The Baltimore Ravens announced Monday they were moving on from longtime head coach John Harbaugh after 18 seasons. He was the second-longest tenured coach in the league.
According to ESPN NFL insider Adam Schefter, Harbaugh reportedly received phone calls from seven different teams expressing interest in his services within 45 minutes of his firing. There are currently seven NFL head coaching vacancies including Baltimore's.
The New York Giants are clearly among that mix and SNY's Connor Hughes reported Monday the team has "done a ton of preliminary research" on Harbaugh and are likely to bring him in for an interview. Schefter confirmed such interest making it hard to see the Giants letting a candidate like Harbaugh leave the facility without an offer.
Sources: John Harbaugh is expected to emerge as a favorite for the head coaching job of the New York Giants.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) January 6, 2026
Harbaugh will be in demand for many teams, not just the Giants.
But will Harbaugh accept such an offer under the current conditions New York is in? Rookie offensive stars Jaxson Dart and Cam Skattebo, plus an already solid defensive front featuring Abdul Carter, Brian Burns and Dexter Lawrence II, are enticing assets to work with. But the amount of holes the team still has to fill draws negative attention to the front office Harbaugh would work under.
Giants may need to fire GM Joe Schoen to land John Harbaugh
Giants owner John Mara, despite his cancer treatments, will likely be heavily involved in the decision-making process. He's given general manager Joe Schoen a longer leash than previous head coach Brian Daboll, who were both hired at the same time, but that may be a decision he has to reverse to land a high-quality candidate like Harbaugh.
Schoen has done a decent job drafting players to replenish the team's youth and talent pool yet his decisions with veterans and in free agency deserve some harsh scrutiny (Saquon Barkley for one). The offensive line remains the biggest weakness for the Giants and while that's a problem that long precedes Schoen's tenure, after four seasons you'd think he'd have solved it by now.
Harbaugh may be eager to work with a talent like Dart but if he's got zero reliable protection and the defense is built on nothing but blitz potential and a Swiss cheese secondary, he's going to need some future assurances. That may come in the form of booting Schoen.
It wouldn't be an unprecedented demand. The Jacksonville Jaguars fired general manager Trent Baalke in order to land current head coach Liam Coen and after just one year the team is back in the playoffs with 13 wins.
The Giants can't let a golden opportunity slip away
Harbaugh's 180-113 overall record (.614) as an NFL head coach is impressive enough, especially with a Super Bowl title in 2012. Despite a downturn this season, he led the Ravens to three consecutive 10+ win seasons prior and in six of the last seven campaigns from 2018-24. Giants fans would bite someone's arm off for consistency like that even if it meant losing six of nine playoff games during that stretch.
The 63-year-old Harbaugh still has a lot of coaching runway left in him and he's clearly demonstrated himself as a leader of men. You'd be pressed to find a single player in the Giants locker room that wouldn't want to play for him and that would extend into the free agent pool which could drastically help Schoen's successor if it comes to that.
There's always the possibility Harbaugh trusts Mara's judgment on Schoen for the 2026 season but asks for a preemptive pardon if things don't improve right away with whatever roster he inherits. That would still give Mara the opportunity to boot Schoen and bring in a fresh face to work with Harbaugh going forward.
The Giants have a golden opportunity to finally turn the franchise around with a proven hire to lead their sideline. If they whiff on this then they'd be better off letting the swamps of the Meadowlands swallow MetLife Stadium whole than moving ahead with anyone else.