Tom Rock: Giants have completely bought in to coach John Harbaugh's optimistic approach
Giants coach John Harbaugh speaks to the media after training camp at Quest Diagnostics Training Center on Aug. 26 in East Rutherford, N.J. Credit: Ed Murray
When John Harbaugh took the job as head coach of the Giants in January, he said the goal was to win a championship.
It’s easy to make statements like that at introductory news conferences. Nothing has occurred yet in terms of the roster or the coaching staff. Back then, the Giants didn’t even know whom they’d be drafting or what their schedule would look like.
Now, seven months later, with the start of his first regular season with the Giants a little more than a week away from kicking off, nothing that has taken place since then has managed to shake his outlook or change his expectations for this 2026 season.
“Of course we expect to win,” Harbaugh said on Wednesday. “How do you go out and compete at this level if you don’t expect to win? If you don’t expect to win, you certainly aren’t going to.
“I’ve said this before: We expect and we plan to, and we will be playing to win every single one of our games this year. That is what we are striving for. And we think we can. We believe we can. Wholeheartedly.”
Yep. The Giants are primed to start this new era.
They are completely bought in. Harbaugh-ed in, if you will.
And their fans are with them. There is a faint but recognizable buzz in the region lately that only a promising football season can provide, a late-summer excitement that hasn’t been around for a while.
This time of year tends to mean the end of things: Long leisurely days, vacations, pools and beaches. This September in particular also turns the page on the frenzies that specifically marked 2026, such as the Knicks’ championship and a World Cup.
Among all that closure, football manages to bring a sense of beginning, something to look forward to while fall creeps over us and winter looms. It lets you know where you are on the calendar. It is the pumpkin spice of sports. See it and you are anchored to a specific season.
Around here, those sensations of optimism haven’t tended to last very long. Football seasons essentially have been over before many recent baseball seasons ended. Meaningful games in December usually are the goal of a team, but these Giants have barely made it to the middle of October with anything other than draft positioning riding on their results.
“It means a lot to everybody,” Harbaugh said of this coming season. “It means a lot to our fans. Our fans are excited. They should be excited. We’re looking forward to doing the best we can and making them proud of us.”
For an organization with only one winning season in the last nine and no playoffs since 2022, Harbaugh’s promises sound almost as laughable as those ridiculous 100th anniversary uniforms or the aborted field-goal attempt by Younghoe Koo last year, or any of the other embarrassments that have plagued them in recent times.
This one feels different.
There is something about Harbaugh that makes it all sound plausible. That’s what the Giants brought him here to provide. His techniques and routines and philosophies have turned them into devoted disciples.
“I feel like the guys embraced it,” tight end Isaiah Likely said of what for many was the most demanding preseason of their careers. It definitely was more punishing than the ones of recent summers, but for Likely, who had played under Harbaugh in Baltimore before following him here as a free agent in the offseason, it was routine.
“If I wake up, I’m putting on cleats. That’s just the mantra I have,” Likely said of practicing nearly every day. “Hearing how Giants training camp was in the past, that was kind of mind-boggling to me.”
Those results were as well.
Certainly the Giants aren’t going to win every game this year. They might not even win their first one against the Cowboys on Sept. 13 or their second against the mighty Rams on Sept. 21.
Harbaugh knows that, too.
“I think we look good,” he said. “But you never know until you start playing games honestly. You feel good about things or you feel bad about things in practice, but when you start playing the games that gives you an idea really of where you are at.”
But as general manager Joe Schoen, who has overseen the team’s last few clunkers, pointed out in describing the difference in this rebuilt roster under this new head coach:
“We’re going to be ready to go. I know we’re going to be ready to go. Week in, week out, we’ll be ready.”
And for Week 1, even with more than a week before that action begins, they are exactly that.
“The guys are looking forward to playing the game,” Harbaugh said. “They’re practicing well. They’re not skipping any part of the process in preparing for the game, which is good, because I thought they were locked in really well [this week]. But they’re ready. They’re excited. They want to go play a game.”
Us too, Coach. Us too.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
