After settling into his new position, Harbaugh began putting together his staff. When looking for someone to fill the role Harbaugh himself made his living for a number of years, the young head coach turned to Rosburg, his former Cincinnati colleague.
Up to that point, Rosburg had following a career path remarkably similar to Harbaugh’s. The former college linebacker left the Bearcats after the 1995 season and bounced around the college ranks before being hired by the Cleveland Browns to run their special teams, which he did for six seasons until Harbaugh brought him onto the Baltimore staff.
Ver Steeg’s resume shows a different growth path. While Harbaugh and Rosburg stayed in Cincinnati when Murphy took the Harvard job, Ver Steeg followed the man that gave him his first big shot.
“The fact of the matter was that there weren’t as many spots on his new staff as there were on his old staff,” Ver Steeg said. “I was thankful for the chance to continue with him.”
Ver Steeg did not just get job security when Murphy brought him to Harvard; he also got a promotion, as Murphy gave him more responsibility in the passing game.
“It was my first opportunity to put something together and start learning to be a coordinator,” Ver Steeg said. “That helped me for when I became a coordinator later on for sure.”
To this day, Ver Steeg thanks Murphy for what he did for his coaching career.
“I appreciated the chance that he gave more than anything,” Ver Steeg said. “I always appreciated the fact that here I was, a young guy that hadn’t really proven himself at all yet, getting close to 30, and he basically took a chance on me. I’ll never forget that…. I’ll always be in his debt.”
Ver Steeg spent two years in Cambridge before taking a limited role with the NFL’s Chicago Bears before the 1996 season.
From there, he dropped back to the college game, serving as quarterbacks coach at Illinois and offensive coordinator at Utah and Rutgers before reuniting with Harbaugh in Baltimore.
Now that Harbaugh has experience in the art of hiring a coaching staff, he respects the job Murphy did in the early 1990’s.
“The amazing thing about that whole deal was the staff that ‘Murph’ put together,” Harbaugh said. “He did great things in assembling and mentoring his staff…. ‘Murph’ was a young coach, and he didn’t know a lot of coaches, but he was a great interviewer of prospective coaches. He’d sit you down and you’d do a full-day interview. At the end of the day, he knew if you were his kind of guy or not.”
While the results of Murphy’s work might not have been clear during the 1993 season, they are evident with the benefit of hindsight. Murphy’s former assistants on the Ravens staff are just three of many members of Murphy’s coaching tree that now litter NFL staffs, including Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive coordinator Bill Sheridan. And on Sunday, his one-time employees will take their shot at the sport’s biggest prize.
—Staff writer Jacob D. H. Feldman can be reached at jacobfeldman@college.harvard.edu.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
CORRECTION: Feb. 3, 2013
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the year in which current Harvard football coach Tim Murphy coached his penultimate season at the University of Cincinnati. In fact, it was 1992, not 1993.