As the 49ers search for a general manager and head coach moves along, it appears to be morphing into a single search. While the 49ers will not confirm or deny the Jim Harbaugh rumors, the volume of information on this subject would indicate Harbaugh is the top choice to be the next head coach of the San Francisco 49ers.
We've seen a million and one stories with most of them pushing Trent Baalke as the heir apparenty for the GM job. However, the momentum has just as quickly begun to swing away from Trent Baalke being the obvious choice. Some folks are sitting on Baalke for GM, but Mike Lombardi is starting to emerge as a potentially more likely target. It's all rumor and hearsay at this point so we can only take it with a big fat grain of salt. However, as was the case last week, the more smoke you get, the more likely there's fire right behind it.
Mike Florio over at Pro Football Talk has had plenty of links related to the 49ers current search for a GM and head coach. A little earlier today he posted that a league source expressed to PFT "a very strong feeling/hunch that Harbaugh would be paired not with Baalke but with NFL Network's Mike Lombardi." The idea appears to be that Harbaugh might not be comfortable with a Baalke-led front office. I'd probably be a bit skeptical about a front office being led by this guy.
But seriously, whether or not your gut tells you (like it does Tre9er) all the Baalke talk was a smokescreen for Lombardi, this just shows how quickly news can change when it's based on rumors and anonymous league sources. At the end of the day barring some shaking change of events, somebody will have tweeted or written an article with the correct answer. That person will claim to be all-knowing at that point even though the person who wrote anything prior to this past weekend will likely be getting it right because of dumb luck more than anything else.
It's a lot of fun to discuss, but I'm also just anxious for this search to end and to see some white smoke come up from 49ers headquarters. I'd have to imagine at some point this week we'll finally get an answer.