It wasn’t so long ago that people around here desperately wanted the Giants to get the No. 1 pick in the draft. They do that now with John Harbaugh. They get the biggest guy out there, and bring him here.
Nobody knew Bill Parcells would become the kind of star coach he would eventually become for the Giants, winning two Super Bowls for them before he took the Patriots to another one and came within a game of doing the same with the Jets.
And even though Tom Coughlin had taken the Jaguars to an AFC championship game – against Parcells – in their second year of existence, no one knew he could become an all-time great in Jersey himself. Coughlin would win two more Super Bowls for the Giants. The first one, against the 18-0 Patriots, is one of the most famous pro football games ever played.
Dan Reeves had coached in a Super Bowl before the Giants hired him, for sure. But when Reeves got here, he didn’t have Jaxson Dart as his quarterback, he had Dave Brown.
It is different with Harbaugh. The Giants know exactly what they’re getting. And he knows the kind of chance here to put the Giants back on top, become the first coach ever to win a Super Bowl with two different teams, unless Sean Payton beats him to it with the Broncos. Because of everything that has happened to them lately; because of the way they have fallen down; and after the general managers and coaches who have come and gone since the last Super Bowl over the Patriots, this is as important a hire as the Giants have ever made, all the way back to old Tim Mara.
Even after the way Jaxson Dart excited Giants fans – on the field and for the future – the hiring of Harbaugh is the best thing to happen to the team, really, since Eli Manning threw that deep ball to Mario Manningham in Indianapolis and the Giants did it to Belichick and Brady again.
More than anything else, closing out the bidding on Harbaugh before he even met with the Titans or with the Falcons, sends out this loud message, and not just to the fan base, but to the rest of the league: He is taking his talents to North Jersey because he’s decided the Giants are worthy of those talents, not just for coaching but for culture building as well. And you better believe that even if Joe Schoen is staying on as general manager, going forward the football business at MetLife Stadium will run through the office of the new coach.
Believe this, too: The way the Giants have done things for a long time as an organization – one that still looks to the outside like a family business for the Maras especially – is about to change with Harbaugh now in charge. Less a family business and more of a business, period. They are about to change because they have to, even if not dramatically at first.
“It’s a coach’s game,” former Giants general manager Ernie Accorsi has said again and again. And again. The Giants just got themselves one of the best.
By the way? From everything we know it wasn’t just the power that the Mara name still carries in the National Football League that quickly closed this deal, it was also the power of persuasion from members of the Giants family, and that sure does include Eli Manning. Eli, after all, is someone else who can speak to the possibilities of putting the Giants back on top, because that is exactly what he and Coach Coughlin did.
Again: The Giants are about to change because they have to, because they can’t go forward with Harbaugh by thinking the way they’ve been going about their business over the 15 seasons since they did win that last Super Bowl. After they did defeat the Patriots in Indianapolis, they were considered as elite an organization as there was in the entire sport. Only the Steelers and Patriots and Cowboys and 49ers had won more Super Bowls than they have.
Then Eli got old and Coughlin got shown the door and even with two playoff appearances and one playoff victory since then, they have looked no better than the Jets over the past two seasons. They lost 27 games in that time, something that hadn’t happened to them in 100 years. Even in a dark decade like the 1970s, the most games they had ever lost in consecutive seasons was 23. It is why — even with a promising kid like Dart — their fans were hoping for the No. 1 pick in the upcoming draft before they won those last two games over the Raiders and Cowboys.
And then, after all the things that had gone wrong and all the mistakes that had been made, on the field and in the front office and just about everywhere else except outside at the tailgates, the fates finally intervened in their behalf. Tyler Loop, the Ravens kicker, missed a 44-yard field goal that would have put the Ravens into the playoffs after a 1-5 start. But according to Ravens owner Steve Biscotti, he’d decided it was time for a change in Baltimore even if Loop had made the kick. He fired John Harbaugh.
Now here he is and here we are. Parcells and Coughlin became coaching immortals with the Giants. They became stars here, without question. But to paraphrase the old Reggie Jackson line, it’s different with John Harbaugh. He’s bringing his star with him to Jersey.
There are no guarantees, of course. We’re still waiting for the Super Bowl coach who doesn’t just go back to the big game, but wins one with a new team. We’ll find out about that over the next few year. But for now, and for the first time in a long time, it’s the Giants who feel like the big game, even after 4-13.
