The New York Giants formally introduce John Harbaugh as their new head coach on Tuesday in East Rutherford, N.J. Harbaugh has given interviews to Ian O’Connor of The Athletic and Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated since signing his contract on Saturday, but this will be the first time the New York media at-large gets to hear from the man the Giants are hoping will reverse their fortunes.
What are some of the questions Harbaugh is likely to be asked when he steps to the podium some time after noon
on Tuesday? Here are 10 questions I hope he will be asked in some form.
What does a ‘winning culture’ look like to you?
Harbaugh is a CEO style head coach, a one-time special teams coordinator who does not call plays on offense or defense. He hires offensive and defensive coordinators who believe in his philosophy of how the game should be played, and empowers them to do their jobs.
Harbaugh is considered a “culture-setter”, and early in his career in Baltimore he was unafraid to stand up to future Hall of Fame players like Ed Reed and Ray Lewis.
What are the tenets of a winning culture, or the kind of culture that Harbaugh believes in?
These may not all be culture-related, but this snippet from a recent story in the Baltimore Banner, tells us something about how Harbaugh does his job.
It could also take leaving Baltimore for Harbaugh to break out of the coaching rut that doomed his Ravens tenure. Among Harbaugh’s greatest virtues as a coach is his curiosity; through his work with the Harbaugh Coaching Academy, he’s interviewed a handful of fellow head coaches, even Kevin Stefanski, then leading the rival Cleveland Browns, probing them for ideas and insights.
Over a disappointing 2025, Harbaugh rarely seemed to find the right message for his own Ravens team. If he fails with the Giants, it won’t be for a lack of trying. Harbaugh’s openness to evolution and compromise made him the longest-serving head coach in Baltimore’s professional sports history. Now comes the biggest change, and challenge, of his career.
“Coaching at any level is a day-to-day job, and your job is to do the best job you can today, and to do everything you can to help your players and your coaches – if you’re a head coach – be the best they can be every single day,” Harbaugh said late in the season, as questions swirled about his job security. “We have responsibilities, and we’re given opportunities to steward those responsibilities, and you’re given a job to do that until you’re not. And then I try to do the job, not try to keep the job, because there’s no such thing as having a job. You’re just doing a job.
“And so my focus is on always … to try to do the best job I can today and fight as hard as I can so the guys have the best chance to be successful today. And anything after today, I’m not thinking about, because it’s not given for us to think about. We don’t have control over that, except for the job we do today. And if we do a good enough job today, then the opportunity to do that job or a different job will be there tomorrow, and that’s what you hope for.”
Will you consider retaining any current Giants assistants?
There seems to be some confusion about the status of assistant coaches with the Giants at the end of the 2025 season. Those coaches, to my knowledge, are still under contract to the Giants.
There was one report that some of those coaches had already been told by Harbaugh that they would be let go. Another report indicated that assistant coaches would meet with Harbaugh later this week in what would amount to an interview to keep their jobs.
When I checked with an assistant coach, he was in the dark and had no information either way. That could indicate that assistant coaches are being considered on a case-by-case, or coach-by-coach, basis.
One of the big reasons Harbaugh is now the Giants coach, and that Joe Schoen remains the general manager, is that ownership seems to believe coaching was at the root of the Giants’ issues the past couple of seasons. That could make it difficult for the Giants to keep many of the coaches left from Brian Daboll’s staff.
What does ‘bolster up the analytics’ mean? What needs to be added?
The Ravens have been known as a team at the forefront in terms of their use of analytics, and Harbaugh said in one of the interviews he gave after taking the Giants’ job that he would like to see the team “bolster up the analytics” department.
So, what does that mean? Adding people to the analytics group? Using it to impact more game-day decisions? Adding more analytics to their study of personnel?
What are the important factors in developing a young quarterback?
The Giants, of course, have Jaxson Dart and making sure he becomes the quarterback the Giants believe he can be is of paramount importance.
Harbaugh has done the “develop a young quarterback” thing successfully twice. His tenure as Ravens’ head coach began in 2008, when Baltimore took Joe Flacco with the 18th overall pick. The Ravens won a Super Bowl with Flacco, and he was still in the league in 2025. Lamar Jackson has won two MVP awards in eight seasons since the Ravens drafted him No. 32 overall in 2018.
Picking up where Brian Daboll and Mike Kafka left off with Dart will be a new experience for Harbaugh. Daboll and Kafka said they had a multi-year plan for Dart that included a number of “benchmarks” they wanted to see him hit along the way.
Does Harbaugh have similar benchmarks, or does he have another way he looks at guiding the progress of a young quarterback?
Do you have final say on major personnel decisions?
We already know the answer to this one is “yes.” In truth, it would just be worth getting Harbaugh on the record actually admitting it. Even if asked, though, he will probably say simply that he and Schoen will continue to work until they have an agreement.
The reality is this. There is no way, at least in the short term, that a head coach with a Super Bowel title, 12 playoff appearances, and a freshly-minted five-year contract for more than $100 million, is going to be overruled by a 22-45-1 GM who is fortunate to still have a job. At least in the short term.
Losing close games and big leads has been a habit here. How does that change?
The Giants, as their fan base knows all too well, excruciatingly lost five games during the 2025 season in which they held double-digit leads. Over the past two seasons they have gone 2-14 in one-score games. They blamed 1-8 in one-score games in 2024 on poor quarterback play, and 1-6 in such games in 2025 on bad defense.
Will Harbaugh have the answer? It is a valid question. The Ravens were 1-5 in one-score games during the 2025 season. With a two-time MVP quarterback in Lamar Jackson at the helm over the past eight seasons, Baltimore never reached the Super Bowl. That period of time is littered with close playoff losses and games during which Harbaugh’s game plans or late-game decisions were questioned.
How does he learn, or how has he learned, from such failures? How can he help the Giants learn to avoid the inexplicable losses that have defined their last couple of seasons?
Will there be other noticeable changes to the organizational structure?
We already know that the head coach to GM to owner reporting structure the Giants have employed since the days of George Young, if not before, is gone. Harbaugh and Schoen will be on theoretically even footing, both reporting directly to John Mara.
We know that Harbaugh is going to have a stronger voice in personnel decisions than any Giants’ coach in the Super Bowl era.
What other changes will there be?
Chris Mara was a critical player in getting Harbaugh to sign with the Giants. Harbaugh has said the two have formed a good bond. Will he play a bigger front office role, particularly with John Mara struggling through a cancer battle?
Could there be a shuffling of roles in the front office, or even some defections, if Harbaugh wants changes there?
Could Harbaugh encourage changes in how the Giants manipulate the salary cap, particularly the reluctance of Schoen thus far to embrace void years?
The Ravens have long been a team that accumulates a high number of compensatory picks. Could the Giants follow suit?
Could changes come in areas like nutrition, training, and other smaller areas that aren’t seen by the public?
Are you a positional value believer, or a talent/need/grade guy in your draft philosophy?
Schoen has been a strong believer in positional value. That has shaped decisions like those on Saquon Barkley, safety Xavier McKinney, defensive tackle Leonard Williams, and probably others. The Ravens, while drafting later because they have been more successful, seem to be less inclined to to worry about positional value.
- In 2025, Baltimore drafted safety Malaki Starks with its first-round pick, 27th overall. The Ravens also drafted placekicker Tyler Loop in Round 6.
- In 2022, the Ravens drafted safety Kyle Hamilton 14th and center Tyler Linderbaum 27th. Again, two players at positions not considered premium ones by most NFL teams.
- In 2020, the Ravens drafted linebacker Patrick Queen in Round 1 (28th overall) and running back J.K. Dobbins in Round 2.
- In 2018, they selected tight end Hayden Hurst 25th. Yes, they also selected quarterback Lamar Jackson No. 32.
Harbaugh may not have had the final call on those picks in Baltimore, but do they indicate he places less emphasis on positional value than Schoen? It is an interesting question because safety Caleb Downs of Ohio State, who plays a non-premium position but might be the best defensive player in the draft, is likely to be available to the Giants at No. 5 in the 2026 NFL Draft.
Was there a point after meeting with the Giants where you believed a deal was not going to happen?
Ian O’Connor’s fantastic look inside the 48 hours leading up to Harbaugh signing his contract with the Giants indicated that the Giants always seemed confident a deal would get done, but Harbaugh and his reps were less certain.
As badly as he seemed to want to become Giants’ coach, it would be interesting to know if he ever felt it wasn’t going to happen. There were reports the Tennessee Titans were circling, waiting for the deal with the Giants to fall apart.
Second acts have been a mixed bag for successful coaches. Why are you confident this will work?
No coach who has won a Super Bowl as coach of one team has ever done so as coach of a second team. Sean Payton of the Denver Broncos, who won one with the New Orleans Saints, has a chance to change that history this season. To do so, though, he will have to hope backup quarterback Jarrett Stidham can summon his best Jeff Hostetler impersonation after the unfortunate season-ending injury to Bo Nix.
A high degree of success in one place does not, though, guarantee that same high level of success in another place.
Andy Reid has had more success with the Kansas City Chiefs than he did with the Philadelphia Eagles. Tom Coughlin won both of his Super Bowl titles with the Giants, his second stop as an NFL head coach. Bill Belichick’s run with the New England Patriots followed a losing tenure with the Cleveland Browns.
Mike McCarthy, Bill Parcells, Mike Shanahan and Mike Holmgren are all Super Bowl-winning coaches who not only did not win Super Bowls in a second stop, but did not win games nearly as often as they had.
As hopeful as everyone is that Harbaugh’s hiring will change the fortunes of a franchise that has one playoff victory and just two playoff appearances in the last 14 years success in New York is not a certainty for Harbaugh.
