After near-misses as a player and coach, Jim Harbaugh finally gets to attend a Super

[Feed Robot]

NEW ORLEANS -- San Francisco 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh has been to Super Bowls before, but never the way he really wanted. He's the coach of a 49ers team that was a couple of fumbled returns away from a possible NFC Championship victory over the eventual Super Bowl champion New York Giants last season, and back in Jan., 1996, he was the quarterback for an Indianapolis Colts team that lost the AFC Championship game to the Pittsburgh Steelers by a score of 20-16 ... and would have won the game if receiver Aaron Bailey could have brought in Harbaugh's 29-yard Hail Mary pass as the clock ran out. At the 49ers' introductory press conference just after the team arrived in New Orleans to prepare for Super Bowl XLVII, Harbaugh said that he'd also been to a few Super Bowls -- but only as a fan. “Yes, I have attended Super Bowls in the past. For example, the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers two years ago [Super Bowl XLV]. I was at the Super Bowl in New Orleans when San Francisco played Denver [XXIV, at the end of the 1989 season], and there might have been one other one along the way. There might have been a couple other ones.” So, he's been as close as you can get in every possible way without getting there. Now, after the 49ers trumped the Atlanta Falcons in the NFC title game despite an early 17-0 deficit, he's finally here the way he always wanted to be. But as you might expect from a coach who is all business and wouldn't tell the media anything but, Harbaugh's focus is on the game against the Baltimore Ravens in a a week's time. Starting, of course, with second-year quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who helped propel the 49ers to that rarefied place, even with a host of stars around him. “It’s been a team effort," Harbaugh said of his players. "I feel like there’s a lot of people that have a lot of fingerprints on this team’s success. Like I said, the team has been focused on the unity of the team and on winning better than any team I’ve ever seen or been around. Really credit that to the men in the locker room. They enjoy each other’s company. They like being around each other and they like competing. They hold themselves to a high standard in terms of that. Colin’s play has been outstanding. He deserves tremendous amount of credit for that. He, like the rest of the guys on the team, are focused on the opportunity to play and win a championship.” But that opportunity might not exist had Harbaugh not stuck to his decision to play Kaepernick in the wake of Alex Smith's mid-season concussion, and to keep Kaepernick as the starter even after Smith was healthy.

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