San Francisco 49ers: Breaking down the 20 biggest moments of the decade

No. 20: The San Francisco 49ers hire Jim Harbaugh

As far as some of the greatest “what if?” moments go in franchise history, one of the top on the list would be what would have happened if the relationship between the 49ers and Jim Harbaugh didn’t fragment so quickly.

Unfortunately, that pushes this moment far down the list.

San Francisco was desperately in need of stability after a string of failures for almost a decade that left them mired in mediocrity in what was, at the time, a mostly mediocre division.

The Niners had this problem before back in the 1970s, and found themselves in a period of almost unprecedented success when they lured eventual Hall of Famer Bill Walsh from Stanford, so why not go to that well again?

The 49ers got their man, luring Harbaugh from the same university. What followed was a period of dominance and respectability not seen for a very long time.

It fell short of the Walsh era by some way, but there’s no doubt it set the team up for the first half of the decade.