If Harbaugh Were Coaching Cowboys/Garrett Coaching 49ers.....

[casmith07]

Close to the same. San Francisco's defense is a lot better than ours. Secondary is better, linebacking is better (though if Bruce Carter comes along that could change really quickly) and their DEs are leagues better than ours.

 

[Chocolate Lab]

We might well be getting ready for a game next weekend.

All this talent the Niners supposedly have... Not one person was claiming that before the year started. Not one. They only claim that now because they were coached to an amazing year.

 

[Risen Star]

Not any different. Harbaugh's not going to create talent along our offensive line.

 

[TellerMorrow34]

Doubt it ... i think Garrett would realize his players strengths and change his philosophy to maximize those strengths. (Defense and running game)

I'm not sure if this is sarcastic or not but in the event that it isn't then would you care to elaborate on why you think he'd do this?

We might well be getting ready for a game next weekend.

All this talent the Niners supposedly have... Not one person was claiming that before the year started. Not one. They only claim that now because they were coached to an amazing year.

I think pretty much everyone knew that they had a dang good defense and a quality running game.

I'm not sure that there was anyone who would have claimed otherwise.

 

[skinsscalper]

While perusing the web today I came across a little tidbit that I thought was relevant to this question. It was in response to a question about excuses being valid for Garrett when Harbaugh had a high level of success in his first year. I believe it was Gosselin (IIRC) that shot down the theory that Harbaugh's success automatically nullified any excuses Garrett may have for not reaching the same level in his first full season.

The reason was simple: Harbaugh has head coaching experience. Years of it. When Jason Garrett was cutting his coaching teeth on the Dolphins staff as a QB coach, Harbaugh was running a high profile program at Stanford. That whole time, making HC decisions both on and off the field. Harbaugh made some mistakes, as anyone does. He had the luxury of learning a lot of those mistakes at the collegiate level and taking what he had learned to the NFL.

Now, I won't begin to argue the fact that things are different at the collegiate level. They are. But, Harbaugh was able to hone certain crafts at the collegiate level that Garrett is learning on the fly on, arguably, the highest profile sports franchise on the planet. The first and most important (next to preparation) being game management and situational football. Harbaugh has seen and coached in many situations 100 times what Garrett was dealing with for the first time this season.

I think it's been discussed ad naseum around here that Garrett has coached his team out of wins and straight into the jaws of a loss on more than one occasion this past season. Those losses are disheartening. No doubt about it. And, we can sit here all day and argue that "It's Garrett's job to know these things and he should have handled it better". That would be tough to argue against. But the reality is that (regardless of his pay grade, title, position, or profile of the organization) Garrett is still new to this. Wisdom is, more often than not, is gained through experience. Some of Garrett's gaffes this season have been mind-boggling, to say the least. However it's easy for us to sit from the comfort of our couch and scream from the mountain tops how we would have done it or how it should be done. We don't have the information that a HC has. We aren't able to look an O-lineman, who's been getting his *** whipped all day, and see in his eyes that he's lost the war and there ain't no winning it back. We don't know that a WR that was wide open on a play was even running the right route or has been running the wrong routes all day, thus being ignored or at most used as a decoy. We don't have our hearts thumping in our chests knowing that the balance of a game, a season, or franchise rests on a decision that you have seconds to make. It's all, relatively, easy from where we sit.

We can start to become TRULY disheartened if Garrett, in fact, displays that he's learned nothing from his experience this year. Until then we endure some of the growing pains and hope that his arrow continues to point up. He has the smarts to get it done, IMHO. The question is when will the fundamentals of situational coaching become his strength? To me, that is the one thing holding Garrett back from being regarded as one of the top coaches in the league.

With all that being said, the answer to the OP is that neither team would have ended up the same or in eachothers' position at the end of the season. Completely unique circumstances for each organization. From personnel to offensive and defensive philosophies.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Cowboy Junkie]

Harbaugh at this point is with out doubt the better coach. Any one that says different is looking through rose colored gogles.

J.G blew a few games last year, the head coach is not suppose to lose gamjes for you.

that is not to say a few years down the road JG wont make a terrific coach

 

[CATCH17]

I'm not sure if this is sarcastic or not but in the event that it isn't then would you care to elaborate on why you think he'd do this?





I think pretty much everyone knew that they had a dang good defense and a quality running game.

I'm not sure that there was anyone who would have claimed otherwise.

Their secondary was questionable going into the season and nobody was worried about their run game because their pass game was so bad.


I think most people would've expected the 9ers to be 1 of the worst 10 teams in football.