- [Narrator] Jim Harbaugh and Pete Carroll
are each maniacally competitive football coaches
who share similar philosophies about the sport
at their core
and they have never been able to escape one another.
Let's take it back and start during Harbaugh's playing days.
After a decorated collegiate career at Michigan,
he went to the Bears in the first round of the 1987 Draft.
He'd go on to have a nice career,
earning the moniker, "Captain Comeback" along the way.
And one of his very first comebacks happened to occur
in 1991 with the Jets in town,
his first game against a defense
coordinated by Pete Carroll.
Down seven on the final play of regulation,
Harbaugh connected with Neal Anderson
to send the game to O.T.
before sneaking in from a yard out for the win.
Harbaugh ripped Carroll's heart out
in the waning minutes a few years later too,
the former now in Indy,
the latter running the 49ers defense.
And in 1997, we even got a year of them in the same division
after Bob Kraft hired Carroll as head coach in New England,
where Carroll got a measure of revenge
with the Pats sweeping their two games
against Harbaugh's Colts.
A few years later, Carroll was coaching in college at USC
where he quickly turned them into a national powerhouse,
while Harbaugh was getting into coaching himself
after wrapping up his playing career.
His first head gig came in San Diego, where in 2006,
he actually tried recruiting Carroll's son, Nate.
He chose USC.
By 2007, these long-lost loves were reunited in the PAC-10
when Stanford hired Harbaugh
to turn around a one and 11 program.
And the jabs came not long after
with Harbaugh claiming that March that the upcoming season
would be the final one for Carroll in Southern California.
Carroll didn't take too kindly to that.
Their first meeting featured Harbaugh
leading his woeful team that had lost
16 of their previous 18 games into the Coliseum
against the mighty Trojans
who were ranked number two in the country
and who had won their previous 35 home games.
USC was favored by over 40 points,
but they were holding on for dear life
in the final minutes with a 6-point lead.
Harbaugh's knack for late-game heroics didn't disappear
after trading a helmet, jersey, and cleats
for a Sharpie, khakis, and, well, cleats.
On their last-gasp drive, Stanford faced a fourth-and-20
before a young wide receiver by the name of Richard Sherman
miraculously kept their hopes alive.
This last-minute fourth-and-goal touchdown
punctuated one of the greatest upsets
in the history of college football
and put the Harbaugh-Carroll rivalry squarely on the map.
The next year, USC was able to flex their muscles
in Stanford and a fourth-quarter surge propelled them
to a blow-out 22-point win over Harbaugh's Cardinal.
But enough with the appetizers,
the stage is now set
for their final PAC-10 showdown in 2009
and the sweet aroma of beef
that would smother the Los Angeles Coliseum at the end.
By now, Harbaugh had turned around Stanford's fortunes
and, now armed with a star quarterback,
they absolutely clobbered USC.
Late in the game, after it was totally out-of-hand,
a Stanford touchdown put 'em up 48-21.
But Harbaugh really wanted that 50 and went for two.
He didn't get it, but boy did that piss off Pete.
After the game, as they approached each other at midfield
to shake hands, Harbaugh delighted
in silencing USC and their fans
and Carroll was still steaming from that two-point attempt
so he had a little somethin' to say to Harbaugh.
Ah, "What's your deal?"
The utterance of those three little words
was a magical moment for fans of football or just pettiness.
At the end of that season,
with sanctions headed USC's way
due to NCAA violations under Carroll's watch,
Pete just so happened to decide that
that was the right point in time
to jump back to the NFL,
reaching a deal with the Seattle Seahawks.
One year and a BCS Bowl win later, in January 2011,
Harbaugh was the hottest coach in commodity out there
with teams falling over themselves to try and land him.
Dolphins owner and fellow Wolverine Stephen Ross,
one of the wealthiest in a club of stupidly wealth people,
was basically offering Harbaugh a blank check
to come to Miami.
And he still had a head coach in place,
but the Dolphins didn't face Carroll's Seahawks
twice per year.
The 49ers did and that really mattered to Harbaugh,
who went out of his way to tell CEO Jed York
that he was ready to beat Carroll again.
So he jumped to the NFL but stayed in the Bay,
joining ol' Pete in the NFC West
for a biannual renewal of acquaintances
and, of course, more beef.
As luck would have it,
Harbaugh didn't have to wait long for his chance,
beating Carroll in his debut as an NFL coach,
before knocking Seattle out of playoff contention
on Christmas Eve.
And yet, outside of a couple
very closely scrutinized post-game handshakes,
2011 was uneventful by their standards.
But everything changed in 2012.
The teams' first matchup of the year occurred
on a Thursday night in week seven.
Four days earlier, Seattle had announced to the world
that they were for real when they knocked off the Patriots
in rookie quarterback Russell Wilson's coming-out party.
In a common theme between these two squads,
it was a 60-minute defensive struggle
and the Niners held on for the win.
Eventually, a rumor started to percolate
that after this game,
Harbaugh had driven by Seattle's team bus
as they were departing Candlestick Park
and proceeded to honk and wave
and troll Carroll and the Seahawks.
An accusation that Harbaugh vehemently denied.
The next day, even though he just won their game,
Harbaugh waged an assault
against the way Carroll coached his secondary,
threatening to take it up with the league office.
Carroll made sure to point out
just how outrageous he found that.
Fast-forward nine weeks to December 23rd,
which also just so happened to be Harbaugh's 49th birthday.
The Niners hit the Pacific Northwest to take on the Seahawks
in a cold, wet, primetime game
with huge NFC West implications.
Let's give this game a bit of a backdrop.
The Seahawks had just clinched their first winning season
in a half-decade, were firing on all cylinders,
and had just become the first team
since Truman was in office
to drop 50 points in back-to-back games.
What's funny is how they managed to reach that mark
the previous week in a game up in Canada.
The man furious with Harbaugh for needlessly going for two
to hit 50 points dialed up this fake punt
in the fourth quarter with a 30-point lead
and, on the doorstep of, wait for it, 50 points.
If that's not the pot calling the kettle black,
then we just need to wipe that idiom
from the face of the planet.
Meanwhile, the Niners limped into this one,
coming off an emotionally draining game in Foxborough,
in which they played over 90 defensive snaps
and saw the heartbeat of their team tear his triceps.
So this would be his first missed game
in over a decade just as the young upstart Seahawks
were nipping at the Niners heels for NFC West supremacy.
And Seattle took advantage,
setting the tone for the evening
on just their second offensive play.
- [Commentator] Justin Smith out of the lineup,
the Seahawks go right after his replacement,
Ricky Jean Francois, and they stick it in from there.
- Yeah, after that alleged disrespect
from the parking lot in October,
the Seahawks were kind of foaming at the mouth for this one.
Now there was nothing physically Carroll's team
could do to Harbauguh even if
cornerback Brandon Browner really wanted to,
but they could sure as hell smack around his team.
And for 60 minutes, they physically manhandled the Niners
and hell yeah Carroll and the Hawks enjoyed rubbing it
in Harbaugh's face, especially on his birthday.
The 2013 off-season arrived a bit later,
but this beef takes no off-season.
The Seahawks, who'd been having a host of players
getting popped for PEDS, were ripe for a June tongue-lashing
from Harbaugh, who stressed being above reproach
while intimating that Seattle's success was due to cheating.
As you could imagine, Carroll wasn't too fond
of Harbaugh commenting about his team.
Heading into that 2013 season,
the rivalry was white-hot.
And after splitting with each other in the regular season,
it all came to a head in a battle royal
of an NFC Championship game up in Seattle.
After Harbaugh's former player Richard Sherman
sealed the game at the end,
he lit into his old college coach on national TV.
- Well I'm the best corner in the game
when you try me with a sorry receiver like Crabtree,
that's the result you gonna get.
The next year was a mess in San Francisco,
Harbaugh was being pushed out the door
by ego-driven Niner management all season
and upon its conclusion, the two sides mutually parted ways.
Harbaugh returned to his alma mater to coach,
but even then, the sweet smell of this beef
never ventures too far.
In the third round of the 2017 NFL Draft,
Carroll actually picked a couple players
Harbaugh had coached in Ann Arbor.
Let's go to the tape to see if there are any beef remnants
when that was mentioned.
(laughter)
Carroll and Harbaugh may never square off
against one another again
and this would be a shame for so many reasons:
the excellent football each coach brings out of his team,
the drama, the antics, the pure tension in the air.
But even if we've seen the final handshake
between these two men,
we'll always have the memories of their long-lasting,
grade-A beef.