I’ll give John Harbaugh this — he attacked his introductory press conference Tuesday as head coach of the New York Giants with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.
Unless you live in Baltimore. In that case, you’ve heard his shtick before.
He talked about the “relentless brotherhood” he wants to create in New York, how he and general manager Joe Schoen want to “have guys who love football,” and the importance of “doing things the right way every single day.”
I have undiminishing respect for what Harbaugh has accomplished as a coach with the Ravens, but listening to him spout from his playbook of clichés to open his Giants tenure, frankly, made my eyes glaze over. As a media member but also as a longtime follower of the Ravens, I’ve heard it all so many times before.
New York is the largest media market in the country, but the Giants fan base is a little like the the film “Yesterday,” an alternate timeline where the Beatles never existed. Up north, they are eating all his soundbites up with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind. And Harbaugh must feel like all his old hits are new again within an organization longing desperately for the stability that Harbaugh enjoyed in Baltimore.
One Athletic headline reads: “In his heart, John Harbaugh always knew he was meant to be a Giant”. Divine providence for sports teams — another Harbaugh favorite.
All the fanfare around Harbaugh’s next gig — along with notable omissions, such as regard for the Ravens fans who supported his team for 18 years — give me the impression that maybe the 63-year-old is charging into the Giants trying to recreate his idealized Baltimore structure without pausing to learn the lessons of why his previous tenure started going downhill. It’s classic Harbaugh, charging into the breach on a ceaseless offensive, risking the possibility of dooming the next campaign.
Not only has Harbaugh been introducing New York folks to his dad’s famous coaching sayings, his contract reportedly altered the power structure of the organization, making him report directly to the Mara and Tisch families rather than Schoen, which mimics the model he enjoyed in Baltimore (while Harbaugh said this was “overblown” in his presser, it was a serious enough consideration to nearly capsize his contract negotiations). He is reportedly trying to bring offensive coordinator Todd Monken, telling WFAN radio “he’s a lot of fun to work with, and I think the guys will really love him” (sidestepping that Monken was the subject of multiple reports citing a disconnect with players).
Even his quarterback Jaxson Dart — a young mobile QB — feels a bit like a discount Lamar Jackson (sorry, Jaxson). The whole vibe is that Harbaugh is trying to recreate the Castle in New York, only his construction materials are popsicle sticks and glue.
The biggest difference Harbaugh has really sought is that he has more power in the organization than he had in Baltimore. The laudatory language that the owners have lobbed his way speaks to how the shine is still on him. While (unsuccessfully) trying to tamp down speculation that Harbaugh has more say-so over Schoen, co-owner Chris Mara said: “He’s going to be the most important cog in the wheel. Let’s put it that way.”
Meanwhile, Harbaugh didn’t even bother to mention Eric DeCosta, the Ravens’ GM who was formerly known as his best friend and his neighbor, in his Ravens farewell statement, or his opening remarks with the Giants. Ahead of working with Schoen, who is already unpopular with Giants fans, his glaring omission of a GM he was definitely close with is not exactly an indicator that he’ll play nice with the front office of his new team.
I don’t think Harbaugh’s last season in Baltimore went south in spite of him — in fact, several coaching decisions helped sink the Ravens to the desperate position of needing a field goal in Pittsburgh just to make the playoffs, something I don’t think needs a lot of relitigating. More Harbaugh would have not answered the problems the Ravens had, which is one of the reasons owner Steve Bisciotti fired his close friend.
As we play the old Harbaugh track in a new setting, I can’t help but wonder if Harbaugh would have been wise to listen to Bisciotti’s advice and take a year away from the game.
“‘If you go to work for somebody else, I get offset, so I’m saving a whole lot of money, but I’d be more than happy to give you a very expensive, paid vacation for a year if you and [John’s wife] Ingrid would pray on that and come to the decision that you could go out and travel and golf together and rifle,’” Bisciotti recounted in his presser last week. “I really, really, really would have hoped that he took a year off out of this crazy business that you work 80 hours a week.”
A year off is more costly to a man who is turning 64 this coming season, but Mike Tomlin seems set on doing it, and Sean Payton did it a few years ago before returning to coach the Broncos. There’s real merit for Harbaugh, who has been successful before, to attempt a post-mortem of what went wrong in Baltimore and what he might have done differently.
Indeed, the very first question Harbaugh got from the New York media was if he considered taking time off.
“There’s no time for that,” Harbaugh said. “Just couldn’t wait to get back to work. That was never a question really.”
It was a question, just not one that Harbaugh ever bothered to listen to. Taking time away from football doesn’t seem to have much foothold in the Harbaugh book of coaching wisdom, and folks in Baltimore at this point know that this coach likes to stick to the script.
Over the last week and a half, it has become apparent how many factors Bisciotti weighed when he sent Harbaugh packing, and if you believe him, some were for his own good. He saw Ravens fans and the media criticizing Harbaugh, and he took some of it personally.
“I couldn’t stand people attacking my friend,” Bisciotti said. “So, some of the stuff that they talked about with John ate me alive. And so part of my feeling like when my instinct says ‘Now’s the time,’ It was, ‘I get to relieve John of all that crap,’ too.”
But Bisciotti can’t save Harbaugh from his own impulses. Perhaps out of fear that he would lose his hot candidate status — after all, Pete Carroll and Bill Belichick have crashed out after a year out of the game — Harbaugh leapt directly into the next job, where it will be significantly harder to build the kind of core he enjoyed as a rookie coach in Baltimore.
If things go south, Bisciotti won’t be able to relieve his friend from a relentless New York press that has a reputation for eating coaches alive, even the ones who initially get a hero’s welcome.
To be clear: I don’t wish Harbaugh any ill at his next stop. It would be a great story to see him succeed in a second act, just like his beloved mentor Andy Reid, and prove his chops with a new organization and a new quarterback.
But the other potential narrative — one in which Harbaugh can’t see past his hubris for the bigger picture — feels a little too familiar. Even if New Yorkers haven’t seen it yet, fans in Baltimore know how that story ends.