EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — After making the playoffs just twice in 14 years, and winning just one playoff game, the New York Giants needed a jolt of energy. After 18 mostly successful years coaching the Baltimore Ravens, John Harbaugh seemed on Tuesday to feel like a new start was good for him, too.
“It’s a profound honor to be entrusted with the responsibility of coaching the New York Football Giants,” Harbaugh said. “One of the most iconic franchises in all of sports. I wanted this job … to be on the biggest
stage in the biggest sport.”
Harbaugh said he is “really excited” about the idea of starting over again and building something from scratch.
“I can’t wait,” he said.
Harbaugh said he never considered taking time off, but his next job “had to be the right opportunity.”
“This was kind of the obvious one from the beginning. This is the one I wanted,” Harbaugh said. “I wanted it because we have an opportunity to go win. I like these players, man.”
Harbaugh said there will be “a relentless commitment … to do things the right way every single day.”
‘When we set out to do this we knew that John was going to be the perfect person for the New York Giants,“ said general manager Joe Schoen.
Earlier on Tuesday, I posted ‘10 questions Harbaugh needed to answer’ at his introductory press conference. In some way, Harbaugh touched on many of those questions during his first media availability. Let’s go through some of what he said about those topics.
What does a ‘winning culture’ look like to you?
Harbaugh said the Giants “have to earn the right” to win games.
“You build anything together. You build it from the inside out,” Harbaugh said. “Culture’s kind of a crazy word. What does it really mean?
“ … What is it in football? It’s a bunch of guys that see the game the same way. It’s a bunch of guys that want to play the game together the same way. It’s a relentless brotherhood, having each other’s back. Being unwilling to give up because that guy next to you is unwilling to give up.”
More than a dozen Giants players were gathered in the back of the field house to watch Harbaugh’s presser. He pointed them as he continued:
“We’ll decide what the culture looks like together every single day by what we do together. That’s how you build it. Together.”
Harbaugh, using a saying he got from his dad, long-time coach Jack Harbaugh, talked about “attacking the day with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.”
“When you do that day-by-day, you build something, you take it on to the field and you let the chips fly, and you go play some ball.”
Harbaugh said that many things change in the NFL, but the “principles” behind everything “are written in stone …. they aren’t ever going to change.”
What kind of players does Harbaugh want?
“To me, the number one thing is we have to have guys that love football. You just have to. It’s football. What are we here for? What do we do? What is this building for? It’s for football. This is a football team,” Harbaugh said. “We need guys that love everything about football. They love the games. They love the practices. They love the weightlifting. They love the meetings. They love the dining hall. They love every part of football. If you love football, guys, if you love football, you’re going to want to be here. You’re going to want to drive in that parking lot every single day. You’re going to want to walk through those doors, you’re going to want to walk up in those halls, you’re going to want to get in front of that tape and watch tape every single day because you’re going to be around a bunch of guys that love what you love. They love football, because that’s what we’re going to be doing, football, all the time, every day.
“If there’s guys around that don’t love football, Joe, we’re probably going to let those guys go play someplace else because if you don’t love football, you’re not going to love it here because we’ll be doing football. That’s the plan.”
Will you consider retaining any current Giants assistants?
Harbaugh said he will start interviewing assistant coaches on Wednesday. He will talk to current Giants assistants, who are believed to still be under contract.
“Great coaches on this staff that we’re looking forward to talking to,” Harbaugh said. “We’re talking to people all across the league, talking to people in Baltimore, obviously, too. We will build the very best coaching staff that we can.”
Harbaugh said he does believe a few of the assistant coaches from Baltimore will join him with the Giants, but he wasn’t ready to offer names.
“My dad always said it starts with teachers. Coaches are teachers first,” Harbaugh said. “The ability to teach, the ability to take a vision that’s well-organized, a structure that’s put together in a really good way that the players can play fast, play around their skillset, you’ve got to create something like that and then present it to the guys and train it in a way that the guys can get out there and play with a lot of confidence.”
What are the important factors in developing a young quarterback?
Developing Jaxson Dart is a big part of the key to whether Harbaugh will succeed or fail in New York. Harbaugh did not lay out a plan for Dart, but did share his excitement about working with him.
“The quarterback’s kind of important. That’s kind of a big deal,” Harbaugh said. “I’m excited about Jaxson Dart … You build your team around your quarterback.
“I lik the way he plays. I like his talent, his skillset … more than that I like who he is and what he’s about. To me he’s about football. This young guy loves football. He wants to talk football all the time. That’s kind of what I like doing, too, so I think we’re going to have a lot of great conversations.”
What makes a good quarterback?
“It starts with the ability to make plays,” Harbaugh said. “You watch all the games you’ll see the quarterback is making a difference one way or another. It just takes an exceptional level of talent, play-making ability, awareness, grit, all those things. Sometimes it’s arm strength, sometimes it’s accuracy. It’s almost always the ability to get out of the pocket and make a play. All those things that Jaxson has I’m excited about.”
Do you have final say on major personnel decisions?
Harbaugh would not say he has final authority on major personnel decisions. He said he has “input” and the ability to set the “vision” for what he wants. He said decisions will be “collective.”
“Everybody wants to make a little bit about who’s making what decision, but at the end the point is that we should all agree to agree,” Harbaugh said.
There were, of course, questions in the media and the fan base about whether an accomplished coach like Harbaugh would want to work with a GM who has built teams that have gone 13-38 the last three seasons. Harbaugh said he expected “great collaboration” with the embattled general manager.
“His knowledge is deep. He knows the league, he knows the coaches in the league, he knows the players in the league, probably knows all the scouts in the league, too,” Harbaugh said. “He was impressive to me.”
Harbaugh downplayed the change in Giants’ organizational structure that will have him reporting to co-owner John Mara rather than to Schoen.
“It’s really not that important in the big picture, in the big scheme of things. I think it’s kind of overblown just a little bit in terms of how it works,” Harbaugh said. “But the main thing is that it works and that we work together. That’s what matters. That’s kind of what I was used to, and it felt like a good way to kind of start off. I think Mr. Mara was happy about that. It seemed like it made sense.”
Losing close games and big leads has been a habit here. How does that change?
The Giants went 4-13 in 2025 and 7-27 over the last two seasons. In 2025, they lost five games in which they had double-digit leads, and they have gone 2-14 in one-score games over the last two years.
Despite that, Harbaugh likes what he is taking over.
“I see a lot of really good players when I look at the roster. Well, not the roster so much as the tape. That’s where you look, you look at the tape. That’s what shows you, right, guys? It shows you. It’s on the tape. So, I look at the tape and I see a lot of good football players,” Harbaugh said. “And not just me, my dad. He calls me up about three days into this process and he goes, you watch the Giants? I’m like, yeah, I watched them. I watched them. He goes, you see the way they come off the ball on offense, you see that offensive line, you see the offense, see those guys, see that quarterback, you see that defense, see that front, you see those guys flying around back there? I’m like, yeah, I saw it. So, when my dad told me, I knew it was true. We have a chance. We have a chance.”
Harbaugh understands the slim difference between winning and losing in the NFL.
“It’s a league of tight margins. Everybody is really good,” Harbaugh said. “You gotta work really hard. You gotta do all the little things to give yourself a chance to be as good a team as you can be to give yourself a chance to play in the margins. You’ve gotta stay healthy.
“Then when you get in those circumstances in the fourth quarter when all these games are won, it goes one way or the other … Just get ourselves to that point, try to win all the little things to give ourselves a chance to win, and find a way to win in the fourth quarter.”
Harbaugh admitted that neither the Giants nor the Ravens team he coached were able to do that in 2025.
“That’s the way the NFL works,” he said.
Second acts have been a mixed bag for successful coaches. Why are you confident this will work?
Harbaugh said that Andy Reid, who has had a historic second act with the Kansas City Chiefs after a good run with the Philadelphia Eagles, told him “change can be good” when Harbaugh spoke with him about moving on from the Ravens.
“We’ll sign up for that deal right now,” Harbaugh said of Reid’s time with the Chiefs. “What he did in Kansas City, let’s do that.”
Harbaugh knows what the goal is.
“We’re here with one mission. To become, to earn the right to be called the world champions,” Harbaugh said.
Chris Mara: ‘Let’s get it done’
Chris Mara played a massive role in this search with his brother, John Mara, the team’s CEO, fighting cancer and limited in what he can do. Was this emotional for him?
“My emotions were, let’s get it done,” Mara said. “Because John, he was really high on Harbaugh and I knew that’s who he wanted. We cast a wide net on the whole coaching staff, and he was number one on it.”
As the negotiations dragged on and Giants fans got increasingly nervous, Mara said he “didn’t have any doubt” a deal would get done.
“I knew there was a lot of work to be done in terms of the negotiation, but I would have bet a lot of money on it myself,” he said.
Mara downplayed his role.
“I just want to make an impression from an ownership standpoint. I think I did that,” he said. “And I just was really conscious of the fact that there was going to be so many different openings, especially with some of these playoff teams that were possibly going to get rid of their coaches.
“So that’s why I thought it was important to beat everybody to it, and that’s what we did.”
