John Harbaugh knows the type of player he wants.

Jaxson Dart is one of them.

"The quarterback is kind of important," Harbaugh said with his trademark smirk during his introductory press conference. "That's kind of a big deal. I'm excited about Jaxson Dart. I've seen your backup quarterback, too, Jameis (Winston), up close and personal two years ago. I saw him complete a bunch of passes. I know, there you go. I saw you. You remember that game, right? It was a great game, for you."

Harbaugh went 28-8 against the Browns in his 18 seasons with the Ravens, but Winston led Cleveland to one of those rare wins in 2024. The former No. 1 pick signed with the Giants following the season and played a part in developing the team's quarterback of the future.

"It starts with the quarterback for sure," Harbaugh said. "You build your team around your quarterback. You build your team around your players and what they do well. I like the way (Dart) plays. I like his talent, skill set, all the things he's accomplished, but more than that, I like who he is and what he's about. To me, he's about football. This young guy loves football. He wants to talk football all the time and that's kind of what I like doing too. So, I think we're going to have a lot of great conversations. I can't wait to get started with him."

In his inaugural 2008 season, Harbaugh set the NFL record for the most wins ever by a first-year head coach starting a rookie quarterback, who was Joe Flacco.

Four years later, Flacco was MVP of their Super Bowl XLVII victory.

Six years after that, the Ravens drafted future two-time league MVP Lamar Jackson with the final pick of the first round.

"It just takes an exceptional level of talent, playmaking ability, awareness, grit, all those different things," Harbaugh said. "Sometimes it's arm strength. Sometimes it's accuracy. It's almost always the ability to get out of the pocket and make a play. So, all those things that Jaxson has is what I'm excited about. It'll be fun. It'll be fun to get with him and do it one more time."

Dart led all rookie quarterbacks in rushing yards (487), rushing touchdowns (nine), and passer rating (91.7) in 2025.

He ended his rookie campaign with 24 total touchdowns, including a franchise-record nine rushing scores. The No. 25 overall draft pick trailed only Charlie Conerly (27 in 1948) and Daniel Jones (26 in 2019) for the most total touchdowns in Giants history by a rookie quarterback.

Dart also surpassed Josh Allen (eight rushing touchdowns in 2018) for the second-most by a rookie quarterback in the Super Bowl era, trailing only Cam Newton (14 rushing touchdowns in 2011). He also became the first rookie quarterback in NFL history to record a rushing touchdown in five consecutive games.

So, is Harbaugh surprised the Giants won only four games?

"It's not a question that, from a coaching perspective, you really ask because you understand what the league is like," Harbaugh said. "You watch the playoff games, it's a league of tight margins. Everybody is really good. Nobody is as bad as you say, as you think. Nobody is as good as you think. This is pro football. It's the NFL. Everybody is right there, so you've got to work really hard, you've got to do all the little things that make yourself as good of a teammate as you can be to give yourself a chance to play in the margins."

Harbaugh added: "So, let's get ourselves to that point. Let's try to win all the little things to give ourselves a chance to win and then try to find a way to win in the fourth quarter. When you don't have as many wins, you weren't able to do that. Really, if you look at the their season, that's what happened to the Giants, which is what happened to the Ravens last year, when we didn't win as many games as we should. That's how the NFL works."

Harbaugh, meanwhile, will begin his second act with the approach that carried him to sustained success in Baltimore. You have to evolve to survive.

"As soon as you start getting comfortable with some scheme, you're going to get overtaken quickly because everybody studies you," Harbaugh said. "You put a big offense out there. You gain 7,000 yards that's never been done before, everybody watches every one of your plays all spring and tries to find a way to stop you. So, you better be coming up with the next iteration of what you're going to do. I think constant evolution is a requirement just to survive. Isn't evolution and survival, you've got to evolve to survive? It just hit me. That's pretty good, right?"

He will add that epiphany to one he had a long time ago.

"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. This is a football team. We need guys that love everything about football. They love the games. They love the practices. They love the weightlifting. They love the meetings. They love the dining hall. They love every part of football.

"If you love football, guys, if you love football, you're going to want to be here. You're going to want to drive in that parking lot every single day. You're going to want to walk through those doors, you're going to want to walk up in those halls, you're going to want to get in front of that tape and watch tape every single day because you're going to be around a bunch of guys that love what you love. They love football, because that's what we're going to be doing, football, all the time, every day. If there's guys around that don't love football, Joe, 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."