What Happened With the Vikings and Jim Harbaugh? A Difference in Perception
Heading into the Vikings' interview with Jim Harbaugh on Wednesday, everything was pointing to the Michigan coach returning to the NFL and being hired by Minnesota.
Various insiders close to the Michigan program were reporting that Harbaugh was going into this interview prepared to accept the Vikings' offer and believing the job was his. New Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, who overlapped with Harbaugh for two years in the 49ers organization, apparently wanted him to be the hire. The hurdle to clear was getting Vikings ownership and other executives in the search committee on board, but it didn't seem like that was going to be an issue.
"That's why they play the game" is a common saying in sports when an underdog pulls off a major upset. Well, in this case, that's why they do the interview.
This was never a lock. The interview wasn't a formality, as described by one Michigan writer who reported that Harbaugh was planning to sign with the Vikings. This Wednesday morning twitter thread from author and Michigan insider John U. Bacon laid out what needed to happen for the Wilfs to sign off on the hire.
During the interview, Harbaugh was going to have to "convince the Wilf family his approach is sufficiently modern in the midst of a youth movement," Bacon wrote. "More importantly, he has to quell the rumors that he’s too difficult to deal with." That noise, based on the way Harbaugh's 49ers tenure ended in rocky fashion, was coming from 49ers owner/CEO Jed York and Vikings minority owner Jim Stapleton, according to Bacon.
"Thus, today will boil down to a simple contest," Bacon continued. "Will the Wilfs believe 49ers owner Jed York and Vikings minority owner Jim Stapleton, or their own general manager, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah? And that may come down to how Harbaugh performs in today’s day-long interview."
Still, it really seemed like this was going to happen. Bacon — the foremost authority on this story throughout the entire Harbaugh saga over the past month — estimated on Tuesday night that there was an 80 percent chance the Michigan coach would be hired by the Vikings.
The interview spanned all day Wednesday, reportedly beginning as early as 8 a.m. central time. Then, at 6:24 p.m., Adam Schefter dropped the bomb. Harbaugh was returning to Michigan. The Vikings interview had come and gone without an agreement, so he was headed back to Ann Arbor.
Safe to say it was pretty shocking, both for Michigan fans who were convinced their head coach was leaving them at an inopportune time and for Vikings fans who had gotten their hopes up that they were landing a big-name prize with a roughly .700 winning percentage across the college and NFL levels.
So what happened?
According to multiple reports, the Vikings never made Harbaugh an offer. We don't know for sure whether that means the Vikings weren't convinced hiring him was a good idea or if Harbaugh changed his mind about wanting the job, but it's an important detail. The job was never offered.
Courtney Cronin at ESPN has some additional detail on what went down.
"Sources previously told ESPN that Harbaugh had been planning for his interview with Minnesota as if he was going to be hired by the Vikings and prepared his exit from the Wolverines' football program by speaking with recruits about the possibility of his return to the NFL," Cronin wrote. "Minnesota did not bring Harbaugh in on Wednesday with the notion that the job was his and went through the same interview process and format that the franchise conducted with New York Giants defensive coordinator Patrick Graham on Tuesday, sources said."
Cronin expanded on her view of the situation on Twitter.
"My read on the Harbaugh/Vikings situation in speaking with sources: Harbaugh was in the mix for the Minnesota job because of his connection to Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. He operated under the assumption that the job was his and prepared for the interview as such. The Vikings saw this very differently and not as a 'slam dunk' as a source put it to me, the way they felt Harbaugh viewed the situation coming into Wednesday. There was no offer extended.
"This isn't necessarily a matter of who said no to who, but two sides that did not align on the nature of what the in-person meeting was all about. The Vikings brought Harbaugh into Minnesota to interview, just like they did with Pat Graham on Tuesday. Followed the same format and everything. For what it's worth, I don't gather that there's any bad blood from either side. Just sounds like a difference in expectation from Harbaugh's perspective and from the Vikings'."
That makes a lot of sense. Harbaugh thought he was getting the job, which is why he told recruits he was expecting to return to the NFL and gave his staff the week off to plan for their futures. But the Vikings — specifically the Wilfs and other execs — weren't viewing it that way. There were conditions that needed to be satisfied if this was going to happen. Adofo-Mensah may have wanted Harbaugh, but he has preached the importance of collaboration and wasn't going to go against the consensus of the committee as his first move in the GM role, if he even had the power to do so.
For whatever reason, over the course of a day-long interview on Wednesday, Harbaugh didn't clear the hurdles he needed to.
Again, it's anyone's guess as to what that exactly looked like. Did he perform poorly in the interview because he thought it was a formality? Did he fail to sufficiently address concerns about his ability to get along with people over the long term? Did he demand too much in terms of annual salary and contract length? It seems like what probably happened was that at some point, both Harbaugh and the Vikings realized that the fit wasn't there for either party.
The fit was always worth questioning because of Harbaugh's personality, the Vikings' stated criteria of collaboration, and the Vikings' timeline with their current roster situation (there's a strong argument they should enter a rebuild and hiring Harbaugh would be a win-now move). The counter-argument was that those were minor concerns when talking about a coach with such a proven track record of winning football games, particularly during his time with the 49ers.
But the risk always would've been there with a Harbaugh hire. It could've gone spectacularly or blown up in everyone's face. And because the Vikings and/or Harbaugh didn't think it was the right fit, the decision was made to go in another direction now instead of risking that explosion at some point down the line.
Shortly after the Harbaugh story broke, news emerged that the Vikings were pivoting to Rams offensive coordinator Kevin O'Connell as their head coach hire. According to KSTP's Darren Wolfson, it sounds like O'Connell was extremely impressive in his interviews with the Vikings and that there were people in the team's search committee who preferred him to Harbaugh the whole time.
We'll never know what could've been with Harbaugh in Minnesota. The interview didn't work out due to a difference in perception, the offer was never made, and the Vikings are going forward with O'Connell, who will officially become their next head coach after the Super Bowl is over. Meanwhile, Harbaugh heads back to Michigan with some damage control to do.
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