FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Jim Harbaugh loves a high-five, calls it one of mankind’s great inventions. But sometimes, even that hearty gesture is insufficient.
So when the Chargers coach spotted the team’s general manager slipping out of the visitors’ locker room Saturday — in the wake of the club’s most lopsided win in five years — he summoned him for a bear hug.
The Chargers clinched a playoff berth with their 40-7 drubbing of the New England Patriots, and Harbaugh felt the urge to wrap his arms around first-year general manager Joe Hortiz. Such is the delirium of an NFL team starting to hit its stride at the right time.
“I needed a hug from Joe,” said the coach, who lured Hortiz from the Baltimore Ravens. “He’s the same brilliant guy every single day. He takes no deep, long bows. But he should.”
This is no finish line, of course, but Harbaugh’s Chargers have checked a big box on their to-do list. The franchise has secured a spot in the postseason for just the third time in 11 seasons, and with a finale at Las Vegas remaining has a chance to lock up the AFC’s fifth seed with a win and a Pittsburgh Steelers loss to the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 18. That would mean a more favorable wild-card game at Houston, as opposed to frigid openers at Buffalo or Baltimore.
There’s also meaning to bolting down a spot in the playoffs by winning at New England, even though these Patriots are a shadow of the version led by Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. This is a franchise that tormented the Chargers in years past, delivering a divisional-round knockout to Marty Schottenheimer’s 14-2 San Diego Chargers in the 2006 season, and beating the broken-down Chargers the following year in the AFC championship game.
There’s no one remaining in that Chargers locker room from that era. Most of the players were probably in grade school at the time. Still, there was significance to these players emerging from the fog that had settled on Gillette Stadium to forge a clear path to the postseason.
This is precisely what Chargers ownership had in mind when they hired Harbaugh, an undeniable turnaround artist. Just check his history. The San Francisco 49ers were 6-10 the year before they hired Harbaugh, and 13-3 in his first season. The Michigan Wolverines went from 5-7 before Harbaugh to 10-3 in his debut season.
“Coach Harbaugh’s a winner, that says it all,” Chargers cornerback Kristian Fulton said. “He’s won his whole life, won each team he’s coached. He told us at the beginning, there’s just one way to get to where he wants to go and that’s hard work. We’ve been working hard.”
When asked at the podium about the common threads among those teams that reversed course, Harbaugh immediately pointed to his players, “stalwarts” as he calls them, including quarterback Justin Herbert and safety Derwin James.
Later, after most of the team had left the locker room for the bus, Harbaugh reiterated that with, “There are no good coaches without good players. There’s no great coaches with bad players.”
One of those outstanding players Saturday was rookie receiver Ladd McConkey, who had eight catches for 94 yards and two touchdowns. That pushed his numbers to 77 receptions for 1,046, six more grabs than previous Chargers rookie record-holder Keenan Allen.
The Chargers traded up to the second pick in the second round to draft McConkey, a standout from the University of Georgia. Their trade partner in that deal? The Patriots, who used the fifth pick in that round to draft Washington receiver Ja’Lynn Polk. McConkey had seven more yards on Saturday, and the same number of touchdowns, that Polk has had all season.
Asked if there was a little piece of him that wanted to show the Patriots what they missed, McConkey said: “That’s not me. If they want to think about it that way, like, `Oh, we should have done this,’ it’s shoulda, coulda, woulda.”
Historically, it’s important for teams to be able to run the ball in the postseason, especially when the weather can turn foul in so many NFL cities. Only more reason for the Chargers to feel good about the return of running back J.K. Dobbins, who missed four games with a knee sprain. He ran for 76 yards in 19 carries against the Patriots, with a two-yard touchdown.
He was part of the Baltimore brigade who came west to the Chargers from the Ravens, coached by Harbaugh’s older brother, John.
Unlike a lot of his teammates, Dobbins has playoff experience. He’s played in postseason road games at Cincinnati, Tennessee and Buffalo. He understands the importance of a team finding another gear in December, as it seems the Chargers have, and fostering a belief that it can compete at the highest level.
“We can beat you a lot of ways, and in the playoffs that’s what you’ve got to do,” Dobbins said. “In the playoffs, they’re going to try to take away the thing that you do best.”
He said Harbaugh has “changed the culture” of a team that won five games last season.
“He’s brought in guys that are winners,” he said. “That’s how you change the culture. You draft guys who win [national championships] or won all throughout college. You bring in guys who have won all across the league. You start to see the benefits of that.”
Harbaugh delivered his hugs Saturday but he’s hoping there are many more. One box checked. The way he sees it, his team has only earned a spot at the starting gate.
