EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — Before the first training camp practice preceding the next chapter of the Los Angeles Chargers’ destiny, Jim Harbaugh was cutting across the field in his cleats when his eyesight caught the path of All-Pro safety Derwin James. Ever the one to engage a team leader and impart one of his Harbaugh-isms, the head coach called out.
“Hey … gliiide,” Harbaugh said, pushing his right hand into the air, as if to simulate a plane lifting off. “Glide today. We’ll be at 30,000 feet before you know it. Let’s glide a little.”
James reached out and slapped Harbaugh’s hand.
“I got you,” he said.
If you wanted a snapshot of the Harbaugh dogma, this is it. Teach. Enthuse. Educate. Connect. Repeat with color and vigor. And above all else, never spare the zany analogies. None more vintage than what he shared with the media after that first practice, comparing the start of a football season with … childbirth.
“It feels like coming out of the womb, you know?” Harbaugh said earlier this week. “It’s like, you’re in there and it’s comfortable and safe and now — poof! You’re out, you’re born. The lights are on, it’s bright. You’ve got chaos, people looking at you, people talking at you. It just feels good to have it happen.”
That story wasn’t just for the media’s enjoyment, either. He imparted that one to his players, too. Including James, who had never quite heard his profession described that way.
“Nah, never,” James said with a laugh. “He’s his own guy. I love him. We love him.”
Whether or not that will translate into these Chargers finally breaking through to meet or exceed expectations remains to be seen. But the way the operation is set up — and some of the aggressive change that has already taken place — certainly sends a signal. Like some of the more successful regimes in recent years, there’s not a lot of waiting happening inside the walls of this franchise when it comes to attacking a roster. Any inclination to be paralyzed by assessment or fearing movement went out the window when Harbaugh was hired and paired with general manager Joe Hortiz, who comes from a Baltimore Ravens operation that cranks out personnel talent the way Harvard stocks White-shoe law firms.
The decisive nature of that duo may never be more evident than their first offseason together, when they moved on from a boatload of veteran talent. Half salary purge and half culture churn, the moves including trading a starting wideout who had become an institution in the uniform (Keenan Allen), letting another young-but-oft-injured starting receiver leave in free agency (Mike Williams), and then declining to re-sign a handful of other veterans who will be key starters or rotational players elsewhere (running back Austin Ekeler, linebacker Kenneth Murray and tight end Gerald Everett, among others).
Those moves were part of what should be a micro-rebuild rather than a full-blown re-tooling, putting the Chargers onto a path that will eventually look similar to how sustained programs have long been established by franchises like the Ravens, Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers. The goal: To build a sturdy team through drafting, teaching and culture molding, then conservatively using free agency and trades to improve the weak spots. All while carefully trying to cultivate underrated tools like the pursuit of compensatory draft picks to fatten up draft classes.
This is what Hortiz believes in as a builder. It’s what he learned in Baltimore from guys like Ozzie Newsome and Eric DeCosta over the course of 26 years. And now that he’s paired with Harbaugh — who has always been a consummate leader/teacher/philosopher at head coach — the pair feel like a software update to some classic tandems. One that comes to mind? The Pete Carroll and John Schneider-era Seattle Seahawks. In that regime, you had Carroll, the energy head coach/teacher, making his NFL return off a national championship with USC, paired with Schneider, the started-at-the-bottom general manager whose “build from inside” fundamentals were shaped by Ron Wolfe and Ted Thompson.
Eventually, the matrix of Carroll and Schneider delivered two Super Bowl appearances and one Super Bowl win (which really should have been two). Seahawks mistakes aside, that’s not a bad aim for a Chargers franchise that hasn’t been to the Super Bowl since the 1994 season, particularly given the decades of squandering elite talent and repeatedly falling short of expectations.
What the team is selling now is something a little different: A proven winner at all levels of football, who does things his own (sometimes unconventional) way — but who is often true to what he believes and says. When he tells you he might draft an offensive lineman with the No. 5 overall pick, because he believes in building outward from a team’s line, then he might do just that. And when everyone assumes he has to take a wide receiver at that very spot, he and Hortiz select Notre Dame offensive tackle Joe Alt. When critics say the NFL is no longer conquered by being run-dominant, Harbaugh and Hortiz lean into laying a run-balanced foundation.
“When you get a guy like coach Harbaugh that has been there and won at a bunch of places, you know that he’s not testing it out for the first time,” defensive end Joey Bosa said. “He has a strategy that he knows that works. It’s easy to buy in when you have a guy like that. Winning a national championship, going to the Super Bowl, you know, wherever he’s been, he’s been really successful. So to have a guy that comes in, he lays the plan out for you, and there’s no guessing. It feels nice.”
That’s the faith and buy-in Harbaugh and Hortiz are in Los Angeles to create. Thoughtfully and methodically, something fans should keep in mind during a 2024 season that is going to be about more roster measurement and getting the right pieces around quarterback Justin Herbert to sustain him for the next decade and beyond. It’s something that Harbaugh could have been alluding to when he described the team’s ramp up toward the regular season.
“Analogy would be a plane taking off a runway,” Harbaugh said. “You know, it goes from a dead start and it starts to build up speed, and it gets so much speed that it just has to get off the ground. And then it takes off and it’s not too long until you’re about 30,000 feet. Just making sure that we don’t have any mishaps while we’re in that, I call it ‘glide’. We’re in the glide time.”
For now, that’s what these Chargers need. Not the recent run of rocket ships — filled with talent, fuel and promise — only to blow up in an array of ways, from the launchpad to the edge of the stratosphere. Instead, what’s being built is an ascent that is dedicated to being steady, reliable and sustainable. Pointed up, to a destination that Harbaugh believes will get here before anyone knows it.
