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Vikings owner Mark Wilf has spoken highly of the idea of communication and collaboration within the organization after the team fired General Manager Rick Spielman and head coach Mike Zimmer a few weeks ago in part for being deficient in those areas.
That same language was shared by new GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah last week when he was introduced. Coming from an analytics background — however you want to define that — leads Adofo-Mensah to seek out information from a variety of different sources in order to make the most-informed decision possible.
That, plus the rule of opposites that seems to guide a lot of coaching searches, would lead a lot of people to scratch their heads at the news that Jim Harbaugh is interviewing for the head coach job on Wednesday.
As Ben Goessling and I discussed on Tuesday's Daily Delivery podcast, Harbaugh is the most accomplished of the four remaining candidates. If all of this is serious, it's hard not to consider him a front-runner at this point.
If indeed Harbaugh is hired — and again, that's still a big if that will play out over the next few days — it will be a good reminder that there is window dressing and then there are the things that really matter.
And the key quote from Wilf after the Vikings launched a GM/coach search was quite possibly this one above all else: "We believe we can be super-competitive right here in 2022. This is not in that mode of a full rebuild. ... I do feel we can be a contender in 2022, and that's the way we view it."
No owner likes to admit their team is rebuilding. It's bad for attendance. And the Wilfs, as Goessling pointed out, have particularly tried to avoid it.
But if you want to win and you think you can win now ... Harbaugh is your hire. He had a 44-19-1 regular season record with the 49ers, won five playoff games, went to three NFC title games and one Super Bowl. That was in four seasons.
He might have a big personality that doesn't lend itself to the modern definition of collaboration. He is almost exactly the same age (58 vs. 57) as Zimmer when he was hired eight years ago.
But the Vikings in the last 21 seasons have won four playoff games, gone to two NFC title games and been to zero Super Bowls.
History is not proof, but it is evidence.
If Harbaugh's competition is a pair of coordinators who have never been head coaches and another who had a losing record in his only other head job ... well, the only thing to conclude is that his candidacy doesn't make any sense except in the most important way.
