The San Francisco 49ers' mid-season quarterback switch from the veteran stewardship of Alex Smith to the dynamic Colin Kaepernick might have sent analysts' heads spinning, but it never was a controversy in the locker room. NFL players will fall in line with a major decision as long as they have faith that their coaching staff has an intelligence edge on the other teams.
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While head coach Jim Harbaugh rightfully garners the lion's share of that credit, offensive coordinator Greg Roman has been described as a "genius" and a "mad scientist" by left tackle Joe Staley.
After salvaging Smith's broken career, Roman incorporated elements of the read-option, the "Pistol" formation and the "inverted wishbone" to take advantage of Kaepernick's athleticism and strong arm.
The game plan in Kaepernick's starting debut against the Chicago Bears was an absolute masterpiece from Roman, a play-caller who describes his methodology as "orchestrating sequences of events."
"It's amazing what Greg has done," Harbaugh told Yahoo! Sports' Mike Silver on Tuesday. "He's basically revolutionized offense as we know it."
Although Roman arguably was the most deserving among all NFL assistants of a head-coaching job in January, he realized prior to the divisional-round matchup against the Green Bay Packers that success on the field would mean that franchises conducting coaching searches would settle on other candidates while the 49ers moved deeper into the postseason.
Discussing the matter with agent David Dunn, Roman stopped to say, "So wait a second. You're telling me that if we win, I lose?"
New Jacksonville Jaguars general manager David Caldwell is confident that Roman will be back atop the coaching-search list next January due to "his track record of success, his experiences both at the college and pro level and his offensive IQ and his defensive IQ."
In the meantime, the self-styled "riveter in the morning, poet at night" is secure in the knowledge that defensive coordinators are losing sleep in their efforts to find a way to stop the 49ers' read-option offense.
"This is real," Roman told Silver. "And we're just getting started."
Follow Chris Wesseling on Twitter @ChrisWesseling.
