Seth Wickersham takes a deep dive inside the mind of 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh

ESPN The Magazine writer Seth Wickersham has authored a piece on Jim Harbaugh that is well worth your time. I don't know that there will ever be a "definitive" piece on Coach Harbaugh, but this provides an extensive psychological profile. I highly recommend giving it a read as soon as you can.

There are so many fascinating pieces of information to take from this, most of which we did not know before. Wickersham threw a football around with Coach Harbaugh, but really this goes into so much more detail. We've had plenty of talk about anonymous sources, and while frequently they can lead to problems, this is an example of a story that takes quotations and stories and weaves a profile of a man that is not quite like anybody else in the NFL. There are plenty of intense personalities in the NFL, but I don't know that many are unique like Jim Harbaugh.

One of the more interesting parts of the article is a discussion of the Super Bowl matchup with his brother. The article talks about how Jim Harbaugh "hates" his opponents, but the Super Bowl provided the one game where he could not hate his opponent. Some people suggested that John telling Jim he loved him before the game through the latter off his game

I don't think that the 49ers lost the Super Bowl because John said something to Jim before the game, but that doesn't mean I don't think about that possibility. And that might tell us plenty about Jim Harbaugh.

This article shows that complicated it can be dealing with Coach Harbaugh on a regular basis. And yet, based on what we see, you could argue he's actually a very straight forward personality. He is not quite like what people are used to dealing with, but all the stories seem to bring us back to his hyper-competitive personality. It's all about figuring out ways to win.

And that is one reason the whole notion of there being locker room dissension is not some black and white issue we can figure out with a yes or no answer. People are complicated, and it is easy to love someone one minute, and be infuriated with them the next minute. As I've said, I'm sure there are people that just don't like Jim Harbaugh. However, I would not be surprised if a lot of players on the 49ers roster have a bit of a love/hate type of relationship with him.

Again, I cannot recommend this article enough. My favorite might be the suggestion that Jim Harbaugh would sign a long term extension out of spite. There has been all this chatter that he would end up somewhere else before finishing a lame duck year, and that the 49ers might be inclined to facilitate that. I could kind of picture Jed York offering Jim  a deal figuring he would turn it down, and then being stunned when Harbaugh says yes. Maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration by the person making the comment, but it would not exactly stun me, I suppose.

Cam Inman had a good piece taking a look at a few excerpts from the article with some of his thoughts. That's worth a look.