NEW ORLEANS — Big brother still has ultimate bragging rights at the Harbaugh family holiday dinner table.
John Harbaugh made sure his parents would be visiting the 49ers’ locker room first last night, coaching his team to a heart-stopping 34-31 victory over brother Jim in Super Bowl XLVII at the Superdome.
Parents Jack and Jackie Harbaugh had agreed to visit the losing coach first, but their destination was in doubt until Colin Kaepernick’s fourth-down pass for Michael Crabtree fell incomplete in the end zone with 1:46 left and the Ravens subsequently defended a free kick at the final gun.
All that excitement plus the weirdness of a 34-minute blackout ended with the Ravens carrying away the Lombardi Trophy, and John — who also beat Jim in a regular-season matchup last year — coming out on top in the biggest “Har-Bowl” of them all.
“It’s tough,” John said when asked what it felt like to beat his brother. “It’s very tough knowing he’s in pain right now. It’s a lot tougher than I thought it was going to be. It’s very painful.”
Jim Harbaugh might have had the more glorious playing career, but John — who at age 50 is a year older than his sibling — still has the upper hand when it comes to coaching in the NFL after Baltimore managed to withstand a power outage and a furious Niners comeback.
Notoriously competitive, Jim — to the surprise of no one — was curt about his feelings on the brotherly coaching matchup afterward.
“I told him congratulations and that I was proud of him,” Jim said when asked to relay what he said during their postgame greeting on the field. “I think he said the same thing back to me.”
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John shouldn’t have felt too bad, though, because his brother’s surprise decision to turn conservative in the second half — during a year in which he had benched his starting quarterback after a 6-2 start — came back to haunt the Niners.
Jim raised some eyebrows by waiting until the fourth quarter to go for the two-point conversion while San Francisco had the hot hand, but there would be even more second-guessing for his decision late in the third.
That’s when Jim went ahead with a field goal on fourth-and-2 from the Baltimore 16 after a penalty on the Ravens had given San Francisco a reprieve following an initial miss by David Akers.
And when the situation appeared to call for conservative play-calling with the Niners having first-and-goal at the 7 and two of the league’s most potent running threats in Frank Gore and Kaepernick, Harbaugh let offensive coordinator Greg Roman call passes on the final three plays. All fell incomplete.
To be fair, though, the Ravens also overcame at least one seriously questionable coaching decision by John to claim their second world championship in 12 years.
That came in the second quarter, when the Ravens were rolling, up 14-3, and seemed ready to turn an Ed Reed interception into a sure-thing field goal by the reliable Justin Tucker. But John inexplicably called for a fake field goal on fourth-and-9, and Tucker managed to get just 6 yards.
The Ravens, however, would survive that boneheaded move and continue to make their coach look smart in a year in which John gambled by firing offensive coordinator Cam Cameron late in the regular season.
“It’s an amazing feeling,” John said. “I’d like to be more profound than that, but that’s all I can come up with right now.”