see how it's a head coach's job to stop his adult players from drinking/driving or beating their wives. Does your boss/manager have that kind of sway over your home life? I'm self-employed now, but when I was working for the man, he never did.
If you look at JH through the same prism that you look at MT, you might see similarities. They are there for people who choose to see them. They are also there for people to ignore.
Maybe, but I just don't see many, if any. The 49ers have won a lot more and performed better in just about every measure over the last several years. They've accomplished more. They've screwed up less. They've shaken up their QB situation on the fly and actually improved in the process. (God, can you imagine this team breaking in a new QB right now? Yeesh.)
