Chargers HC Jim Harbaugh Talks McDaniel, Mack, Herbert & More I Full Interview I The Rich Eisen Show

Jim Harbaugh came on ten days out from the season having just finished what he called one of his favorite meetings of the year, and Rich spent a solid chunk of the interview trying to get him to reveal what happened in it.

The meeting was the captain vote, and Harbaugh's description of how he runs it explains a great deal about him. He counts the ballots himself, along with the first-year players who are not eligible to be captains. They retire to a side room and do it by hand.

"We like to do it old school. There's a ballot, and that way there can't be any chicanery." His alternative was not appealing. "Electronically, I mean, who knows what could happen?"

What struck him about the result was the depth of the pool. "We have so many leaders on our team. Probably the most I can ever think of in any team I've ever been on, in terms of being a player or a coach." His description of what those players provide is less about speeches than about being copyable. "You want to know what to do, how to do it, when to do it." His instruction to everyone else was simple. Watch them, study them, emulate them, and see if you can make them proud of you.

Then Rich went to work, invoking his status as a former honorary captain to justify the attempt. Harbaugh would not announce the names, wanting to leave that to the organization, and admitted he was tempted. "I'm so tempted right now."

So Rich changed tactics and started offering rhymes.

Does one rhyme with Sherwin Shames? It does. Berbert? It does. Schlamile Schmack, the man with over a hundred sacks? Harbaugh confirmed that one too, allowing that it would look good on a captain's resume.

Which led directly to the answer Harbaugh gives when people ask about his surprise player, and it is the same man. Khalil Mack is 35 years old, and Harbaugh's argument is that nothing about him reads that way. "By all performance metrics, the tape, but also the strength and power, the speed and agility, the flexibility, mobility, all are at peak. They're all PRs."

Then the detail that made it land. Mack wears a ring that tracks his biological age, and it currently has him at six and a half years younger than he is. "He plays like he's 22. He looks like he's 22."

Harbaugh being Harbaugh, he could not leave it as a fun fact. "If one man can do it, another man can do it. And if human history has shown us or told us anything, if one man can do something, then others can and should be able to do it."

The conversation Rich most wanted to hear about is the one between Harbaugh and Mike McDaniel, and Harbaugh did not undersell it. His assessment of McDaniel's intelligence came in a list. "Book smart, football smart, all the smart, street smart, you name it."

He also has a stock answer for people who ask how smart McDaniel and Justin Herbert actually are, and it doubles as a compliment to both. "They're so smart that I don't know how smart they are. But I know one thing. It bodes really well for the Los Angeles Chargers."

What Harbaugh described next is a head coach openly taking notes from his own coordinator. He has his pen out in those meetings, and there are two, three, four interactions a day. "There's like a nugget of gold that comes out of every one of those." He was almost sheepish about how much he enjoys it. "I like to listen to this guy talk. This man sure can talk, and I like what he's saying."

The delegation is complete. "He's got the keys to the offense, and we're all behind him."

Which brings up the actual football question. What does McDaniel unlock in Herbert that has not been unlocked in two years?

Harbaugh started by rejecting the framing, because he does not believe in one-man solutions. "There's no sport like football when it takes a team effort. There's no one-man band."

But he did name the specific mechanical fit, and it is more precise than a general endorsement. McDaniel's conviction is that the moment to hit a receiver is right out of the break, because that is when separation is greatest and when the catch turns into yards, with the receiver moving up the field rather than back toward the defense.

That timing requires a quarterback who can actually place the ball in that window. "Justin's so accurate. Those two things are what I really felt we're connected."

Harbaugh's evaluation of the quarterback he inherited has not gotten more modest with time. "I think he's got the most arm talent. I think he's the most accurate." His conclusion is that in a system built to maximize yards after catch through timing, that accuracy is the thing that goes furthest.

Rich then reached back to a previous appearance, when Harbaugh sat in the same chair and said he had woken in the middle of the night thinking that he had to get Justin Herbert to the Hall of Fame.

Harbaugh remembered it precisely, including the timing. He had woken about four hours before the show and was staring at the ceiling.

His answer to what he thinks about now is that nothing has changed. "I think he's the best I've ever seen, in person. When it's all said and done, I want him to be recognized for that, because I truly believe that's going to be the case."

He also has the beginning of a case on paper. Nobody has thrown for more yards in their first six seasons than Herbert.

Then Harbaugh widened it, because the individual honor is not actually the goal. "The thing we all want to do is win." And he wanted the names in the record, listing Derwin James, Khalil Mack, Joe Alt and others, describing them the same way he described the captains. "They just put their whole soul into it."

Rich, still fishing, asked how many of the names Harbaugh had just rattled off were the captains he would not announce. Harbaugh conceded a little ground. "I think there's some overlap."

The interview ended on the clock behind him, which reads 8:02 and never changes. Rich wanted to know whether 8:02 meant something.

It does not. It was a gift from Shinola, out of Detroit, and it has a dead battery.

"The one time Jim Harbaugh needs a battery."