Giants appear to have biggest win in years with reported hire of John Harbaugh
Former Ravens head coach John Harbaugh looks on before an NFL football game against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Dec. 7, 2025, in Baltimore. Credit: AP/Nick Wass
This 2025 Giants season was defined by blowing big leads late. The Giants didn’t let this one slip through their fingers at the start of 2026, though, and they now have their biggest off-field win in years.
A week-long effort to bring John Harbaugh in as their next head coach, which led to an all-day press from virtually every corner of the organization on Wednesday when he visited them in New Jersey, resulted in Harbaugh reportedly agreeing in principle to become the new leader of the organization late Wednesday night.
The two sides will spend time finalizing their deal, but the Giants did something they have rarely accomplished in recent years: They set their sights on a goal and achieved it.
From the moment Harbaugh was fired by the Ravens last week, he became the GIants' priority. Actually, it was even before that.
While he was guiding his Ravens through the final stages of the regular season, right up to the final play in which a missed field goal eliminated Baltimore from playoff contention in Week 18, Giants general manager Joe Schoen and others in East Rutherford were preparing to pounce. They knew there was a chance Harbaugh could shake free and they wanted to be ready for it if it happened.
“Having this runway has really helped,” Schoen said last week regarding the team’s early elimination from contention and the midseason firing of Brian Daboll. “There's not a lot of positives of making an in-season coaching change, but having this runway to really do a deep dive on a wide array of candidates is one.”
That put the Giants in the lead. Just as they were in Dallas and Denver and Chicago and Detroit? Gulp.
This time, though, they made their advantage stick over the Falcons, Titans and Dolphins, the other teams in pursuit of Harbaugh.
When the Falcons announced that they had interviewed Harbaugh on Monday — it was really just a phone call between new president Matt Ryan and the coach — the Giants already had done that with several of their executives.
When the Giants sent Steve Tisch’s private jet to Baltimore to bring Harbaugh to their building, no one else even had that on their schedule.
And even when Harbaugh left New Jersey on Wednesday evening and planned to meet with the Titans at his home in Maryland on Thursday, the Giants already had done that; Chris Mara had lunched with him over the weekend.
They were a step ahead of everyone else. And when they needed to slam the door on the process late Wednesday, sell themselves to Harbaugh and pony up for what will be considerably more than they have ever paid a head coach in the past, they did that too.
It was reasonable for Harbaugh to want a moment to digest his whirlwind visit to the Giants’ facility. He had been with the same team for 18 years and wasn’t expecting to be fired last week until he got the call from Ravens ownership on Tuesday afternoon. Given that he's 63, assuming everything works out close to as planned with this gig, the Giants likely will be the last place he coaches. So he went home, thought about it and made up his mind.
There still are plenty of questions that will need answering, not the least of which is who Harbaugh will bring in with him for a coaching staff and who will remain from the previous one.
There still is a chance that interim head coach Mike Kafka will return as the offensive coordinator. He and Harbaugh have no direct ties, but both were mentored early in their careers by Andy Reid, so that could serve as a connection.
Retaining Kafka also would allow quarterback Jaxson Dart to have familiarity with his coaches and the system as he heads into his second NFL season after a promising rookie year.
Defensively, perhaps we could see the return of one of Harbaugh’s old hands from Baltimore to give the Giants a jolt of energy on that side of the ball. Wink Martindale? Rex Ryan? There are options, and just as with the contract, it will be worked out.
The most important relationship in the building now, though, is the one involving Schoen and Harbaugh. There were some who felt Harbaugh would want his own personnel guy or control over the roster and would dismiss the Giants out of hand because they had retained their beleaguered general manager. The two men spoke at several points during their week of wooing and finally met face-to-face for the first time on Wednesday. How it got ironed out remains to be seen, but Harbaugh clearly was convinced that working with a general manager does not mean working for a general manager.
Perhaps Schoen’s willingness to draft Dart in April demonstrated that more than anyone realized. He was keen on the quarterback, but Daboll was the real engine behind the decision, pushing Schoen to make the trade and selection happen. Schoen spent most of the past nine months trying to dispel the emasculating narrative that he had acquiesced to the coach in that moment. What irony, then, that he woke up on Wednesday and that very trait had become his superpower.
All those details are secondary, though. The big picture is what matters, and Harbaugh is nothing if not a big-picture coach. He brings a gravitas to the seat that hasn’t been felt since Tom Coughlin left the organization. He brings a resume that no other hire could boast since they hired Dan Reeves. And now he can get to work on making the Giants' product better, improving the systems that are in place throughout the building, setting a tone of competence and accountability, and helping them win.
That, after all, is what this was about from the beginning. Winning.
The Giants got their first taste of the Harbaugh Era on Wednesday night. They expect there will be many more to come.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
