John Harbaugh Got Tackled by His Own Running Back and Called Himself Washed Up. The Giants Are 4-2-1.
Devin Singletary ran 30 yards up the middle to end overtime in Houston on Sunday, sprinted to the sideline and hugged his head coach hard enough to put him on the ground. John Harbaugh is 64. He did not pop back up.
“I’m day-to-day right now,” Harbaugh joked on Monday. He is not hurt. No injury has been reported, and none is coming. What he was, by his own description, is embarrassed.
“It’s so bad. It’s so terrible,” Harbaugh said. “As I was going down, I just felt like a total non-athlete. Over the hill, washed up. I just felt so weak, so pathetic.”
That win put the Giants on top of the NFC East
New York went to Houston, gave up the lead inside the final minute of regulation, forced a three-and-out to open overtime and then needed three plays: a nine-yard J.J. McCarthy throw to Malik Nabers, a 42-yard Cam Skattebo run and Singletary’s walk-off. Giants 27, Texans 21.
That is 4-2-1, first place, and a bye week to enjoy it. This is a team that went 4-13 last season, fired Brian Daboll in November and finished under an interim coach.
Harbaugh’s explanation was not complicated. “We are where we are now because we didn’t quit,” he said this week. “We didn’t back down. We didn’t sulk.”
Baltimore let him go and New York had him hired in two weeks
Harbaugh spent 18 seasons with the Ravens. He went 180-113, won Super Bowl XLVII, reached 12 postseasons and was AP Coach of the Year in 2019. Baltimore fired him in January after a Week 18 loss to Pittsburgh cost the Ravens the AFC North and a playoff berth. The Giants hired him on Jan. 20 as the 21st head coach in franchise history, on a reported five-year deal. Baltimore hired Jesse Minter two days after that.
Firing a coach with that resume was always going to need results to justify it. Nine months later the Giants lead a division and the Ravens are chasing one.
The quarterback situation finally settled
Houston was the first start for McCarthy since the Giants sent Minnesota a 2027 fifth-round pick for him on Sept. 28, and he is the third quarterback to start a game for New York this season. Jaxson Dart tore up his knee in Week 2 and is done for the year. Jameis Winston took over, threw seven touchdowns against five interceptions, ranked 28th in QBR and lost the job.
McCarthy went 20 of 28 for 252 yards with a 99.1 passer rating in his debut. He is 23, he was the 10th pick in 2024, he lost his rookie season to a torn meniscus, and Minnesota moved on from him twice before August was over. A fifth-round pick for a starting quarterback who wins his first game is the kind of trade a front office frames.
Singletary earned the hug
Singletary is 29 and has spent the season as the complementary back behind Skattebo, who ran for a career-high 124 yards in Houston. Singletary had 18 carries for 80 yards on the year before Sunday. The 30-yard touchdown was his only rushing score of 2026 and roughly 38 percent of his rushing total. He also spent 2023 in Houston, which made it a reasonable place to do it.
Once he was on the ground, Harbaugh decided he approved. He called the tackle “football joy” and said it “made all the sense in the world.” He also laid out the bye-week practice plan: “No pads.”
New York is off until Nov. 8 at Philadelphia. Harbaugh has 11 days to recover from a hug, and the rest of the NFC East has 11 days to figure out why the team that won four games all of last year is sitting in front of them.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
