His father, Jack Harbaugh, a high school and college football lifer, effectively told his older son he’d be nuts to sign with anyone other than the Giants. John agreed with his dad, and yet he needed to ensure that he could change the infrastructure of the franchise enough to make it a consistent winner like the one he helped build in Baltimore.
This wasn’t about Schoen; the coach definitely feels he can work with the GM. Harbaugh wanted the ability to impact the entire operation, from security to training to analytics to media relations to staff size to assistant salaries to relocation expenses to you name it. And yes, in the unlikely event there’s a stalemate on draft day between Harbaugh and Schoen, there’s no longer any question who will prevail.
The Giants have been in the Mara family for more than 100 years, and it was never going to be easy to merge with the modern-day Harbaugh machine. This wasn’t a hostile takeover, or even a non-hostile takeover. This was a long-overdue reboot for a franchise that hasn’t done any meaningful winning since its fourth Super Bowl victory 14 years ago.
