Hiring head coach John Harbaugh is a big win for the Giants

From 2004 to 2015, Tom Coughlin was the head coach of the New York Giants. He won multiple Super Bowls. That alone would tell you how much he meant to the organization.

But Coughlin meant more than that. His intensity and rigor returned the franchise to the days of Bill Parcells as much as his Super Bowl rings did. The Giants were gritty again, physical and powered by an elite defense. Even in the bad days — the Giants missed the postseason in all four of Coughlin’s final seasons as the coach — they had an identity.

Since Coughlin stepped down in 2016, the Giants have been without one. Offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo was promoted into Coughlin’s spot to retain continuity around veteran quarterback Eli Manning. In 2017, he broke Manning’s 210-start streak and was fired at 2-10. Pat Shurmur was hired to replace McAdoo as another offensive whisperer. Two seasons, 9-23, fired.

Joe Judge in 2020 was the Giants’ first foray back into the tough culture setter. It was disastrous. Judge lasted two years before he was fired, doing just barely better than Shurmur (10-23). And for the past four years, it was Brian Daboll. Things looked promising at first. In his first year, the Giants made their first playoffs since 2016. Then they went 6-11, 3-14 and 2-8 (en route to 4-13) before Daboll was let go.

benching of Manning was just the beginning. The Giants lost a postseason game because Victor Cruz and Odell Beckham Jr. took a picture on a boat. General manager Dave Gettleman drafted running back Saquon Barkley at No. 2 and mocked the nerds for their concerns about the positional value, only for New York to let Barkley leave in free agency for the division-rival Eagles in a rather disastrous fashion. New York got to watch him win a Super Bowl that season.

The Giants also signed Beckham to a five-year, $95 million contract in 2018, then traded him to the Browns in the 2019 offseason, not two weeks after Gettleman said: «We didn’t sign Odell to trade him.» In the 2021 season, Judge called a quarterback sneak on second-and-11 and then another one on third-and-9. There was the Evan Neal pick, the Kadarius Toney pick and the Kenny Golladay contract. There was the Daniel Jones pick, the Daniel Jones extension and the Daniel Jones release (a year and a half after the extension).

Few teams in the NFL are as desperate for a return to competency as the Giants. And that’s why they acted so desperately to secure the services of John Harbaugh as their next coach. The longtime Ravens coach is expected to be hired in New York, as the two sides are working to finalize terms on a deal.

Harbaugh had a series of interviews lined up. After speaking with Giants ownership in New Jersey on Wednesday, he was expected to meet with the Titans and Falcons to interview for their open head coaching positions over the course of the week. He never got there. Giants ownership clearly ratcheted up the team’s offer to a level Harbaugh could not and would not deny.

It’s easy to call this hire a slam dunk and devote no more critical thought to it. Harbaugh is a Super Bowl-winning head coach with a strong track record of postseason contention. Baltimore made the playoffs in 12 of his 18 seasons there and had a losing record in just three of them. He has been on the cutting edge of team-building for much of his time in Baltimore — many of the people filling analytics staffs across the league today are branches off the Ravens’ tree. Harbaugh was successful with a pocket passer in Joe Flacco and a dual-threat quarterback in Lamar Jackson, and while other teams might have wondered how well Harbaugh would ride the QB carousel, given the stability he has enjoyed at the position, the Giants don’t harbor much concern. They have an exciting young signal-caller in Jaxson Dart already in hand.

But retread head coaches don’t automatically have strong encore performances. If Harbaugh brings the Giants a Super Bowl ring, he’d be the first head coach to do so for multiple teams. According to ESPN Research, there are only seven head coaches who have led multiple teams to the big game, and not one has won it with both squads.

So yes, the ceiling is in question, but most people will call Harbaugh a floor-raising hire. This, too, isn’t as automatic as we’d like. For every Andy Reid, who chased his long and successful Eagles tenure with an even longer and more successful Chiefs tenure, there’s a Pete Carroll in Las Vegas or Mike Shanahan in Washington. Also from ESPN Research: Harbaugh is the ninth Super Bowl-winning head coach to take over a four-win team. Of the previous eight, only Parcells didn’t have a losing record with his new team.

Consider the greatest complaints that Ravens fans had about Harbaugh on his way out, including that Baltimore constantly seemed to lose games it should have won. Take the Week 1 opener against the Bills this season, in which the Ravens held a 40-25 lead with under four minutes left in the fourth quarter … and lost 41-40 in regulation. Or the late-season loss to the Patriots, in which Derrick Henry’s touchdown put the Ravens up 11 with 12:50 left in the fourth … but Henry never touched the ball again, and the Ravens failed to salt the game away.

On the one hand, Harbaugh’s late-game collapses are concerning. Since 2021, in games in which his team at any point had a win probability of 90% or greater, Harbaugh is 50-8 (win percentage of 86.2%). That eight-loss tally leads all coaches.

On the other hand: Harbaugh’s Ravens had a win probability of 90% or greater in 58 total games! That’s more than twice as many games as the Giants have actually won (26) over the past five seasons. Daboll had 24 games with 90% win probability or higher, and he went 19-4-1. That 81.3% win percentage won’t come as a surprise to anyone who watched the Giants surrender an 18-point fourth-quarter lead to the Broncos. Harbaugh’s 86.2% will be an improvement — and that’s just if those late-game collapses are endemic to Harbaugh.

Frustrated Ravens fans might also highlight the struggles at the coordinator spots. The expectation in Baltimore before Harbaugh was fired was that he’d hold on to the job for at least another season but would need to make changes on his staff. Offensive coordinator Todd Monken, who replaced a maligned Harbaugh coordinator in Greg Roman, had a difficult relationship with Jackson this past season. Defensive coordinator Zach Orr, who was hand-selected from a glut of talented assistants to replace the outgoing Mike Macdonald in 2024, struggled with slow-starting defenses in consecutive seasons and never really figured out the pressure packages.

We don’t yet know what staff Harbaugh will field in New York. As a long-tenured NFL coach, he has a deep pool of coaches he has worked with in the past, and an even deeper tree of coaches they have worked with. But veteran coaches can also fall into the trap of following only well-trodden paths of familiarity. Just look at John’s brother, Jim, in Los Angeles, who hired directly from the Michigan/Baltimore tree on defense (Jesse Minter) with great success but made a retread mistake with Roman on offense.

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In that John Harbaugh is a CEO head coach — one who doesn’t call plays for a specific unit but rather manages his staff — his ability to identify rising coaching talent and develop coordinators-in-waiting is critical.

Harbaugh’s record in this regard is strong. Defensively, Macdonald is the most recent name to come up through the Ravens’ ranks as an assistant, with Minter right behind him. Orr was another branch off that tree, as are outgoing Titans defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson and outgoing Dolphins defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver, the latter of whom is getting head coaching interest for another cycle.

It’s not just the new kids: Chuck Pagano was a secondary coach on Harbaugh’s first staff in Baltimore, and Teryl Austin replaced him when Pagano became coordinator. Vic Fangio, Steve Spagnuolo, Dean Pees and Wink Martindale all spent time with him in Baltimore. However Harbaugh wants to fill out his defensive staff in New York, he’ll have a long list of options as playcallers and assistants.

Offensively, Harbaugh is more prone to going outside his coaching tree. The search for an offensive coordinator in 2023 was expansive and landed on Monken, who had no strong connection to the Harbaugh tree. Despite the reported difficulties with Jackson and the Ravens offense this season, Monken has head coaching interest in this cycle. It remains to be seen whether he’ll get any of those jobs, and there is buzz that he could join Harbaugh in New York should he stay at the coordinator level.

Monken has spent time at the NFL and college ranks alike, and his experience grafting college concepts into NFL playbooks would come in handy for Dart. The Giants’ rookie quarterback came out of the gates hot as a starter in large part thanks to the Ole Miss-inspired offense Daboll was running for him. This season, Dart was in the shotgun at the sixth-highest rate among NFL quarterbacks and in empty formations at the 12th-highest rate. Monken has at times leaned heavily on empty sets (2019 Browns with Baker Mayfield at quarterback) and on shotgun running games (2023 Ravens with Jackson). So, he has the tools in his toolbox to fit the offense to Dart’s strengths.

The veteran voices of Harbaugh and Monken would hopefully have a strong influence on Dart’s play style, as that is perhaps a bigger concern than any schematic considerations. Dart played a dangerous brand of football as a rookie. Both from holding the ball in the pocket and from running often, Dart was hit 148 times in just 14 games — more than 10 hits per contest. It’s not a historic rate, but it is remarkably above league average (8.0 last season), and it began accumulating on Dart. He missed two games with a concussion and was checked for a concussion four times over the course of the regular season. That’s a clear sign that he isn’t protecting his body well by sliding early or stepping out of bounds.

Dart is a quality runner and a tough cookie. But franchise quarterbacks must be available for long seasons. The only reason Josh Allen gets to play like Josh Allen is because he is built like Josh Allen. Harbaugh and Monken come from Baltimore, where Jackson dealt with injuries to his lower body but never invited them by failing to step out of bounds or taking unnecessary shots. Of course, Jackson is a uniquely slippery runner, and Dart shouldn’t emulate him, either. But Harbaugh will hopefully bring the soft skills necessary to persuade Dart to better calibrate his play style to the NFL level.

When it comes to coaching performance, historical data can really take us only so far. Each coaching job is so unique that comparisons end up being between apples and oranges. Harbaugh enjoyed unbelievable front office stability over his 18 years in Baltimore. How will he work with incumbent general manager Joe Schoen in New York — and for how long, as Schoen’s job was in question even before this hiring? Harbaugh had only two starting quarterbacks over his 18 years in Baltimore; what if Dart doesn’t pan out and he is forced to cycle through QB options for a few years?

I don’t need to tell Giants fans that coaching success is tough to predict. They were there through McAdoo and Shurmur and Judge and Daboll. I have confidence that Harbaugh will provide a level of competency above those four that will return the Giants to NFC contention. But Harbaugh had that competency, along with a two-time MVP at quarterback, just this past season. The Ravens went 8-9 and lost an extremely winnable division. A lot can go wrong between a great head coach and a winning record — some things inside their control, and plenty outside it. But the buck stops with him.

Harbaugh is a great guy at whom the buck will stop. He’s a veteran with a track record. Players will respect his reputation, and coaches will be drawn to his staff. He was the best hire, and the right hire, and accordingly the Giants refused to let anyone else talk to him. Success isn’t guaranteed — it never is in the NFL — but this a successful hire. It’s a winning week in Giants history.

It won’t count in the record books and might be forgotten to time. But in January of 2026, the Giants are 1-0.