Souhan: Jim Harbaugh wants this meeting with the Vikings to go his way

Jim Harbaugh is one of the best coaches in football history. He’s also one of the quirkiest.

Reading his mind requires a Ouija board, Tarot cards and an interpreter, but we can surmise this much:

Harbaugh doesn’t want to lose to Kevin O’Connell again.

Harbaugh interviewed with the Vikings to replace the fired Mike Zimmer. The Vikings were not impressed by Harbaugh’s quirky personality or seeming assumption that the job was his for the taking.

While Harbaugh was deciding what color he should paint his office at TCO Performance Center, the Vikings were finalizing a contract with Kevin O’Connell.

All summer, this showdown between two excellent coaches who once vied for the same job promised to feel epic.

The Vikings were coming off a 14-win season and grooming the quarterback with whom Harbaugh won a national championship at Michigan, J.J. McCarthy.

Today, both coaches are trying to survive a series of devastating injuries, while trying to keep their teams from slumping into mediocrity. The Vikings are 3-3, and McCarthy has been healthy enough to play only two games. The Chargers won their first three games. In their last four games, they have beaten only the woeful, dysfunctional Miami Dolphins, and they won that game by only two points.

By late Thursday night, only one of these teams will be above .500.

There is no reason to reexamine the process that led to the Vikings hiring O’Connell. In the two seasons in which O’Connell has had a healthy quarterback, he has won a combined 27 regular-season games.

But Harbaugh will always be one of the most intriguing figures in the history of high-level football coaching. Only three coaches have won a college national title and a Super Bowl: Jimmy Johnson, Barry Switzer (who won the Super Bowl with Johnson’s team) and Pete Carroll.

Harbaugh won a national title at Michigan with McCarthy, and he came within one last-second pass into the end zone of winning a Super Bowl against his brother, when John’s Baltimore Ravens defeated Jim’s San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII.

Like Carroll, Harbaugh left college football after winning a national title (Carroll won two at USC) and before he could be hit with NCAA sanctions. USC was heavily punished for recruiting violations under Carroll, and Harbaugh is effectively banned from college coaching for another 12 years because of a sign-stealing scandal.

Harbaugh and O’Connell face the same challenge: winning a Super Bowl.

The Vikings organization is desperate to win a Super Bowl, to erase the franchise’s reputation for losing big game after big game, and O’Connell is counting on McCarthy to develop into the kind of quarterback who can make that happen.

The Chargers are another NFL franchise that has never won a Super Bowl. When Harbaugh failed to get the Vikings job, he returned to Michigan and won the national title in 2023.

He returned to the NFL in 2024 and inherited one of the most attractive jobs in the league. The Chargers have talent all over the field, and a youngish quarterback — 27-year-old Justin Herbert — who looks like he was created for the role by a billion-dollar Hollywood studio.

Both are being reminded this season that brainpower can’t always mitigate the fragility of bones and cartilage.

These starters have missed games for the Vikings: McCarthy, Aaron Jones, Jordan Addison, Brian O’Neill, Donovan Jackson, Ryan Kelly, Christian Darrisaw, Andrew Van Ginkel and Blake Cashman.

The Chargers used their first-round pick on running back Omarion Hampton and signed veteran Najee Harris to give them a power running game to pair with a strong passing game. Harris is out for the season; Hampton is on injured reserve.

Kimani Vidal is a talented second-year back, but he isn’t the between-the-tackles bruiser that Hampton is, and the Chargers offensive line’s injuries have been as problematic as those on the Vikings O-line.