Originally posted by ethan:
Gabbert was just in a lousy situation, and suffered some untimely injuries. Most of which can be attributed to lousy protection. This thing about coaches "making" quarterbacks once they reach the NFL is myth. Look at all the different teachers Tebow has had. He is worse now than when he arrived. Harbaugh makes good quarterbacks by building a strong support system around them and installing the proper offensive system to maximize their skill set. But he isn't a magician. At least as many quarterbacks he has coached are mediocre or irrelevant as the other way round. He has a good eye for talent at the position, and he obviously sees Gabbert as a talent. Tried to recruit him to Stanford before Luck. Gabbert missed his entire high school senior year, went to the Army All America Bowl in January and beat out Luck for the starting position. Even though Blaine hadn't played in months prior to that.
You can have the genes of usane bolt, but if you don't have a good coach that will train, motivate, teach and encourage you- you probably won't break the world record.
The point is yes, i agree with you to a certain extent - Harbaugh does surrounds his qb's with a qb friendly system. As you said his qb's have a strong o-line, good run games, and good wr's. However Kurt Warner did lousy on teams that didn't understand him as a player. So it's not like you can take any truly talented QB - plug him in to any coach and any system and he'll be great no matter what. That is not the case.
The QB position is almost all mental, and harbaugh does a good job in developing that side of his QB's game. I think he has a good eye for talent because he knows more about the position than most other human beings in the NFL. Take a gifted qb and have jimmy ray as his oc and you know what you'll get!
take a guy like Bill walsh. He turned some really average qb's into decent serviceable ones. So coaching does matter, specially at the QB position.