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David Newton, ESPN Staff Writer
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — It was the day after the Carolina Panthers suffered their 15th straight loss to end a 1-15 season in 2001. Head coach George Seifert had been fired hours earlier. The mood was quiet as Jack Harbaugh and his wife helped their son move out of the Charlotte hotel he had called home the past two months as the team’s scout team quarterback.
Jim Harbaugh didn’t tell his parents he was calling it quits as a player that day. But he knew after 15 seasons and consecutive 1-15 records with the then-San Diego Chargers and Panthers it was time to follow in the footsteps of his father and older brother, John.
It was time to coach.
“This is the football gods explaining to me that we’re not going to play anymore, we’re going to need you coaching,” the first-year Los Angeles Chargers coach recalled of his brief time at Carolina as he prepared for Sunday’s game against the Panthers (1 p.m. ET, CBS).
Since then, Harbaugh, 60, has become more renowned as a coach than he ever was during his 15-year NFL playing career. He led the San Francisco 49ers to Super Bowl XLVII, losing to John and the Baltimore Ravens in a 34-31 thriller. And he won a national championship at his alma mater, Michigan, last season before returning to the NFL with the Chargers.
He began his new NFL journey last week with a 22-10 victory over the Las Vegas Raiders behind his staple running game that produced 176 yards, 135 by J.K. Dobbins.
It’s a potential nightmare scenario for a Carolina team that gave up 180 yards rushing and saw second-year quarterback Bryce Young continue to struggle in a 47-10 loss to the New Orleans Saints after finishing 2023 with an NFL-worst 2-15 record.
“This is a different deal than we played last week,” said Carolina defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero, who coached under Harbaugh from 2011 to 2014 with the 49ers. “Last week was zone running, running outside, trying to cut you off on the backside.
“This is more go right at you or try to run over you. And so we’ve got to be ready for it.”
Harbaugh calls the decision to stop playing after the 2001 season one of “two powerful memories” from his time at Carolina.
The other was meeting then-offensive line assistant Greg Roman, who was in his first coaching job.
They hit it off immediately.
“He was always in the film room, always,” Roman, 52, recalled. “He’d be sitting in our special teams coach’s office on the floor watching film … at night. So what does that tell you? So he was just grooming himself to become a coach.”
Evero said Roman and Harbaugh are of the “same mindset” in their philosophy built around tough, physical football and a power run game.
So in 2009, when Harbaugh needed help turning around Stanford in the first year of his second head-coaching job, he hired Roman as his associate head coach.
They ended Stanford’s streak of seven straight losing seasons by going 8-5. That was followed by a 12-1 record that helped Harbaugh land the head-coaching job with the 49ers, where Roman became the offensive coordinator.
Harbaugh turned to Roman again when he came back to the NFL with the Chargers this year.
“Nothing more profound than meeting Greg Roman in Carolina,” Harbaugh said.
Harbaugh was most impressed by Roman’s ability to teach. It didn’t take long at Carolina for Harbaugh to ask him for football tips “that I’d never heard before.”
“It was enchanting,” Harbaugh said. “If this guy was a chess player, he would be probably thinking seven, eight, nine moves ahead. … I knew he was going to be a shining star already.”
Another profound moment with Carolina was working with rookie wide receiver Steve Smith Sr.
Smith didn’t get many opportunities in games that season, but he went on to become the team’s all-time leading receiver and was key to Carolina reaching Super Bowl XXXVIII.
“They were tearing up our defense, so it didn’t bode well,” Roman said.
Said Harbaugh: “I had more fun in those eight practices when I figured out that I’m just [passing] to Steve Smith. This guy [was] a shining star.”
Harbaugh never played a down for Carolina, but he took his job seriously.
“I remember him talking about how he was playing it like it was game day,” Jack Harbaugh said. “He did everything he could to make the team better and demonstrate he might still be able to play.”
Harbaugh did enough to impress former Carolina tight end Wesley Walls.
“Jim definitely paid attention to the game at a different level,” he said. “It doesn’t surprise me at all he’s become a great coach.”
Harbaugh called Panthers owner David Tepper early in 2023 when the team was looking for a head coach. The call wasn’t characterized as a job interview, according to a source with knowledge of the talk, but in hindsight, Harbaugh might have been the best option.
Tepper hired Frank Reich, who was subsequently fired after a 1-11 start.
Few current Carolina players were aware of that call, that Harbaugh had been with the organization or how dominant Harbaugh’s 49ers were from 2011 to 2014, including a 23-10 divisional playoff victory in 2013 at Carolina.
That game was classic Harbaugh football. The 49ers rushed 34 times for 126 yards and a touchdown to spoil the Panthers’ first playoff appearance since 2009.
The physical nature of the game led to what then-Carolina coach Ron Rivera called a loss of composure by him and several players, two of whom were called for unnecessary roughness.
First-year Carolina coach Dave Canales is preparing for the same type of intensity from the Chargers.
“You have to look at a lot of stuff and really just look at the style of football they want,” he said. “Greg Roman … he’s fantastic. He’s one of the premier offensive coordinators in the NFL. He’s got a style about him.”
It’s just like Harbaugh’s.
“[Harbaugh] does a great job of getting guys to buy into what he is, and the team is always going to epitomize what he stands for: toughness, physicality,” he said.
The Panthers never got to experience that side of Harbaugh the player, but Harbaugh the coach is thankful for his time in Charlotte and how it convinced him to stop playing.
He was reminded of that a few years ago when asking his dad “how long do you go in coaching?”
“He said, I’ll never forget it, ‘You coach until you cannot step onto the field one more time, until you can’t endure one more practice or put one more game plan together. And when you come to that point, you coach for two more years,”’ Harbaugh said.
“You’re asking me how I felt as a player at that time? I felt like I had two more in me, but football gods were saying something different.”
ESPN Chargers reporter Kris Rhim contributed to this story.