Nothing Gets Jim Harbaugh’s Motor Running Like An Obscure Rule

Jim Harbaugh has this look about him that screams dotty uncle: the blinky eyes behind the old-man glasses, the slightly slack jaw, the refusal to employ the newfangled play-sheet-and-face-shield look. He’s perfectly cast for a man who thinks Lawrence Welk is the cutting edge.

Thus, it was right and proper that he be the one to return the fair catch kick to our notice by stealing a last-second three-banger right before halftime of Thursday night’s Amazonapalooza, in which Harbaugh’s Los Angeles Chargers defeated the almost as old but not nearly so physically arresting Sean Payton and the Denver Broncos. An arcane enclave of the rulebook which was successfully employed as recently as 1976, when Harbaugh was spiritually already in his mid-40s, the fair catch kick can be employed only after a fair catch, or a penalty on a fair catch, which the Broncos’ Tremon Smith gifted the Chargers on a punt that Derius Davis tried to collect with no time left on the clock. The 15-yard penalty took the ball from the Chargers 38 to the Broncos 47 and offered an untimed play to provide the punishment for the penalty that would otherwise go unpunished—why, you could hear the oldey-timey gears in a million old coaches’ heads at the possibilities. “It’s my favorite rule in football,” Harbaugh said.

In fairness, this isn’t something that only Harbaugh could concoct. It just seemed that way because he’s tried it before. Carolina attempted one in 2019 under Ron Rivera, but Joey Slye’s 61-yarder fell short, and Harbaugh used the tactic in 2013, but that failed because Phil Dawson couldn’t convert his 71-yard attempt.

Indeed, you have to go back those 48 years to Ray Wersching, a short, squatty and aggressively mustached money-from-40-and-in Charger who made his bones later with the Bill Walsh 49ers. He converted one in a three-touchdown win over the equally feh Buffalo Bills in a game without intrigue, consequence, or note—until today. There had only been nine attempts since, which tells you that this was a dust-caked page of the rulebook that only special teams coaches ever think about, and that only in moments of fantasy on sleepless nights in darkened rooms.

This, then, was Ryan Ficken’s moment. Ficken, the Chargers’ special teams coach and a holdover from the staff predating Harbaugh, is credited with his unit practicing the fair catch free kick each week, to the point that they look at Slye’s attempt every Friday. He surely knew that those nine failed attempts came from 74, 73, 61, 60, 58, 68, 69, 71 and 60 yards—basically, WTF distances—while Cameron Dicker, a.k.a. Dicker The Kicker, had a better than coin-flip chance of converting: 57-yarders this year hit at a 56 percent rate, which is the equivalent of a 40-yarder in 1990.

Thus, when fate kissed Ficken on the mouth Thursday, he was not only ready but made sure he advocated it to Harbaugh, who didn’t need reminding, let alone encouraging. While quarterback Justin Herbert thought it was Hail Mary time, Harbaugh played the better and less-employed percentages. For him, the Chargers had been gifted a free 57-yard field goal attempt at the end of a seemingly abandoned half of playoff-dependent football controlled by the Broncos, and they had the hired leg to convert it.

(As an added note, our liege and larynx Al Michaels also figured out the gambit almost as soon as the penalty flag landed, which is something we can almost guarantee the army of fashionably younger microphone jockeys would not have considered until the teams lined up.)

The only thing that this scenario needed was Harbaugh walking around, talking to Ficken, then the officials, then pointing at players and making this look like the good old days when there were only two TV games per Sunday and streaming was what you did at halftime after four beers. And because Harbaugh always looks like a slightly baffled and peripatetic owl with a bad case of dry eye, the scene looked even more like Currier and Ives Do The NFL.

And Dicker nailed it, the longest successful fair catch kick attempt in history. The Chargers cut the Broncos’ halftime lead to 21-13, scored three touchdowns in the second half and nearly doubled the Broncos in yardage, improved their playoff chances to 97 percent with only one win to earn from the Patriots (oof) and Raiders (a traditionally tough out as soon as their hopes have been destroyed) in the final two weeks. True, the Chargers’ history is to strangle themselves in big moments—last night’s final margin prevented them from breaking their 10-game losing streak in games decided by three or fewer points—but it also represented a level of gumption the Chargers historically do not display.

While there is no metric that backs this notion, we maintain this game turned on the caricature of Harbaugh’s devotion to the weirdest appendices of the rulebook and having the employees who share his receptiveness to screw-it-let’s-do-it football. He is not alone in this knowledge. Every NFL coach is a socially maladjusted weirdo as a requirement of the job and knows this rule, but players know only what they need to know, and their historical references ended last week. Harbaugh, though, looks the part of the perpetually distracted professor more than anyone else in his strata, largely because he was 68 when he was 18, has been 68 every year since, and is still eight years from actually being 68, and players have responded to the weird scientist in him at most of his stops, at least for a while.

Or, in the immortal words of his running back Gus Edwards, “I was confused as shit. I ain’t ever seen that before.” The Chargers winning an important game also falls into that category.