The Giants’ overtime victory in Houston on Sunday counts in the standings as a single win. It means so much more than that.
The outcome is a validation of the organization’s decision to commit to a full overhaul, through the hiring of a coach who was able to apply jumper cables to a dead-ass battery.
John Harbaugh has changed everything about the Giants. And it’s working. They have a new identity, forged by Harbaugh. They’re tough, gritty, focused. They have the kind of healthy fear of true accountability that comes from failing to live up to the standard Harbaugh has set.
We saw it last week. Running back Cam Skattebo had fallen short of the coach’s expectations. So he barely played, and he didn’t touch the ball once. Then, when running back Najee Harris publicly questioned the approach to the ground game, he promptly got a pink slip.
It’s all because of Harbaugh. He has a vision for the culture and the character of the team, and he’s stubbornly implementing it. It’s a football team, and he’s the head coach. It’s his way. Adapt, or take a seat. Conform, or take a hike. It’s a bottom-line business, and he’s doing what he believes he needs to do to impact the bottom line in the best possible way.
The team’s 4-2-1 record, despite the loss of starting quarterback Jaxson Dart early in Week 2, confirms the wisdom of the decision to give Harbaugh whatever he wanted. The team’s reward could be, based on the struggles from the other teams in the division, an NFC East title and a home game in January. Maybe two. Hell, maybe three.
Maybe the Giants will end the season back in the stadium where they lost Dart for the year.
However it plays out, it feels like the Giants have a real chance. Which is all any NFL team can hope for. And which is more than plenty of franchises enjoy on a consistent basis.
And here’s what it means for the coming coaching carousel, which is less than three months away. Although former Steelers coach Mike Tomlin has given no indication that he intends to coach again, the league’s perennial also-rans should be plotting a run at luring him to town.
Whatever it takes. Money, roster control, anything else he’d want. With the going rate for the best coaches in the range of $25 million per year, offer Tomlin $30 million. Or $35 million. Or $40 million.
Every year, teams spend hundreds of millions on players. Many would spend even more if they could, but the salary cap prevents it.
As to coaches, there’s no cap. And while there’s likely a not-so-subtle collusive effort to keep coaching pay under control, owners either want to win or they don’t.
They act like they do, even if guaranteed victory comes in the form of the annual profit margin. Any owner with a team that has become the gang that couldn’t shoot straight should shoot his or her shot at Tomlin.
It’s not hard to come up with a list of teams that should be making a full-court press for Tomlin. The Jets, who share a stadium with the Giants, have been lost in the NFL wilderness for years. And the Jets now have to witness the impact that Tomlin’s former arch rival is having on the other team in town.
It could be the perfect litmus test for the bad teams that hope to become good teams. If the owner is trying to hire Tomlin, the team is trying to be good.
None of this means Tomlin will jump back into coaching. He seems to truly enjoy what he’s doing. It all comes down to whether he can tolerate walking into a stadium every week and watch others do the job he held for 19 years. Is proximity a sufficient replacement to being in the fight?
That decision ultimately won’t be made in a vacuum. If the owners who see what Harbaugh has done believe Tomlin can do it for their teams, there will be a very real financial component that will be difficult to ignore.
And, depending on the size of the offer, potentially impossible to refuse.