The Minnesota Vikings are poised to be aggressive in their pursuit of a quarterback in the 2024 NFL Draft but Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio believes a potential grudge involving Jim Harbaugh could throw a wrench in their quest to trade up.
The Vikings chose Kevin O’Connell over Harbaugh for their head coaching vacancy after the 2022 season and with Harbaugh back in the NFL as head coach of the Los Angeles Chargers, Florio believes Harbaugh could hold that decision against Minnesota they try to trade for the Chargers’ No. 5 overall pick.
“Do you think if they called Jim Harbaugh, the team that spurned him when he thought he was going to be the head coach of that team when he packed up his office and left in early 2022 fully believing he was going to get that job and then he didn’t, [do] you think he’s going to do them any favors?” Florio asked. “Hell no.”
Harbaugh’s potential hiring came when the Vikings were looking to replace Mike Zimmer. Harbaugh’s candidacy got to the point where he traveled to Minnesota for what he allegedly believed was to sign the contract to become the Vikings’ next head coach, but it turned out to be an eight-hour interview that led to the Vikings’ decision to hire O’Connell.
“Some jobs came open [and] I was contacted by the Vikings,” Harbaugh recalled on a social media video on the Chargers website on Thursday. “For better or worse, it was something I wanted to explore. I went in thinking I’m going to have 100 percent conviction on this…then it’s something I’m going to do.”
ESPN’s Courtney Cronin also reported that Harbaugh arrived in Minnesota expecting to sign a contract but The Athletic’s Chad Graff and Jon Krawczynski said that things took a turn during the interview process “for reasons that are not exactly clear.”
While one could speculate what those reasons could be, you could also speculate how it could hurt the Vikings’ chances of trading up to pick No. 5.
For example, could Harbaugh price gouge the Vikings if they want to make a deal for the fifth overall pick? Or could he take a similar deal to send J.J. McCarthy – who Harbaugh believes is the best quarterback in this year’s draft – to New York or Denver?
Or could Harbaugh select McCarthy at No. 5 and have him sit behind Justin Herbert for two years, dealing Herbert at a lower cap hit and building around the quarterback that led him to a national championship at Michigan?
It would be an interesting turn if the Vikings’ decision to hire O’Connell led to settling for someone in the next tier of quarterbacks – such as Washington’s Michael Penix Jr. or Oregon’s Bo Nix – but we won’t know how much Harbaugh’s snub really affected him until the Chargers are on the clock on April 25. Or, perhaps we’ll never know.
