It’s becoming clear what John Harbaugh’s biggest challenge with the Giants will be

Ingrid Harbaugh, self-proclaimed bird nerd, was in her suburban Baltimore yard when her Merlin app identified the first-time visitor flying alone as a common raven.

A few days later, right before her husband’s football team played the Pittsburgh Steelers for the AFC North title, Ingrid was stopped at a traffic light when she saw the very same bird.

“It was huge, and when it was swooping down, I thought it was going to hit the windshield,” she recalled in February. “It swooped over the car, and I looked in the rearview mirror and saw it sitting behind me in the street. I drove off with the bird sitting there before it flew off above the traffic.

“I said to John, ‘I wonder if that means the Ravens are in the rearview mirror, already behind us.’”

John Harbaugh wondered whether he had his own sign that the end of an 18-year run was near. He was reading the Book of Acts a couple of days before that win-or-else game in Pittsburgh when this New Testament line struck him: “His office let another take.”

Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti took Harbaugh’s office after that 26-24 loss to the Steelers, and Harbaugh immediately turned his attention to the New York Giants. Even before he was fired, Harbaugh had ranked the Giants as his top choice among the teams expected to pursue him if he left Baltimore.

Harbaugh was aware the Giants had held internal discussions about his possible candidacy before their seasons had ended. He wanted them, and they wanted him.

Brian Daboll’s Giants were 13-38 over the last three years, and Harbaugh’s Ravens were 33-18. The Giants were 60 games under .500 over the last nine years, and Harbaugh was 41 games over .500 with Baltimore. The Giants have won only one playoff game over the last 14 years; Harbaugh had claimed eight of his 13 postseason victories, including a Super Bowl, in that time.

It seemed the perfect union of a coach who adored NFL history and a flagship franchise that had completely forgotten how to win. The Giants had past champs like Tom Coughlin, Eli Manning and Michael Strahan to sell Harbaugh on the glories of winning it all in New York. They had longtime senior executive Chris Mara to hold two private in-person meetings with Harbaugh and to persuade his brother, John, to give the coach the direct report to ownership he needed to take the job.

“We are going to compete for the playoffs and for championships,” John Harbaugh told The Athletic a half-hour after accepting. “I expect and want to make the playoffs next year.”

Harbaugh already knew it would be a monumental challenge to restore the Giants’ credibility before he endured an offseason that would surely remind him of just how far they have to go.

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With the start of training camp a week away, Cam Skattebo’s viral backflip and tumble onto his rump at Fanatics Fest — after suffering a gruesome season-ending leg injury last fall — was a fitting punctuation mark on the six-month Harbaugh honeymoon, as it were.

When the coach saw the clip on his phone, he told Bob Papa and Carl Banks of the “Bleav in Giants” podcast that his reaction was: “Dude, at least stick it. You know what I mean? Land the thing if you’re going to do it.”

The Giants have missed a few landings since hiring Harbaugh, who has had his hands full while assembling a bigger, more physical team that he hopes will deliver the franchise’s first season of double-digit victories in a decade. The coach has answered questions about football and non-football concerns that he wished were never in play.

Football: The Giants’ best player, Dexter Lawrence, forced his way out of town. Three players suffered Achilles tendon tears in the spring. Malik Nabers criticized Harbaugh’s NFL Draft picks while his return from a serious knee injury remained a mystery.

Non-football: Co-owner Steve Tisch’s disclosed ties to Jeffrey Epstein blitzed Harbaugh before he’d even settled into the job. Jaxson Dart’s decision to introduce President Donald Trump at a Rockland County, N.Y., rally (without properly informing his employer of his role) compelled teammate Abdul Carter to criticize his quarterback on social media and moved Harbaugh to extinguish a spreading fire.

The good news is that Harbaugh, 63, has been coaching NFL or Division I college ball since 1984. He faced his share of on- and off-field crises in Baltimore, where, as a former Philadelphia Eagles assistant, he took over a divided team and a defense that wanted coordinator Rex Ryan to get the job.

Harbaugh had tense standoffs with legacy defenders Ed Reed, Ray Lewis and Terrell Suggs and, during the 2012 season, held a sitdown with his players to address their vicious and personal attacks on his approach. “The meeting we just had,” Harbaugh told them, “would happen in no other meeting room in the National Football League. There’s no other coach who would tolerate what was said in here.”

Those Ravens players went out and won the Super Bowl.

Harbaugh has seen the good, the bad and the ugly in the NFL, and he knows what buttons to push to inspire athletes to come together and achieve things they weren’t sure they could.

The bad news? The Giants’ young, talented players have become high-profile figures without winning games. Rookies Dart, Skattebo and Carter, who didn’t exactly produce a clean sheet as the No. 3 pick in the 2025 draft, all contributed to a 4-13 record a year after Nabers, the No. 6 pick in 2024, was a big part of a 3-14 team.

Did they happen to notice that Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns did their pro-wrestling thing after the Knicks’ drought-busting championship?

By the definition of his position, Dart is the Giants’ first-rounder who needs to be held to the highest standard. The franchise’s OG of Super Bowl coaches, Bill Parcells, used to tell Phil Simms: “I don’t need any celebrity quarterback. I need a battlefield commander.”

Dart is a modern-day Broadway Joe. He has every right to enjoy the spoils of New York in the social media age as long as he understands that every decision he makes — as a potential franchise quarterback — will impact the locker room, the coaching staff, the front office and the fan base.

Dart is a primary reason Harbaugh accepted the Giants’ $100 million offer. At Fanatics Fest, Dart said his new coach has had a profound impact on the team’s culture. “Like how Harbs establishes the camaraderie between the team, the coaching staff, the standard,” the quarterback said. “It’s a different feeling. It’s a refreshing feeling.”

But it’s a daunting feeling, too, for anyone who has watched Giants football for most of the last 15 years. Months before Mike Brown led the Knicks on their magical run, Coughlin told Harbaugh a ticker-tape parade in the big city “is the most incredible thing ever.”

Harbaugh had a vision of what that would look like. “I want to be in that parade,” he said in the winter. “But with that being said, what I’m thinking about is what the team looks like that earns the right to be in that parade someday. What do we have to build to get there? That’s what I’m really consumed with.”

After 18 years as a head coach in Baltimore and another 10 as an assistant in Philadelphia, the new guy believes he’s ready for this ultimate challenge. When practice starts next Wednesday at the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia, millions of fans in the New York area will be wishing Harbaugh the best of luck.

He’ll definitely need it.