John Harbaugh went all-out to build the most accomplished offensive coaching staff possible for the 2026 New York Giants.
- Offensive coordinator Matt Nagy is a former NFL head coach and multiple-time offensive coordinator.
- Quarterbacks coach/passing game coordinator Brian Callahan is also a former NFL head coach and offensive coordinator.
- Senior offensive assistant Greg Roman is a four-time NFL offensive coordinator, including for Harbaugh with the Baltimore Ravens.
- Tight ends coach Tim Kelly is a three-time NFL offensive coordinator, if you include his interim gig in that role for part of the 2025 season with the Giants.
- Offensive line coach Mike Bloomgren and running backs coach Willie Taggart are former college head coaches.
You could forgive Nagy if he wondered how he was supposed to make all the pieces work. Would these talented coaches stay in their lanes? Would they chafe at responsibilities below what they had risen to in their careers?
So, during a Zoom call on Tuesday, I asked Nagy how he looks at the situation.
Rather than bristle at the idea some may have that there could be too many cooks in the Giants’ offensive kitchen, Nagy said he is embracing the help as the Giants build their offensive scheme.
“It’s really been invigorating for me,” he said. “To your question, you have all these guys that have all this experience and backgrounds of coordinators, head coaches. There’s a lot. I mean, there’s a lot of guys.
“Going into this, you can look at it different ways. I think if you look at it one way, you could say, well, my title is offensive coordinator, and it’s my job to do everything. That’s not true. You know, we have so many – Coach Harbs did such a great job at bringing in guys with a ton of experience, and I’d be foolish to not use that. They’ve been amazing.”
‘A beautiful staff’
The Giants are building an offense that will continue to evolve as they get players on the field, see what they can and cannot do, and what works or does not work with the personnel they have.
“It’s been so much fun putting this offense together, our offense here,” Nagy said. “I know a lot of different coaches with a lot of different backgrounds from different teams, a lot of different coaches with OC experience, head coaching experience.”
Nagy said it doesn’t matter where an idea comes from.
“For me, it’s so important for all of us – and we talked about it – put the egos aside. Let’s make this ours. Let’s not worry about whose idea it is. Let’s make it our idea, and let’s run with it,” he said. “Let’s make it make sense to the guys, and let’s go out there and figure out as we go through OTAs and into training camp what we’re going to look like.
“I can’t thank those guys enough, and it starts at the top with Coach Harbaugh. I’ve just been really, really fortunate and lucky, because it’s a beautiful staff.”
‘We’re going to team up together.’
Nagy ran through the list of accomplished coaches, giving particular credit to Callahan, who was fired last season as head coach of the Tennessee Titans.
“You look at a guy like – you look at (passing game coordinator/quarterbacks coach) Brian Callahan. Here’s a former head coach that’s now a quarterback coach and passing game coordinator. I did that in 2022 after I got fired in Chicago. I went back to Kansas City in the same role,” Nagy said.
“In that interview process with Calli, I wanted him to understand and know, it’s not easy doing what you’re doing. I have a ton of respect for what you are doing, and I’m going to be there. We’re going to team up together to tackle this thing together and make it ours.”
Nagy didn’t stop there.
“You get a guy like Greg Roman, who has been an offensive coordinator in our division in Kansas City last year, and here he is coming in and been doing this a long time,” Nagy said. “That’s awesome, the value that he brings.
“A guy like Mike Bloomgren has been a head coach at Rice. Willie Taggart has been a head coach at four or five different colleges. The experience goes on and on and on. You’ve got Tim Kelly, who was an offensive coordinator.”
‘It’s going to be physical.’
So, what kind of offense will all of those assembled minds put together for the Giants? Nagy didn’t share much, but he did share something that sounded like old-school Giants football.
“It’s going to be physical, I can tell you that,” Nagy said. “Now, there are different ways when we say physical. I think if you look at any team that Coach Harbaugh has always had on both sides, all three phases, the word “physical” is the first thing you think of. So, it’s going to start there. That’s not a hidden fact.
“But from there now we’ve got to work around our players’ strengths, and we’ve got to say, okay, in the run game, in pass pro, in the pass game, these buckets that we form of all three phases, where do we want to start? Well, we got to start with these guys understanding how we do things, and then once we get to OTAs and into training camp, it will kind of start to get personalized.”
Nagy made it sound like a voluminous playbook is not a necessary outcome.
“What it is exactly, we have an idea big picture, but what it becomes through these players’ strengths, we’ll have a direction. That’s the exciting part,” Nagy said. “I’ll give you an example. There are some plays that we’ve done, and we might teach on the front end, but we might see that it just, for whatever reason, doesn’t fit our players right now, and there are other plays that are better, so we’re going to do those and work around our guys.
“We’re going to have some fun, but we’re going to be really good at what we do, because we’re going to be detailed and have that less-is-more concept.”
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