PHOENIX — So far, so good.
Actually, better than good.
John Harbaugh, in a head coaching lifecycle that encompassed 18 years, never before had to go through staff and roster-building processes with a different franchise. He was with the Ravens, and in that supervisory role, that is what he knew.
Now he has gone through a few months incorporating what he wants with how the Giants operated prior to his arrival.
The main thrust of free agency has come and gone. There was an array of signings. The NFL Draft is coming soon, with all the decision-making crammed into that crucial endeavor.
Harbaugh is putting his imprint on the Giants and they are doing their best to show him many of their methods also have value.
“I thought we did a really good job of it,’’ Harbaugh said Monday morning at the NFL’s Annual League Meeting. “It’s still a work in progress, for sure, but I’m really pleased with the way it operated.’’
Harbaugh then name-dropped general manager Joe Schoen, assistant GM Brandon Brown — front office executives already aboard — and Dawn Aponte, the newly-hired senior vice president of football operations and strategy.
“I thought Joe was great, his group was great,’’ Harbaugh said. “Brandon was amazing, Dawn was great. We’ve just got a really working group of people in there and I thought we operated at a really high level.’’
Harbaugh made sure before agreeing to a five-year, $100 million contract that his voice would be heard loudest of all when it came to football decisions. That does not mean Harbaugh is a soloist and there is no chorus alongside him.
Players were brought in from around the league — several former Ravens made their way to the Giants, to be sure — and the blending of what Harbaugh wants with how the Giants go about their business turned out to be seamless enough.
“It went well,’’ Schoen said. “Our communication was great. Coach had obviously been in Baltimore for 18 years and did things a certain way. So we introduced our process. Here’s how we go about things. And he thought it was great, the process that we had in place. He was open to how we do things.”
Harbaugh admitted he was not sure how this first time around would play out. Would his priorities mesh with how the Giants evaluated players? Did their system for assigning value and establishing financial parameters jive with his assessments?
“You kind of wonder,’’ he said. “It’s new, that’s probably the biggest thing. It’s new for the first time, but I wasn’t nervous about it at all because we’ve been interacting for a couple of months and planning and talking. I saw the operation, I saw the way they prepared. I thought the preparation was at a really, really high level, very detailed and they were ready. They knew the players and they knew the values.”
Harbaugh continues to quote his first general manager with the Ravens, Ozzie Newsome, about finding “the right player at the right price’’ in free agency. Nearly two decades with the same franchise can create someone set in his ways.
As far as the NFL Draft, Harbaugh was quite interested in seeing how a different team approached the massive undertaking of assembling a strategy and putting together a comprehensive draft board.
Schoen has his college scouts together in one room for open give-and-take. The Ravens did not do that. Harbaugh observed Schoen’s approach with the Giants and came away impressed.
“It’s not like we’ve sat down and we’ve laid out the whole draft process and we’ve had this big conversation,” Harbaugh said. “We just talked about, ‘What if we operate this way? This is how the meetings will look.’ I might be like, ‘Yeah, well, okay,’ then we’ll talk about that. This makes sense. And I like that.
“I think the Giants, from what I’ve seen, have a great process. I love the way we’re operating, I’m looking forward to playing it through.”
Schoen previously worked with Brian Daboll, a first-time head coach.
This was a different experience in that Harbaugh has a tried-and-true formula and he knows exactly what he wants at each position on the field. This allowed the Giants to look at a free agent and consider if that player would fit in the Ravens’ scheme that Harbaugh championed for so long.
“I mean, we literally, in our scouting reports, ‘This guy looks like a Baltimore guard or a Baltimore outside linebacker or whatever,’” Schoen said. “People just know what that means within the room. They’re gonna be tough, you’re gonna be physical. That hasn’t changed for him since he’s been coaching, and we’re gonna try to build the roster to mirror those philosophies.’’
It is still early and there is much more work to get done.
Harbaugh and the Giants have not even gone through a draft together. Thus far, ownership is thrilled — amazed, really — with how quickly the Harbaugh-Schoen partnership coalesced. The strong sense is Schoen, entering the final year of his contract, will receive an extension sometime after the draft.
“I’m really excited about the people in New York,’’ Harbaugh said, “and how well they do their jobs.”
