Why John Harbaugh is the right coach at the right time for the Giants

New York Giants fans overwhelmingly love the team’s decision to hire John Harbaugh as head coach. That is reflected in a poll here at Big Blue View in which 95.2% of respondents (5,227 of 5,490) said the hiring of Harbaugh was the right decision.

The move has been nearly universally praised. Dan Duggan of The Athletic wrote that “Landing Harbaugh is like hitting the inside straight the Giants have been chasing all these years.”

There are, though, always naysayers. Always doubters. Always people who look for reasons why things won’t work out.

Are there valid reasons to doubt the Harbaugh hire?

Sure. Nothing is ever guaranteed. Having success in one place does not mean you will definitely have success in another.

So, let’s give the doubters their due.

Doubter No. 1 — ‘Long-time listener, first-time caller’

I received an e-mail to the Big Blue View mailbag inbox from Daniel Selz. It’s really too long for a mailbag question, but is worth discussing. Daniel’s letter reads:

One of the things I admire about your work at BBV is your generally even-keeled takes, not getting too high or too low, not getting caught up in the hyperbole of the ‘hot take machine’.

Then this morning I read in your piece, ‘has there ever been a bigger, more stunning, more potentially franchise-altering move than this one by a New York team?’ And I don’t want to just single you out, everyone on the Internet seems sure this is the best, most amazing move in the history of sports and maybe everything.

For fun as a thought experiment, I had Google Gemini help me compile the following table comparing Harbaugh to ‘Mystery Coach A’:

Can you guess who Mystery Coach A is? What if I tell you, like Harbaugh, he was also fired from his first head coaching gig for friction with his two-time MVP quarterback who wore number 8…

Mystery Coach A is Mike McCarthy! And just as a thought experiment, let’s say the Giants were hiring Mike McCarthy right now, after whiffing on Harbaugh and Stefanski…it’s hard to imagine everyone and their mother would be saying hyperbolic things about this being the best moment in the history of their giant fandom.

What gives? My point isn’t to claim we should have hired McCarthy or that i would have been excited about that, I’m just trying to understand what is driving such a difference in ‘vibes’ about Harbaugh vs. McCarthy, since the underlying key data about each’s performance seems shockingly similar (if anything–gasp!–you could look at the bottom two rows and have a preference for McCarthy right?)?

One last question in the spirit of being a wet-blanket…in your opinion or based on what you’ve heard, what are Harbaugh’s weaknesses or shortcomings that need to fixed that led to him being fired from his last job? As a Giants fan of a certain age, it’s impossible not to remember the narrative that Tom Coughlin was too rigid, too hard-edged in Jacksonville, but with the G-Men, he softened up, started listening to his players a bit more and the rest is history.

What about Harbaugh? From what I’ve read, it seems part of why he was dismissed was his fierce loyalty to/unrelenting stubbornness about (depending on your perspective) Todd Monken. Which then makes one a little queasy to read the online papers where it seems a foregone conclusion that Harbaugh is going to make Monken his OC here. Not even willing to consider a change. Not learning from his mistakes in the way Coughlin did perhaps?

Valentine’s View

Daniel, there really wasn’t any palace intrigue regarding the identity of ‘Mystery Coach A’ in your table. Anyone who has been reading Big Blue View in recent weeks should know that on several occasions I have pointed out that Mike McCarthy’s resume is almost identical to that of Harbaugh and Mike Tomlin. Except, of course, for those two pesky firings.

I have always maintained that McCarthy’s accomplishments should not be downplayed, that he has many of the characteristics the Giants were looking for, and that the idea of the Giants hiring him shouldn’t have been scoffed at.

Hiring McCarthy would have been fine. It wouldn’t, though, have been nearly as good for the Giants as hiring Harbaugh is.

McCarthy and Kevin Stefanski are good coaches and would likely have improved the team’s fortunes on the field had they been hired.

No other hiring would have been met with the excitement, or brought the instant credibility that Harbaugh did. The Giants have been flailing for more than a decade now, going mostly in the wrong direction. Harbaugh offers them the best chance for a course correction.

He comes from a winning environment that he was a big part of establishing and maintaining. He brings with him knowledge of how the Ravens have been consistently good, and the cachet to get ideas implemented with the Giants. We are already seeing some of that take place. He brings a reputation with him for having a keen eye for finding quality young assistant coaches who could help set the organization up for sustained success.

On the field and in the locker room, Harbaugh is a culture-setting CEO type head coach who brings the ability — and credibility — to set standards and hold players accountable. The Giants, and the entire organization, desperately need that. There are other good offensive or defensive coaches who could have been hired. None, though, with the reputation Harbaugh has for creating a winning culture and being willing to stand up to star players who may not want to do things his way.

Yes, Harbaugh reportedly was unwilling to fire Todd Monken. I disagree, though, that he is unwilling to learn from his mistakes. He fired offensive coordinator Greg Roman when it became clear Roman couldn’t help Lamar Jackson continue to grow as a passer. He moved on from Wink Martindale a few years ago after a poor defensive season.

Was it hyperbole to ask the ‘has there ever been a bigger, more stunning, more potentially franchise-altering move than this one by a New York team?’ question? Maybe. But, was Babe Ruth the icon he became when the Yankees traded for him? Tom Coughlin wasn’t a Hall of Fame coach when he got to the Giants. The trade for Eli Manning in 2004 caused a stir, but he wasn’t a two-time Super Bowl MVP at the time. Joe Torre was “Clueless Joe’ when the Yankees hired him.

Is there a single move the Giants have made in their 100+-year history that was thought, on the day the Giants made it, to be as big as hiring Harbaugh? I’m hard-pressed to find one.

Doubter No. 2 — Those whiny Eagles fans

Of course our “friends” over at Bleeding Green Nation are casting doubt on the Giants’ hiring of Harbaugh. BGN’s Dave Mangels wrote:

The New York Giants have hired John Harbaugh. Congratulations! Do they know that they’re only getting John Harbaugh? That they’re not also getting the Baltimore Ravens talent machine? …

This is perhaps the best organization in the NFL. The Ravens have a Tier 1 front office that gave Harbaugh the tools to succeed.

He won’t have that in New York. Success in one location guarantees nothing in the next. …

Certainly Harbaugh deserves credit for keeping the Ravens machine going for nearly two decades. But he wasn’t the one who built the machine, and Giants GM Joe Schoen is no Eric DeCosta, let alone Ozzie Newsome.

Good luck John, you’ll need it!

Valentine’s View

Ahh, Eagles fans! Let’s be real here. Mostly, Mangels is whining because the Giants just unwrapped a shiny new toy the Eagles can’t have, and that feels threatening.

Mangels is right that Harbaugh won’t have the Ravens’ front office in New York, and that success in one place does not guarantee success in another.

Harbaugh, though, has two decades worth of knowledge regarding what allowed Baltimore to field quality teams almost every season. He brings that knowledge to New York, and the Giants will be a better organization for that.

Will the Giants become as consistently competitive as the Ravens have been? There is no guarantee of that, obviously. This is the best move the Giants could have made, though, to try and set themselves up for sustainable success.

If it annoys Eagles fans, or makes them even a wee bit nervous, all the better.

Doubter No. 3 — Reasonable questions to ask

Ben Solak of ESPN doesn’t hate the Giants’ hiring of Harbaugh. After all, the headline of his post is “Hiring head coach John Harbaugh is a big win for the Giants.” Solak, though, raises some reasonable questions. He writes:

It’s easy to call this hire a slam dunk and devote no more critical thought to it. Harbaugh is a Super Bowl-winning head coach with a strong track record of postseason contention. Baltimore made the playoffs in 12 of his 18 seasons there and had a losing record in just three of them. He has been on the cutting edge of team-building for much of his time in Baltimore — many of the people filling analytics staffs across the league today are branches off the Ravens’ tree. Harbaugh was successful with a pocket passer in Joe Flacco and a dual-threat quarterback in Lamar Jackson, and while other teams might have wondered how well Harbaugh would ride the QB carousel, given the stability he has enjoyed at the position, the Giants don’t harbor much concern. They have an exciting young signal-caller in Jaxson Dart already in hand.

But retread head coaches don’t automatically have strong encore performances. If Harbaugh brings the Giants a Super Bowl ring, he’d be the first head coach to do so for multiple teams. According to ESPN Research, there are only seven head coaches who have led multiple teams to the big game, and not one has won it with both squads.

So yes, the ceiling is in question, but most people will call Harbaugh a floor-raising hire. This, too, isn’t as automatic as we’d like. For every Andy Reid, who chased his long and successful Eagles tenure with an even longer and more successful Chiefs tenure, there’s a Pete Carroll in Las Vegas or Mike Shanahan in Washington. Also from ESPN Research: Harbaugh is the ninth Super Bowl-winning head coach to take over a four-win team. Of the previous eight, only Parcells didn’t have a losing record with his new team.

Valentine’s View

I will agree with Solak that the hire is not a slam dunk. I think I have already made my feelings clear on that. Nothing in life is a sure thing, except that it ends one day. Yes, Solak is right that coaches who were highly successful in one stop often don’t match that success in another stop.

I have been clear on this point, too. Judging the hire as a success only if Harbaugh leads the Giants to a Super Bowl title is setting the wrong bar.

Something else Solak wrote is what this hire is all about:

Few teams in the NFL are as desperate for a return to competency as the Giants.

The Giants have been headed in the wrong direction ever since they won their last Super Bowl at the end of the 2011 season. They desperately need to stop the bleeding. Hiring Harbaugh is the biggest swing they could possibly take at closing the wound and healing themselves. They spared no expense and left no stone unturned. They went for broke, and that counts for something.

Solak is right to point out that Harbaugh needs to answer for not being able to win, or even reach, a Super Bowl with a two-time MVP quarterback. That he needs to answer for some of the late-game collapses the Ravens have suffered in recent years — a malady that was a Giants’ specialty this past season.

The Giants and their fans, though, would love to have the kinds of problems the Ravens have had in Baltimore. If Harbaugh brings the Giants to that point on a consistent basis he has done what he is being brought to New Jersey to do.