Chris Mara Flew to Baltimore in January to Recruit John Harbaugh Himself
The quote making the rounds this week has a specific backstory. Mara has also become ownership's public voice more often this year, as his brother and co-owner, John Mara, is treated for cancer.
Giants senior player personnel executive Chris Mara said this week that hope has turned into expectations under new head coach John Harbaugh.
"The way I look at it, we've used the word hope in the last 10 or 12 years," Mara told ESPN New York radio hosts Gary Myers and Dave Rothenberg on Friday. "The hope now has turned into expectations. At least for me it has. I don't hope we win this year. I expect it. I think everybody else does, too. When it comes to November and December, I expect to be playing games that mean something late in the season."
The interview was first reported by Sports Illustrated's On SI, which first quoted Chris Mara's Aug. 21 interview on ESPN New York radio.
Several of those reports referred to Mara as a Giants co-owner. His title, per the New York Daily News, is senior player personnel executive and board director; the team's own website lists him only as senior player personnel executive. The Giants' recognized co-owners are John Mara, the team's president and CEO, and Steve Tisch. Chris Mara joined the organization as vice president of player evaluation in 2003, was promoted to senior vice president of player personnel in 2011 and received his current title in 2022. He is in his 22nd season with the team across two stints.
Mara's role in the Harbaugh hire was more direct than a title suggests. Baltimore fired Harbaugh on Jan. 6, 2026, after a 26-24 playoff loss to Pittsburgh, according to CNN. Former Giants coach Tom Coughlin connected him with Mara and pushed Mara to move fast, telling him to "get your [butt] down there," Mara told Newsday. Three days later, Mara flew to Baltimore and met Harbaugh at his house.
"The perspective was to act and not react because we thought he was very gettable for us," Mara told Newsday. "I just wanted to make an impression on him from an ownership standpoint. I think I did that. I didn't think he'd be available, I really didn't. But for us, it was a home run."
Mara said he told John Mara and Steve Tisch the Friday night before Wild Card weekend, "I'm driving to Baltimore tomorrow. I'm gonna talk to John," according to the New York Daily News. The meeting laid the groundwork for an in-person interview at the Giants' facility the following week. The sides agreed to a deal reported at five years by ESPN's Adam Schefter, and Harbaugh's statement that day, published by CNN, thanked "John Mara, Steve Tisch, Chris Mara, and Joe Schoen for the opportunity to lead the New York Giants." Harbaugh was introduced at a press conference on Jan. 20.
Mara has been more visible publicly this year in part because John Mara is being treated for cancer. "I'm just helping him anyway I can," Chris Mara told the Daily News in January. "He's here every day pretty much. We talk all the time. No one has a better idea about the league than him. I've learned a lot from it, and I've kind of taken the reins when he's not able to."
Chris Mara has drawn scrutiny over his front-office influence before, in a different context. In January 2022, questions surfaced about whether Mara, then senior vice president of player personnel, and Tim McDonnell, John Mara's nephew and then co-director of player personnel, had outsized sway over football decisions because of their family ties. John Mara addressed it directly at a press conference that month.
"Chris is a very skilled evaluator but he does not have any authority here, other than the fact I will go to him on occasion and ask him about players," John Mara said, according to the New York Post.
That episode centered on the Giants' general manager search, not the head-coaching process, and nothing in Harbaugh's hiring has drawn similar questions.
The Giants haven't won the NFC East since 2011, the same year they last won the Super Bowl, and have reached the playoffs twice since Coughlin's departure in 2016. Their first test under Harbaugh comes Sept. 13, at home against the Dallas Cowboys.