Dolphins owner Stephen Ross said the team didn’t make an effort to hire ex-49ers coach Jim Harbaugh
When Jim Harbaugh and the 49ers mutually parted ways, it created a unique situation. Here was an outstanding NFL coach, one of the best in the league, and he was leaving the league to go back to college. That just doesn’t happen.
Harbaugh may have wanted to return to his alma mater, the University of Michigan, but that doesn’t mean NFL teams weren’t champing at the bit to bring him in.
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Rumors surfaced at the time that the Miami Dolphins would be one of Harbaugh’s biggest pro suitors. At the press conference to introduce new defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh, Dolphins owner Stephen Ross denied that the team went after Jim Harbaugh after Harbaugh and the 49ers parted ways.
“Forget what the press said,” Ross said, according to the Detroit Free Press. “We didn’t try for him here.”
Ross famously went after Harbaugh in 2011, flying him into Miami for a meeting–despite the fact that his team already had a coach, Tony Sparano. That had to be fun for Sparano, who coached the team the following year but was fired after the season anyway. So Ross can’t pretend this time that the fact that Joe Philbin was the Dolphins’ coach had anything to do with the team not pursuing Harbaugh.
It’s likely that the team at least made some inquiries about Harbaugh; it would have been foolish not to. But Ross seems genuinely happy with Joe Philbin as the team’s coach.
There’s been talk after each of the past two years that Philbin would be fired–both seasons featured a collapse down the stretch, plus there was the black mark of the Richie Incognito scandal in 2013, which never looks good for a coach. But Philbin has weathered all of this, and seems to have earned the support of his owner, who went out of his way to declare that Philbin would be back as coach before the season was over.
This year may still be a make-or-break year for Philbin to prove that he has earned that trust. The team has been close to the playoffs the last two years; if they can’t get there this year with Suh in the fold, Ross may be left wishing he had gone after Harbaugh.
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