Here came San Francisco 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh, right down the row of towel-draped, 300-pound offensive linemen in the San Francisco locker room. The 49ers had just defeated the Detroit Lions 25-19, a victory punctuated by a near postgame brawl between Harbaugh and his Lions counterpart, Jim Schwartz.
“It was a bar fight,” Harbaugh kept shouting as he hugged, held and hammered on the shoulders of Mike Iupati(notes) and Anthony Davis and the rest of the behemoths who had helped the Niners roll up 203 rushing yards on Ndamukong Suh(notes) and the gang.
“It was a damn bar fight out there,” the Niners coach reiterated.
The hottest coach in the NFL was laughing and smiling and bouncing around. This was nirvana for the Niners, now 5-1. “Who’s got it better than us?” Harbaugh had asked his team after the game and, like always, they shouted “no one.”
Who can argue now? The Niners walked into Detroit and slapped the season’s first loss on the Lions. Then their coach, admittedly out of control with glee, delivered an overaggressive handshake of Schwartz that led to a huge scrum near the Ford Field tunnel.
“I was just really revved up; It’s totally on me,” Harbaugh said, not looking a bit sorry for it. “I shook his hand too hard. I really went in and it was a really strong, slap, grab handshake.”
Schwartz said there was “an obscenity” too, which led to him chasing after Harbaugh and delivering a bump of his own. While the details are debatable, the impact is not: San Francisco and its in-your-face coach are not to be ignored.
“What’s your deal?” Pete Carroll asked Jim Harbaugh, back when they were in the Pac-10. Harbaugh coached cellar-dweller Stanford; Carroll was at mighty USC. Harbaugh was intent on switching places and didn’t mind everyone knowing it, hard feelings be damned.
It’s no different now.
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