A Non-Disaster, Brought to You by the New York Giants
Against all odds, the Giants managed to land John Harbaugh…without screwing it up.
It’s no secret, the New York Giants have spent a majority of Joe Schoen’s tenure operating about as well as my 9-year-old self pulling the Adam’s Apple after a few too many Pixy Stix.
So despite the fact that a clear and obvious candidate emerged as the frontrunner for the team’s latest coaching vacancy, it was far from a given that the Giants’ brass would be able to get the deal done.
But by the grace of whatever god you believe in, “Slow Joe and the Failsons” somehow got the team ranked 27th in red-zone efficiency over the ever-elusive goal line.
The Giants have done everything wrong for so long. Typically, their bad hires and bad draft picks make them unavailable when good candidates or players emerge. Take, for example, the decision to retain Brian Daboll rather than engage in a coaching cycle that featured Mike Vrabel, Ben Johnson, and Liam Coen — or deciding to pass on Justin Herbert because Daniel Jones was selected the year prior.
This faulty judgement is typically brushed off as “bad timing” in a press conference where the fanbase is assured that we’re actually really close to contention. Giants fans no longer expect competence — we expect chaos, followed by a second press conference explaining how said chaos was actually part of the plan.
Needless to say, when Baltimore fired John Harbaugh and reports trickled in that the Super Bowl-winning coach actually preferred the Giants out of all the other vacancies, the fanbase eagerly awaited the latest installment of Schoen urinating down his pant leg.
On paper, the plan reeked of its extremely justified desperation.
The team flaunted Jaxson Dart around like some 2000s Abercrombie model. John Mara delayed his chemo to meet Harbaugh in person (please get back to your treatments, dude).
We hadn’t heard from Mr. Tisch in a what feels like a decade, yet Stevie fueled up the PJ and shipped Harbaugh up to Bergen County, where the Maras and Schoen planned their elaborate dinner date.
I’ve been to Elia several times since its opening in 2017. The food is undoubtedly solid, but I knew it would take more than some braised lamb, baba ghanoush, and repeatedly chanting “Smart, Tough, Dependable” to get pen to paper.
These are the minds that brought you “Deonte Banks is a 1st Rounder” and “Darren Waller has a lot left in the Tank”. I don’t know what they could’ve said to this man to convince him that East Rutherford, New Jersey, is a late-career retirement destination.
But somehow — the deal was (reportedly) done.
Over the course of the next 72 hours, we learned that not only was the contract unsigned, but after promising Harbaugh the earth, moon, and stars — the future Hall of Fame coach actually wanted all of this in writing. The nerve!
The pain points of the contract remain somewhat of a mystery, but I can imagine the process involved Joe Schoen slowly negotiating away his own responsibilities while attempting to preserve whatever semblance of a job remained.
The pundits will say that this move brings stability to the organization — but its not even that. Harbaugh had a hard-on for our rich history, something his grandfather must’ve told him stories about. We had one of the better rosters in this cycle, largely by default. Most importantly, he wanted to be here and refused to even interview elsewhere.
This wasn’t a masterclass. It wasn’t all that impressive. It was simply a non-disaster — which feels like tremendous growth.
There are dozens of free-agency decisions and draft picks that we’ll have every opportunity to mishandle in the coming months. But on this day, we did something right, largely by not blowing the golden opportunity that fell directly into our laps.
So it goes without saying but…
The Giants are fucking back.
