Old-School Revival: How Harbaugh is Rebuilding Giants’ DNA

The flashbacks are nearly impossible to ignore. New head coach John Harbaugh has begun cooking up a winning recipe for the New York Giants that takes a different key ingredient from each of the franchise's Super Bowl eras.

Stand up and take a bow, Bill Parcells and Tom Coughlin. Your influence on Harbaugh's "old-school" mentality has come full circle and appears to have pointed the organization back toward reaching the NFL's upper levels for the first time in many years.

And how fitting it is that the seeds for the turnaround are being planted during the 40th anniversary of Parcells leading the 1986 Giants to the first of their four Lombardi Trophies - two for Parcells and two for Coughlin.

Okay, let's pump the brakes for a moment. The results will always be about the players, their health, and their ability to play at least up to their expected level of production.

However, Harbaugh's mentality, which led to 12 postseason appearances and one Super Bowl title over 18 years with the Baltimore Ravens, features two "throwback" qualities to the Giants' past success and can offer significant reasons for optimism.

Harbaugh has sent a clear directive to the rest of the organization that he prioritizes more of a bully-ball mentality in shaping this roster. Strength, size, power, toughness, physicality, and grit are visible traits throughout the Giants' revamped roster, albeit still a work in progress.

He insists on having players "who love football" and show a strong, unwavering dedication to their craft.

All of those characteristics ought to sound familiar because they are exactly how one would describe the "Parcells guys" who made up the bulk of the rosters for the Super Bowl XXI and XXV champions.

Parcells had a strong preference for blue-collar "football" players who were strong enough to impose their will on the opposition, and Harbaugh's post-draft comments about literally beefing up the team, particularly in the trenches, said all you need to know.

"Definitely a priority. It's important," Harbaugh said. "... The fact that they're bigger players, longer, heavy-handed type guys is important, because especially in this division, you've got to play that way. Your interior offensive line has to be physical. Look at the defensive tackles in this league. Right down the road, especially.

"[Defensive] line, the same way. We want to be able to handle the offensive lines that we have to play against up front. Of course, we talked about stopping the run right out of the gates, right? They have to be big and strong to do that. You have to be athletic. You've got to be able to move. All those things are part of it, too. It's a big part of it."

And so is the coach's Coughlin-like disciplined and detailed approach to appreciating the spoils after the daily grind. Not that Parcells didn't have a structure–because he certainly did–but he was a master of using various motivational techniques to prod the team forward.

Harbaugh relies much more on his foundation of rules and the fervor for all of the little things within them that lead to the joys of victory, bringing the same determined attitude that Coughlin placed on the table.

"The league is a lot tighter than you might think," Harbaugh said recently.

"It's a tight margin proposition. Every game is close. ... so we want to win at all these tight margins. ... We're going to prepare that way, we’re going to meet that way, we’re going to lift the right way, we are going to talk ball that way. We are going to do everything we can as a team to make that happen."

For further insight, Big Blue Breakdown Live! host Paul Dottino will sort through the state of the team with Emory Hunt of CBS SportsHQ and Football Gameplan tonight at 8 p.m. ET. Listeners will also be able to participate via chat and audio/video calls.

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