This could be the week that changes everything for Giants
John Harbaugh, the former coach of the Baltimore Ravens, looks on before a game against the Giants at MetLife Stadium on Dec. 15, 2024. Credit: Getty Images/Luke Hales
The Giants just had one of their best weekends in a long while. All they had to do was nothing at all.
There was no game for them to lose.
There was no game for them to win and negatively impact their spot in the draft order.
There were no other teams scoring in-person interviews with John Harbaugh, so they remain one of the front-runners for his services. The Falcons did make a big show of saying they had interviewed him, but that was a virtual meeting with new president Matt Ryan. It doesn’t put them in the lead, it catches them up; Harbaugh had been personally in contact with key decision-makers for several other teams before Monday, including the Giants.
The Packers lost on Saturday, and that put Matt LaFleur in a bit of a perilous position, but it now seems as if he will be returning to Green Bay, which keeps one of the potential competing head coach openings closed.
And the Eagles fell to the 49ers in their Wild Card game, sending them into an offseason filled with uncertainties and infighting rather than parades and banquets. It’s not only a chance for the Giants to revel in the disgrace of a division rival but also an indication that the NFC East no longer has one all-powerful team lording over it. The gap the Giants have spent the past four seasons trying to close wound up shrinking all on its own.
Now, though, it’s time for them to start working. And that means finding a head coach who will be able to take their young quarterback, the assembled roster core that they repeatedly have said they like, the key players returning from injuries and everybody else in the organization forward. They need someone who can make these good vibes continue not only into the start of the regular season in September but beyond.
Hiring Harbaugh could accomplish that, but he is not the only candidate who would. Kevin Stefanski, who met with the Giants last week, and Mike McCarthy, who will formally interview with them in New Jersey on Tuesday, also can do it.
Any of the three would be the most accomplished Giants coaching hire since Dan Reeves and certainly give the Giants their best shot at reclaiming their mojo since Tom Coughlin left a decade ago this month.
After having their most recent searches result in unproven first-time head coaches such as Ben McAdoo, Joe Judge and Brian Daboll — Pat Shurmur was the only one who had been a head coach at any level before arriving with the Giants, and he had a 9-23 record in Cleveland as his track record — getting a chance to hire someone not only with experience but success would be new for the team.
Several of the other candidates with whom the Giants already have met in various capacities — Vance Joseph, Raheem Morris and Antonio Pierce — have experience (if not success) going for them too.
General manager Joe Schoen said last week that is not a prerequisite, but judging by his search, it clearly is something in which he is interested.
“That’s why there’s probably more misses than hits,” he said of the difficulty in projecting a coordinator as a head coach. “[A former] head coach has a track record. You want to know how they manage games. You can go bring up game management situations, which we’ve done that on some of these candidates. Game management is an important part of it. You can go see how they were in front of the media after wins, after losses. What their record was, it’s right there, where they ranked offensively, defensively.
“So that’s a little bit easier because the information is there for you versus a projection with an offensive, defensive coordinator, whoever it may be, that hasn’t been a head coach in the NFL before.”
The Giants will continue to deploy their “wide net” for possibilities, too, and will conduct a virtual interview with Colts defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo on Tuesday.
Anarumo is from Staten Island, but his coaching career began on Long Island. From 1992-94, he was the defensive backs coach and defensive coordinator for the Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, his first full-time job in the business.
“You learn that you need to do everything when you work at those types of jobs,” Anarumo told Newsday of that experience for a 2022 article when he was defensive coordinator for the Super Bowl-bound Bengals. “I remember setting up the field, making sure the buses were on time, even coaching another sport in the spring. One year I was the lacrosse coach, the next year I was an assistant softball coach. You get to learn how to do a lot of different things without a lot of resources.”
Plenty of others have used a short stint at the tiny military academy to springboard into bigger and better things. Former NFL head coach Joe Philbin, Hall of Fame executive Bill Polian and Lehigh’s winningest head coach, Andy Coen, all began there.
Anarumo previously worked for the Giants as a defensive backs coach and his son is a scout for the front office, but despite all that familiarity, he is not allowed to meet with the team in person. Like all other candidates currently employed by another team, he must wait until next Monday for that.
Perhaps by then it will not be necessary. There is a chance the Giants will hammer all of this out this week.
Who knows? They may be able to enjoy two good weekends in a row.
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.
