It doesn’t take a rocket scientist — or ChatGPT — to figure out that John Harbaugh should be a primary target in the Giants‘ coaching search now that the Baltimore Ravens have fired him.
Anticipating this wasn’t difficult, either.
There were strong indications that Harbaugh was potentially in trouble a year ago, prior to Baltimore’s Jan. 2025 Wild Card win over the rival Pittsburgh Steelers that temporarily calmed the waters around the Ravens.
The most exciting part of Harbaugh being available to the Giants, though, isn’t just that he is a Super Bowl winner with a track record of building a program and a strong staff.
It’s that Harbaugh hitting the market has blown open the Giants‘ search to virtually every possible outcome that exists.
This year’s list of candidates previously lacked huge names like last year’s headliners, Mike Vrabel and Ben Johnson.
Vrabel was a respected former Titans head coach with a track record of winning and accountability. Johnson was running the best offense in the league in Detroit. The Patriots hired Vrabel and captured the AFC’s No. 1 overall playoff seed. The Bears hired Johnson and secured the NFC’s No. 2 overall seed.
The Giants retained Brian Daboll, fired him in the middle of a 4-13 season and jumped back on a much less exciting coaching carousel, aiming to pair their next hire with an incumbent GM who just threw his “collaborative” partner under a metaphorical bus on the New Jersey Turnpike.
So the firings of Cleveland Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski and the Ravens’ Harbaugh have injected some juice into a Giants search that previously threatened to cast as wide and arbitrary a net as last year’s ridiculous Jets process.
Stefanski already had dinner with Joe Schoen on Tuesday night. The Giants are now moving fast on Harbaugh.
The excitement is warranted.
So which direction will this go? The intriguing part is that now, the Giants’ process has a wider range of outcomes with a better chance of hitting a home run but also greater risk of suffering a colossal disappointment.
In one scenario, John Mara and Steve Tisch could land Harbaugh, who is now their top candidate. But it would probably come with a hitch:
Numerous NFL sources believe Harbaugh would want to replace Schoen and bring in his own GM to create alignment, such as Chargers assistant GM Chad Alexander or Bears assistant GM Ian Cunningham.
Even if Harbaugh retained Schoen, it is expected he would at least marginalize the GM’s influence, similar to how Patriots GM Eliot Wolf basically works for Vrabel in Foxborough, Mass., now.
So that’s one possible outcome on the board for Giants ownership now that Harbaugh is in the mix:
Hire what seems like the ideal candidate to restore professionalism, accountability and competence to the Giants’ building — but fire Schoen to do it.
Scenario two is that Harbaugh is leveraging the Giants’ rabid interest but ultimately could take a different job, devastating this desperate fan base.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Miami Dolphins, the Daily News is told, are two franchises that have not fired their head coaches yet but who should be viewed as threats to hire Harbaugh.
So if the Bucs’ Todd Bowles or the Dolphins’ Mike McDaniel get canned, look out.
Not to mention the Atlanta Falcons as an organization that is hungry for the stability that Harbaugh might provide.
Plus, there is uncertainty around situations with the Buffalo Bills, Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers that bear monitoring on Wild Card weekend, as well.
So that’s a second possible outcome: Harbaugh and the Giants both show real interest during this accelerated courtship, but ultimately, he prefers a different job — which rocks this fallen franchise to its core.
A third possible outcome, if Harbaugh spurns the Giants, is that his presence as the white whale of this Giants coaching search at least might hand New York a better consolation prize.
Think about it: if the Ravens hadn’t fired Harbaugh, and Stefanski and Mike McCarthy were the top available former head coaches, losing out on the top of the class could bump the Giants down into a range of 15 coordinators that might be a hard sell compared to what they had been chasing.
Losing Harbaugh and landing on Stefanski or McCarthy, by comparison, might be an easier sell. No doubt that’s what Schoen will do if Harbaugh hangs the Giants out to dry: find the friendliest narrative and sell it.
A fourth scenario is that the Giants’ excitement about hiring Harbaugh above all else will become too obvious — or already has — and that Brian Flores’ attorneys will use this coaching cycle to enter a lot more evidence into discovery in that discrimination lawsuit that is scheduled to go to court.
The Giants have never had a Black head coach. And although they chased Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman early — and since have requested interviews with Broncos defensive coordinator Vance Joseph and recently fired Falcons head coach Raheem Morris — breathlessly pursuing Harbaugh and only Harbaugh wouldn’t do much justice to the Rooney Rule.
A fifth scenario is that Harbaugh choosing another team over the Giants sends them into freefall because more attractive jobs continue to open. For example, which job would you take: the Baltimore Ravens’ gig, so you could coach two-time MVP winner Lamar Jackson, or the Giants’ vacancy?
What if the Packers job opens? What if both the Bucs and Dolphins fire their coaches, too?
One scary part for Giants fans, right now, is the possibility that this coaching search could end up just like Schoen’s highly publicized search for a franchise quarterback last spring:
He made sure everyone knew that he was chasing Matthew Stafford, Aaron Rodgers and a trade up for the No. 1 pick to draft Miami quarterback Cam Ward. And then, when Stafford and Rodgers and the Titans said no thanks, Schoen landed with a thud on … Russell Wilson.
A player Schoen still thought was good, by the way.
In that analogy, Freeman already was the Stafford of this search. Now Harbaugh is Rodgers. So if Harbaugh skips town to the Buccaneers, who would be Cam Ward? Then who would be the Giants’ head coaching hire version of Wilson that would create a legit mutiny among its fan base?
There is at least an exciting possibility that the Giants’ fortunes could turn now.
Harbaugh’s availability has quickly created significant hope and optimism despite the Giants living in the NFL’s basement for three straight seasons, especially because it has created the scenario that Schoen might not stick around after all.
Still, until Harbaugh signs on the dotted line with the Giants, nothing is guaranteed.
The NFL’s annual game of musical chairs is not over, and although Harbaugh now offers the Giants the opportunity to hit a home run, it also creates the risk that they will strike out looking and get sent to the bench by a fan base that has had enough.
