San Francisco 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh thrives in chaos and difficulty

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His talent at turning losers into winners is matched only by his propensity to piss off people in the process. He's in his fourth year with the 49ers, a team that before he arrived was in a decade-long morass. But after three NFC Championship Game appearances and a close loss in Super Bowl XLVII, the team seems to have all but concluded that unless this season ends with a championship, Harbaugh's way of winning is probably unsustainable.

Many successful coaches can be jerks, of course. But in San Francisco, it's gotten strangely personal.

I had happened upon a video of Harbaugh instructing high school quarterbacks, and when he picked up a ball, he seemed to come alive, energized by the power and possibilities at his command. It made me want to throw with him. You can learn a lot about someone playing catch, including why they grate on people. There's a late-night bar story told in NFL circles about Peyton Manning's free-agent visit with the 49ers in 2012. Harbaugh and Manning were throwing the ball, so it goes, when the coach couldn't help but remark that his passes had more mustard on them than the still-rehabbing future Hall of Famer's did. You can guess how that went over.

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At the time, few knew the barely functional relationship between Harbaugh and 49ers general manager Trent Baalke -- two men who can talk football but at the NFL combine didn't look at each other on a shared elevator ride -- had started to spread to the front office and the locker room. Team CEO Jed York says there was a "rawness" that festered after coming up short three straight seasons. Harbaugh worked the players hard, tightening his grip, which prompted a few of them to voice concern to management. He had twice turned down contract extensions, and now, with two years left on the five-year, $25 million deal he signed in 2011, nobody knew whether he wanted to coach the 49ers next year and beyond, or even whether the 49ers wanted him.

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A cold war was heating up. A speech Harbaugh delivered to the team a few days later, entitled "2014 1st Team Meeting," explained his approach to battle. He usually writes in a spiral notebook, but this was typed and eight pages long. "I will be your alarm clock and wake you early," he said. "It can be a great temptation to rest on the field and let the opponent have a play without making him pay for every inch. I must hold his pain where it is. Mine does not matter. ... The punishment I inflict, his fatigue, and that he is up against something that he does not comprehend is everything."

It was vintage Harbaugh, sincere and obsessive, inspiring and crazed. And its decisive moment, as Harbaugh described how he fights in the trenches, contained a clue as to why a coach who has won 74.5 percent of his games might just be expendable: "My opponent is going to have to die. But does he have to kill me too? He is killing me. But he has a right to. I have never seen a greater opponent than him.

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/11625088/san-francisco-49ers-head-coach-jim-harbaugh-thrives-chaos-difficulty