​This is Part 6 of 26 in Art Stapleton’s New York Giants summer series Q&A. The Giants boast a Super Bowl-winning and potentially Hall of Fame-worthy head coach in John Harbaugh, a leader who can push the entire organization toward a championship standard the franchise has long searched for but largely failed to attain. The ovation from Giants fans at Beacon Theatre during the May Town Hall event was a sign of the enthusiasm surrounding Harbaugh, and he is poised to guide the team into a new era as the franchise enters its 102nd year. He demonstrated early on that he knows how to rally his audience.
Inside the arena, amid chants of “Cowboys suck,” a fan asked Harbaugh if he could guarantee that the Giants would stop being undermined by their NFC East rivals—the Cowboys, the Eagles, and the Commanders. With 193 career victories, Harbaugh answered with a pledge that sounded like a battle cry he will echo repeatedly from now until the season begins. “I could not care less about what happened last year or the year before that or ten years before that,” he said. “All I care about is tomorrow’s practice, because if tomorrow’s practice is the way it’s supposed to be, that will be one more step in the direction of being a good enough football team to kick the Cowboys’ ass.”
Meanwhile, the question session continues to provoke more inquiries than concrete answers as we set the summer stage and look ahead to defining the 2026 Giants season with 26 essential questions. The Giants have always drawn comparisons to their championship past, often measuring today’s squad against the teams that came before. Yet for more than a decade, the current group has rarely reached that lofty standard. When I pose these questions, I do so recognizing that the bar is set extremely high for this year’s core—Andrew Thomas, Jon Runyan, John Michael Schmitz, Sisi Mauigoa, and Jermaine Eluemunor. The challenge, however, is not insurmountable.
What the offensive line of the past—David Diehl, Rich Seubert, Shaun O’Hara, Chris Snee, and Kareem McKenzie—achieved for the Super Bowl XLII Giants was extraordinary. There was no complacency, no resting on laurels. It wasn’t until the following season, and likely beyond, that the line received widespread acknowledgement for its accomplishments. The Giants have endured nightmare scenarios along the offensive line before, often too many times, truthfully. As an organization from top to bottom, there is a belief that Francis “Sisi” Mauigoa can be the pivotal piece to flip the script, bridging the gap toward a more complete and competitive identity for the team.