Captain Comeback

Sporting News, The, Jan 15, 1996 by Paul Attner

Jim Harbaugh is standing behind a podium, conducting a postgame interview last Sunday after the Colts, numbing upset of Kansas City. He is swinging his right leg back and forth. He swings a bit too hard, hits the wood in the back of the stand and bashes it in.

"Gosh," says Harbaugh, who is given to such preppy terms ("neat" and "golly" also are in his vocabulary), "I am ugly and I'm not even on the field." He laughs hard at himself and everyone around him smiles, too. He has just won the biggest game of what has been until this season a very undistinguished career and he is not about to get serious. He sort of floats through games and life now, joking and scrambling and talking like he is a bit spaced out and doesn't care who knows it.

It would be easy for Harbaugh to be full of himself, particularly on this day in which Indianapolis stuck a 10-7 loss on the Chiefs, the AFC favorites to make it to the Super Bowl. The Colts came into the toughest home field in the NFL, forced four turnovers from the least error-prone team in the AFC, made Steve Bono look like the career backup he once was, handed Marty Schottenheimer yet another postseason scar and came away knowing they would have to beat Pittsburgh to play in their first Super Bowl since the 1970 season.

And they did it behind a surprisingly solid defense and a quarterback who has been publicly embarrassed by Mike Ditka, cut by the Bears, benched by the Colts and told this season he would play behind newly acquired Craig Erickson, who came from Tampa Bay for a No. 1 draft choice because they didn't think Harbaugh was good enough to get them into the playoffs.

So now the Steelers wait and the Colts shouldn't beat them, either, same as they shouldn't have won two weeks ago in San Diego or Sunday in Kansas City. Dome teams don't do these things in the playoffs especially in frigid weather (it was 11 degrees at kickoff), particularly against physically strong opponents who eat snow for breakfast. Harbaugh contemplates all these odds, shoves some tobacco in the side of his mouth, pauses, seems like he is ready to deliver a really big thought and says, "Can't explain it. We just keep grinding and keep coming back. Geez, I wish I could figure it out. But it is not magic. None of that. We've had guys come in all year and not expected to be factors. Like me."

A television crew comes over to talk to him. "Could you move to the other side?" he asks. "I want to enjoy this chew." If the camera crew moves, he can hide the tobacco. But what about the cup in which he is spitting? He finally gives up and takes out the ugly substance and puts it in the cup. Now Jim what about the blood you spit up in the second half?

"I'm not sure what play it was, but I got hit on the shoulder and it popped out and for some reason my chest hurt and I started spitting up blood," he says. "I finally popped out a lot of it and I felt better."

What he didn't say is, he didn't miss a play. The Chiefs, defensive linemen, tired of chasing him around the field (he scrambled nine times for 48 yards) groused that he is just like that pest John Elway, who has beaten them with his legs a few times over his storied career.

"Me, John Elway?" says Harbaugh, amazed that his name is appearing in the same sentence. "l am not in John Elway's league. He is the big leagues. I am Double A."

But Elway is home and Harbaugh will be in a big league playoff game, at Three Rivers, bringing in the league's No. 1 quarterback rating, a dynamic ability to bring his team from behind this season in the fourth quarter and legs that never seem to stop churning and pumping. "Doing his thing," is how Coach Ted Marchibroda describes Harbaugh's style. The Colts expect Harbaugh to make few throwing errors and to somehow convert third downs into first downs, even if it means, as he puts it, "flying by the seat of our pants and kind of making stuff out of nothing."

Indianapolis tries to take off some pressure by grinding out rushing yards behind a solid offensive line. Even though the Colts have had Marshall Faulk for just one series this postseason (he had knee surgery last week), they keep throwing out unknown running backs, guys named Zack Crockett and Lamont Warren and Ronald Humphrey, and they still succeed (147 yards from the rookie Crockett against San Diego, 147 more yards rushing from four sources against Kansas City's No. 3-rated rushing defense). So Harbaugh doesn't have to work miracles on every play, just in the pressure situations.

But when you are oblivious to failure what's pressure? "We are just a ragamuffin outfit, a bunch of rejects," says the leader of the gang, this man who giddily exclaims that he really loves playing in the harsh cold before unfriendly fans. "People think we can't do it and that is OK We just disagree with them." But doesn't he want to tell everyone who thought he is no longer an NFL quarterback, "I told you so." He stares away. "Not at all. But it makes it sweeter when you do it."

A Colts official comes over to his locker. "Take a shower, we have to go," he says. He walks away and Harbaugh smiles. "Can't I enjoy this a bit more?" he says in mock anger. "The places I've been ... it is kind of nice knowing people still want to talk to you. Hey this is a good gig."