John Harbaugh pays tribute to Jim Johnson

Steve Bisciotti and Ozzie Newsome made a bold and fortunate move in January 2008. Jason Garrett had just rejected their offer to replace Brian Billick as the head coach of the Baltimore Ravens, so the team's owner and general manager turned their attention to John Harbaugh, the longtime Eagles special-teams coach.

Harbaugh, 45 at the time, had spent the previous season as a secondary coach with the Eagles in an effort to enhance his resumé for a head coaching job, but no NFL team other than the Ravens considered him a serious candidate to run its football team.

History, of course, has shown that Harbaugh was exactly the right man to run the Ravens. He has a Super Bowl ring and six playoff appearances in seven seasons to prove it. It's fair and fun to wonder whether the Eagles would have ended their 54-year championship drought if they had been willing to make the same bold move the Ravens made after the 2007 season.

The Eagles might argue that they could not have possibly fired Andy Reid after the 2007 season because he had accomplished so much during his nine previous seasons as the head coach. The Ravens, however, fired Billick even though he had won a Super Bowl and put together five winning seasons in nine years.

All of this comes out now because Harbaugh and his Ravens are in town this week for a series of joint practices with the Eagles ahead of Saturday night's preseason game at Lincoln Financial Field. Harbaugh spent a decade in Philadelphia - one season under Ray Rhodes and nine under Reid - and the memories came rushing back to him as he arrived at the Eagles' practice facility Wednesday.

"I think about Andy and I think about Brian Westbrook," Harbaugh said. "I joked with Ike Reese and we talked about one of the miracles at the Meadowlands with Westbrook and the punt return."

The memory of one man, however, stood above the rest for Harbaugh.

"Nothing more so than Jim Johnson," he said. "Nothing more so than the greatest defensive coach in the history of football. We're running half of his schemes right now. A great man and a great mentor and a great teacher."

Johnson, who died from cancer in late July 2009, proved to be the greatest influence on Harbaugh's career path to becoming an NFL head coach. When Harbaugh was pigeonholed as a special-teams guy, it was Johnson who invited him into the Eagles' defensive meeting rooms.

"He grabbed me and pulled me in there and he would give me little duties and let me learn," Harbaugh said. "Football-wise, I would say he was the biggest influence. I learned more about football in the NFL from him than anybody else."

When Harbaugh got a chance to coach the Eagles' defensive backs in 2007, Johnson walked into Harbaugh's office at the NovaCare Complex and slapped the defensive playbook down on a desk. "You ought to know most of it anyway, but learn it," Johnson told Harbaugh.

"He was the kind of guy who expected you to study and ask you questions," Harbaugh said. "Even when I wasn't coaching the secondary I'd ask him questions and he would sit down and give me a lengthy explanation of the history of something and why they did it. He expected you to work and he expected you to study. He wasn't going to hand it to you on a plate."

It's a nice story that a longtime NFL assistant who never got a chance to be an NFL head coach had such an impact on a longtime assistant who finally did. You can see a lot of Johnson in Harbaugh, too. Both men have been kind, caring and charismatic, which is helpful when you are also ultra-demanding.

Harbaugh, thanks to the influence of Johnson, is old school. Eagles coach Chip Kelly, even though he is only 14 months younger than Harbaugh, is definitely a new wave of NFL coach. Harbaugh said he has evolved some since his first season with the Ravens, but his core principles have not changed.

"Now you're eight years into it and your players believe in it completely," he said. "So you have the veterans teaching the young guys that this is how we do things. Method you can change . . . but the principles - rough, tough, physical, disciplined, fundamentally sound football team that works hard - that never changes."

Harbaugh believes that is what Kelly is trying to instill in the Eagles.

"I see a guy that believes in what he believes," Harbaugh said. "He is a guy who is willing to fight those battles early on. You can't back up from what you believe in as a new coach in this league. He has a nice record in college coming in here obviously, but now he's done well two years in the pros. He has backed it up. He has not budged one bit from what he thinks is right and proper. He sticks to it and that's what you have got to do."

Kelly and the Eagles will be fortunate if the coach's tenure turns out as nicely as Harbaugh's has in Baltimore.

@brookob