John Harbaugh coached Lamar Jackson to a pair of MVPs in Baltimore, but the duo couldn’t find a way to navigate through the playoffs to a Super Bowl before Harbaugh was dismissed after the 2025 season.
Harbaugh’s overall record meant that he only spent a short time out of work before landing as the head coach of the Giants and his chances of finding a way back to the big game will be heavily impacted by his new quarterback. Jaxson Dart showed ability as a runner and a passer in his 12 rookie starts and Harbaugh said on The Dominique Foxworth Show that he sees a chance to do “a lot of the stuff that we did in Baltimore with Lamar” in terms of attacking defenses on the ground and in the air in multiple ways.
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“Jaxson’s capable of doing a lot of things,” Harbaugh said. “Like he can live in a lot of different worlds, football-wise. He can live in a power-running game, obviously, and a power-running game protects the quarterback because you can hand the ball off and get yards and make people defend that and keep them honest. Then, it opens up your play-action passing game. . . . That stuff, we’re gonna be in those worlds. But now we can also get in the gun or we can get in the pistol, and we can run RPOs, we can run quarterback-driven runs.”
Dart’s flashes as a rookie were mitigated by a concussion that kept him out of two games and concussion checks that forced him out of parts of other contests. That’s made his ability to stay on the field a question heading into his second season, but Harbaugh downplayed concerns about Dart’s style by again citing Jackson.
“You say something like that to Lamar, and he kinda just looks at you like you’ve got three heads,” Harbaugh said. “It’s like, ‘No, I’m gonna play ball, I’m gonna play ball.’ I just knew, I trusted that he was gonna protect himself because he wants to be out there and he wants to play. It’s not the type of a sport where — you can’t put yourself in bubble wrap.”
Harbaugh’s feelings will be put to the test this fall and he’ll need to be right about Dart for the Giants to fully blossom.
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