Jackie Harbaugh’s oldest son had just been fired by the Baltimore Ravens and she was in the midst of doing some basement cleaning when she came across an old football board game her kids played as youngsters.
“I found this NFL game that our kids played with,” she told NJ Advance Media. “I looked underneath the game and there was a chip lying there. On one side it said NFL and on the other it said Giants. This was last week just as all this was starting. We looked at it and we thought, ‘Oh my God, is this an omen or something?’ Why was that chip from that box underneath that board?”
Less than a week later, after some weekend haggling over final say on personnel decisions, John Harbaugh was introduced as the 24th head coach of the New York Football Giants Tuesday.
With mom Jackie, dad Jack and wife Ingrid sitting in front of him, Harbaugh interacted with his family and his players while handling questions from the New York and national media.
John became the wealthiest Harbaugh in this new arrangement with the Giants, but father Jack might have been the most excited by the day’s events.
“I know the Giants kind of from the other side,” said Jack Harbaugh, a football coaching legend in his own right who won a I-AA national championship with Western Kentucky in 2002. “Jackie and I are both from Ohio. She was Cleveland and I was 60 or 70 miles away. Paul Brown. Jim Brown. Otto Graham. We go back to all those guys.”
Jackie laughed as her husband got started.
“He could tell these stories all day,” she said.
Jack kept going.
“The thorn in (Cleveland’s) side was the New York Football Giants,” Jack said. “Jim Brown would rush for 130 and 140 yards in a game and make it look easy. Then they would line up against a 6-1 defense and there was a middle linebacker — big No. 70 — and that was Sam Huff and wherever Jim went it would seem like he would tag along and make a tackle very close to the line of scrimmage.
“The other guy was Y.A. Tittle. In our basement, we have a picture of Y.A. and he’s down on both knees, his helmet was on the ground and blood coming off his face and out of his nose. You could just see that this was a guy who had given everything he had, but there was nothing left.”
At 63 and after 18 years as Baltimore’s head coach, questions about John Harbaugh’s longevity are natural. But his parents’ energy suggests he has plenty left in the tank.
Ingrid Harbaugh didn’t want her husband taking a year off after being fired by the Ravens just two days after a devastating loss on the final play of the game.
“It moved so quick,” Ingrid told NJ Advance Media. “We haven’t had time to process losing that game and how that went down and then getting fired and not knowing where we were going. It was like, ‘Man, I didn’t see that coming.’ It was kind of a shock. And now we’re here. It has been 100 miles per hour.”
Things did slow down some when the Harbaughs entered the Giants’ practice facility and started seeing the franchise’s history that has been painted on the walls.
“It’s so exciting when you walk those halls,” Ingrid said. “It’s 100 years. Just to see all the iconic people who played here and coached here. He was like, ‘We have to take this job.’ I was like, ‘I know. If you finish on top of your career coaching the Giants, what more can you ask for?”
It was clear as Harbaugh spoke that family matters to him and that his parents imparted life lessons that he both believes in and feels a need to pass to all he teaches.
“There will be a relentless commitment to this organization, to this city and the fans to do things the right way every single day,” Harbaugh told his audience. “Nothing will be taken for granted. It will always, always be all about the team. The team, the team, the team. Thanks, dad, for that. It’ll always be about that.”
He mentioned his father again when he talked about evaluating the roster by looking at the tape of the Giants from the just completed season.
“I look at the tape and I see a lot of good football players,” Harbaugh said. “And not just me, my dad. He calls me up about three days into this process and he goes, ‘You watch the Giants?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I watched them. I watched them.’ He goes, ‘You see the way they come off the ball on offense, you see that offensive line, you see the offense, see those guys, see that quarterback, you see that defense, see that front, you see those guys flying around back there?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I saw it.’ So, when my dad told me, I knew it was true. We have a chance. We have a chance.”
Unsurprisingly, John Harbaugh won his introductory news conference. He’s polished and poised. He could have been a motivational speaker and made millions. Instead, he chose football and that’s the thing he reminded the players in attendance who stood near the back of the room Tuesday.
“To me, the number one thing is we have to have guys that love football,” Harbaugh said. “You just have to. It’s football. What are we here for? What do we do? What is this building for? It’s for football. If there are guys around that don’t love football … we’re probably going to let those guys go play someplace else because if you don’t love football, you’re not going to love it here because we’ll be doing football. That’s the plan.”
