The New York Giants courtship of new head coach John Harbaugh has been described as a “full-court press.”
That, however, seems to be underselling things a bit. After all, you can only executed by the players currently on your team. The Giants’ pursuit of Harbaugh was aided by Giants past and present, and perhaps nobody did more to make this union possible than former Giants’ head coach Tom Coughlin.
It’s somewhat ironic that the man who delivered Harbaugh the fourth loss as a rookie head coach back in 2008 helped to deliver Harbaugh to the Giants.
But that’s exactly what Coughlin did when he connected Harbaugh and Chris Mara shortly after the former was fired by the Baltimore Ravens.
“I didn’t think he’d [Harbaugh] be available,” Mara told reporters. “I really didn’t. But for us, it was a home run.”
While it was reported at the time that the Giants had hypothetical discussions about Harbaugh should he become available, they didn’t think it was a realistic opportunity. When the Ravens fired him, however, they knew they had to act quickly.
“I just was really conscious of the fact that there was going to be so many different openings,” Mara said, “Especially with some of these playoff teams that were possibly going to get rid of their coaches. So that’s why I thought it was important to beat everybody to it, and that’s what we did.”
The problem? Chris Mara had never spoken to Harbaugh before. After all, as Mara said, he didn’t think Harbaugh would be available.
Enter Coughlin.
“I got in contact with him [Harbaugh] after a conversation with Tom Coughlin,” Mara said. “And he’s the one that put us together.”
Of course, anyone who remembers the Giants’ ornery former coach knows it couldn’t have been that simple.
“He was absolutely over the top,” Mara said. “He yelled at me 15 times before it was done. And once we got it done, he yelled at me again.”
“We discussed it as a group, as an ownership, and as an organization,” Mara said of the decision to go after Harbaugh following his firing. “I decided that it was time to act on it. And Friday night, before the playoff game started, I talked to John and Steve and said, I’m driving to Baltimore tomorrow, and I’m going to talk to Tom [Coughlin]. I’m going to talk to John [Harbaugh], and Tom Coughlin set it up for me in terms of contact info. I had never talked to John Harbaugh in my life until I got to his house.”
Mara says that he and Harbaugh had a long conversation set to the backdrop of a playoff game neither of them were involved in.
“He asked me eight million questions about players, about facility, about structure,” Mara said of the conversation. “And we just had a man-to-man talk for a couple hours while the game was going on in the background. And he wanted to know about a lot of the players, some of the coaches we have. I gave him some first-hand information.
“When I left his house on that day,” Mara said, “I drove there, I drove home, and I talked to John, I talked to Steve, and I said, this guy wants to be a Giant.”
And now Harbaugh is a Giant — thanks in no small part to Tom Coughlin, once again proving the saying “Once a Giant, always a Giant.”
See More:
