Two days after he was fired by the Baltimore Ravens, John Harbaugh used the word “we” when he talked about the New York Giants. He did not catch himself or correct himself in our phone conversation, because it sounded right. It felt right.
He was picturing himself in that tunnel and on that sideline wearing the cap, jacket and colors of one of the NFL’s most storied franchises. Again, he was only 48 hours removed from a phone call with Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti that separated him from 18 years of earnest and accomplished work, and he was already picturing himself leading the big team in the big city to victory.
“I think we can win games next year with this roster and the players coming back,” Harbaugh said.
Even before Bisciotti ran him out, Harbaugh had already ranked the Giants atop his list of potential job openings that interested him in the event he didn’t get that 19th year with the Ravens. He weighed all the possibilities, including the Titans, Falcons, Browns, Dolphins, Raiders, etc. And Harbaugh kept circling back to the Giants.
He wanted that job and that quarterback, Jaxson Dart, after his relationship with Lamar Jackson had reached a point where mutual fatigue had overtaken their mutual respect.
At age 63, Harbaugh wanted this monumental challenge in the worst way. “This is the job for me,” Harbaugh said that night last week. Four years ago, when I asked him if he thought his kid brother Jim might want to go work for the Giants, who were in the market for a coach, Harbaugh paused before responding with more than a healthy dose of incredulity.
“The New York Football Giants?” he said. “Are you kidding me?”
That’s when I first knew that John William Harbaugh of Toledo, Ohio, and Ann Arbor, Mich., fully understood the magnitude of that position and what it would mean to hold it.
And boy does he ever hold it … to the tune of a five-year deal valued in the neighborhood of $100 million. The Giants have swung and missed on four consecutive head coaches after showing two-time Super Bowl champ Tom Coughlin the door, and all the losing over the years left them desperate for a proven winner who could lead the entire organization, CEO style, while commanding the immediate respect of Abdul Carter and friends in the locker room.
Darius Slayton called for a Coughlin-esque presence, and Harbaugh is all of that. He could have taken an easier road to a division title in Atlanta and grabbed hold of the underwhelming NFC South, but instead, he took on the Eagles and a team, the Cowboys, that generally owns the Giants as much as the Maras and Tisches do.
I can assure you that Harbaugh is not terribly concerned about the competition in the NFC East. In fact, he welcomes it. He has won 180 regular-season games and a league-record eight playoff games on the road. He is 33-18 over the last three seasons, while the team he is now running is 13-38.
Harbaugh is the first Giants coach who’ll walk in on Day 1 with a Super Bowl victory already tucked in his hip pocket. His numbers say he is the most accomplished coach this franchise has ever hired.
Some years ago, I asked Harbaugh if it was important to him to be known as the best coach in the NFL.
“Sure, absolutely,” he responded. “But I would rather be the best coach in the NFL. I’m working for that. I’m trying to get there.”
He’s gotten damn close.
Now people who follow professional football are asking: How in the world did the Giants pull off this hire? They realized that after three novices (Ben McAdoo, Joe Judge, Brian Daboll) and a guy with an alarming head-coach track record (Pat Shurmur) had let them down in the post-Coughlin era, they had no choice but to shrink their margin for error. Harbaugh represented competence, stability and credibility. He’s never going 4-13 or 3-14. His brutal years are 8-9.
So the Giants started doing intel work on Harbaugh long before his final game against Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin, guessing correctly that the Ravens coach would be the AFC North titan more likely to be let go and more likely to want to coach in 2026.
Just as Harbaugh was quietly looking at the Giants in the final weeks of the 2025 season, the Giants were quietly looking at him. The Harbaugh camp was not surprised when beleaguered general manager Joe Schoen called several times within the first couple of hours of the coach’s dismissal, starting a Giants push that felt more like an all-out, nine-day assault than a standard recruiting drive.
Schoen was all over Harbaugh’s agent, Bryan Harlan. The GM spoke with the candidate himself, calling him time and time again. Senior Giants executive Chris Mara, the younger brother of co-owner John, told The Athletic that he met with Harbaugh for a Sunday lunch and meeting at the coach’s home off a winding country road in Owings Mills, Md., changing the dynamic of the race the Giants were running against the Falcons, Titans, Dolphins and Browns.
Chris Mara spoke at length with Harbaugh about the organizational support the Giants could offer him. The Giants followed up Mara’s sitdown with a blitz of phone calls to Harlan and Harbaugh, trying to outwork the competition. Schoen gave the coach a complete rundown on the franchise’s daily operation, including his approach to analytics. In a phone meeting, Chris and John Mara and nephew Tim McDonnell, director of player personnel, guaranteed that the coach’s requested wage (in the $20 million range), staff salaries, and infrastructure upgrades would not be hurdles to a deal.
Harbaugh watched Dart on tape and came away excited about his future. He had at least one longtime scout study the Giants’ roster and film to determine whether this 4-13 team could be fixed in short order, and he came away believing it could. Harbaugh told people that he didn’t believe a rebuild was necessary, and that with the returning playmakers (Malik Nabers, Cam Skattebo), he felt the Giants could be a winning team in 2026.
The coach did have concerns about roster construction and, more importantly, roster control. Harbaugh did his legwork, asking around the league about Schoen. The Harbaugh camp asked Giants executives what would happen if Schoen wanted to draft this player with the fifth overall pick, and Harbaugh wanted to draft that player with the fifth overall pick. Who breaks the tie?
John Mara, the co-owner fighting cancer, said he only steps in on disciplinary issues, but assured Harbaugh that he could trust the collaborative culture inside the building. Mara’s standing around the league as a man of his word helped Harbaugh and his agent get past whatever lingering issues they had about personnel power. And Schoen’s willingness to move up in the draft and select Daboll’s preferred prospect, Dart, sent an encouraging message to Harbaugh about the potential for their future partnership to mirror the partnerships he had in Baltimore with Ozzie Newsome and Eric DeCosta.
Eli Manning was among the famous franchise faces who weighed in with Harbaugh on the benefits of working for John Mara and Steve Tisch. The Giants were confident they could hold off Atlanta and Cleveland (questions at QB), Miami (serious questions at QB), and perhaps their most dangerous challenger, Tennessee, which has Cam Ward and not a whole lot more.
But the Packers loomed as an existential threat. If they happened to fire Matt LaFleur, I told Chris Mara, the Giants would likely be cooked on Harbaugh.
“I wouldn’t bet on it if I were you,” he responded.
By the time Harbaugh was flown into New Jersey on Wednesday via Tisch’s private jet, with Schoen aboard for the ride, the Giants were beyond confident. He met with ownership, executives and department heads at their East Rutherford, N.J., facility in a marathon run of interviews that exceeded seven hours before Harbaugh dined with team officials at a local restaurant, Elia Mediterranean, and headed back to Teterboro Airport for a 7:27 p.m. liftoff on Tisch’s Gulfstream G500.
He landed at Baltimore/Washington International a short time later, knowing he had to cancel Thursday’s scheduled interview with the Titans at his home. For days, Harbaugh knew he wanted something different. He was chasing a feeling and a vision that he had right after he was fired in Baltimore.
John Harbaugh wanted to be the head coach of the New York Football Giants, and he got what he wanted. If he becomes the first coach to win Super Bowls with different franchises, Harbaugh will own this town forever.