John Harbaugh Is The Shiniest Pony On The NFL Coaching Carousel

The hours since John Harbaugh was binned in Baltimore have dragged comfortably into double digits and are easing towards actual days—not a long period of time by normal standards, but long enough that he has already been crowned the best available choice for whatever coaching vacancy you've got. Maybe there's a mourning period that needs to be honored, or maybe the six other owners with vacant coach offices are still busy trying to figure out how not to pay off the guys they just fired. After all, Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti had just extended Harbaugh's contract last year to take him through 2028, and now he wants his team to go in the chimerical "different direction." Figuring out what that direction might be beyond "later into the postseason" is the bigger challenge, but the more urgent one is negotiating a dimes-on-the-dollar deal for the remaining $54 million on Harbaugh's contract.

But Harbaugh will be hired again, and by week's end if the NFL's billionaire boys club is paying any attention. Based if nothing else on the pundit "desirability" scale, he's the only fired coach who should get a new gig, even though at the age of 63 he is well past the desired young (which is to say cheap) demographic of the young'un class best represented of late by Jacksonville's Liam Coen and Chicago's Ben Johnson. Beware the Ides Of Belichick, and all that. Even if Harbaugh isn't the right fit for every available job, he is indisputably the safe fit for an owner's comfort and public profile, not to mention preening rights at the next owners' meeting. "He likes me more than you" oddly works just as well in the halls of the league's wealthiest men as it does in 10th-grade study hall.