If Jim Harbaugh wants to return to the NFL, he should have no shortage of potential suitors.
"I think there’s a lot of people who definitely want to sit down and talk with him," Audacy Sports NFL insider Peter King said Tuesday on 97.1 The Ticket.
Starting with Raiders owner Mark Davis. King said Davis "has very high regard" for Harbaugh -- who got his first coaching job as quarterbacks coach of the Raiders from 2002-03 when Davis' late father Al Davis owned the team -- and "can probably offer him something that I’m not sure every place in the NFL will offer him."
"Basically, here’s the operation, here’s the franchise, take it. I would assume he’s going to have some interest," said King. "The thing about the Raiders is, there’s a lot of pressure internally and in their locker room to keep (interim head coach) Antonio Pierce, so it will be interesting to see. That’s a decision that will have to be made fairly quickly, because I think several teams will be interested in talking to Jim Harbaugh."
King also mentioned the Los Angeles Chargers and Carolina Panthers, and said the Chargers job is likely "the most compelling" to Harbaugh given the roster in place, headlined by quarterback Justin Herbert.
"If I were him, I would want to investigate fully the Los Angeles Chargers, because every other place you could go to has either an ownership issue, which in my opinion is the case in Carolina, or a quarterback issue, which is, you don’t have one," said King. "I think if you go to Vegas you have to be willing to say, 'OK, we gotta go find a quarterback.' I’m sure Jim Harbaugh is not afraid of doing that.
"But I think the job out there that has to be the most interesting, the most compelling, despite that fact that there’s a bunch of contracts that you might have to get rid of, is the Chargers job. If I were him, that’s the one I’d probably be sniffing around the most."
The biggest question facing any team with interest in hiring Harbaugh, said King, is how much control of the organization the owner is willing to cede. For that reason, King thinks that "the best fit for Harbaugh would be the Raiders because Mark Davis is looking for someone who he can just hand the team to and not worry about it."
"I think Harbaugh would want to have (Bill) Belichick-type control over a team, along with a general manager who he would approve of hiring. That, to me, is the difficult part of this choice: are the owners he’s going to talk to, is Dean Spanos with the Chargers, willing to say, ‘We’ll give you full control over everything. You hire a general manager and let’s go,'" said King.
Harbaugh's resume speaks for itself, both in college and the NFL. Michigan is 40-3 in the last three seasons under his watch, cresting in Monday's national title. And Harbaugh went 44-19-1 in four seasons with the 49ers from 2011-14, with three straight appearances in the conference championship game and a trip to the Super Bowl -- which he has always considered football's greatest prize.
Harbaugh, who turned 60 in December, has interviewed with NFL teams each of the last two offseasons, and nearly landed the Vikings head coaching job in 2022. He also has a contract on the table from Michigan worth a reported $125 million over 10 years, which would make him the highest-paid coach in college football. The new deal would prevent him from pursuing any NFL jobs in 2024.
"That's a decision for him," Michigan president Santa Ono said Monday night before the national championship game, via The Detroit News. "As you know, we've made it very clear that we want him to stay and I very much hope (he does)."
Asked after the game whether he'd like to return to the NFL, Harbaugh said, "I just want to enjoy this. I hope you give me that. Can a guy have that?"