Training camp is almost here for the Giants, and with players set to report on Tuesday, July 28 and the first practice scheduled for Wednesday, July 29 at The Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia, the early conversation is already turning to what a realistic 2026 season might look like.
The betting market is not exactly treating New York like a powerhouse. FanDuel has the Giants at 7.5 wins in John Harbaugh’s first season as head coach, with the over at +100 and the under at -120.
Around Big Blue View, optimism runs a little hotter: in a poll there, 63% of voters picked the Giants to finish with seven to nine wins, while another 19% believed they could reach 10 or more. That’s a pretty strong vote of confidence for a team that has won just seven games total over the past two seasons.
Some of the optimism is tied to Harbaugh himself. In 18 seasons running the Ravens, he reached the playoffs 12 times and had only three losing seasons.
Just once, in 2015, did one of his teams finish with fewer than eight wins. He also brought Baltimore a Super Bowl title in 2012.
The Giants are obviously not stepping into the same situation Harbaugh inherited in 2008, when the Ravens already had Ozzie Newsome in place and were viewed as one of the league’s best-run organizations. Even so, Baltimore’s level of stability and success improved after Harbaugh arrived.
That matters because the Giants have been stuck in the mud for a while. They’ve gone 7-27 over the last two seasons, 13-38 over the last three, and in the last nine years they’ve had eight losing seasons.
Six times in that span, they failed to win even six games. It’s difficult to picture a Harbaugh team living in that kind of territory for long.
“The plan is to win every game,” Harbaugh said at his introductory press conference. “You go into every game planning to win that game.
That’s our expectation. That’s what we will be expecting to do.
But we’ve got to earn the right to expect that by how we go to work and prepare and what kind of a team that we make ourselves into.”
Still, it would be a mistake to assume the Giants are about to pull off the kind of instant leap New England just made. The Patriots went 4-13 in Bill Belichick’s final season in 2023 and then 4-13 again under Jerod Mayo in 2024. After that, they hired Mike Vrabel, reshaped the roster, leaned on a highly drafted second-year quarterback, and somehow surged to 14-3 and the AFC title in 2025.
There are obvious similarities. Both teams endured multiple ugly seasons.
Both brought in a veteran coach with a winning track record. Both have young quarterbacks in Drake Maye and Jaxson Dart.
Both also spent the offseason remaking the roster.
But the Patriots’ kind of jump is still the exception, not the norm. The Bears did it too, going from 5-12 in 2024 to 11-6 and the playoffs in 2025.
Then there’s Washington, which went from 4-13 in 2023 to 12-5 and the playoffs in 2024 before falling back to 5-12 last season. Big swings happen.
They just don’t always stick.
For the Giants, even an 8-9 finish in 2026 would look different than it did in Baltimore, where Harbaugh was fired after that record in 2025. A 7-10 season would also carry a different feel in New York, especially with Harbaugh in charge, Dawn Aponte in the building as another veteran voice, and Joe Schoen now having more experienced sounding boards around him than he has had before.
The roster is deeper, even if the Giants didn’t make a splashy free-agent run. They are moving in the right direction, but they are not there yet. There are still holes to fill and young players who need to develop before this thing looks the way they want it to.
Maybe the Giants shock the league and turn into the next overnight success story. Maybe they win the NFC East, though the Eagles and Cowboys are both good and Washington could be on the rise again. But a season around .500, with Jaxson Dart taking a step and young players like Abdul Carter, Arvell Reese, Sisi Mauigoa, Malachi Fields, Cam Skattebo, and Colton Hood showing they belong in the future, would still count as a positive year.
That’s the baseline worth keeping in mind. If the Giants clear it, great. If they go beyond it, then the season gets a lot more interesting.
In Other News...
This Giants Rookie Already Faces A Brutal Camp Reality
Bobby Jamison-Travis arrived in camp with the usual rookie hope, but the path for a sixth-round defensive tackle is already looking steep. The Giants have built a roster that is fairly settled in a lot of places, which leaves late-round newcomers fighting for a narrow opening, especially along the interior defensive line where depth is still being sorted out.
Jamison-Travis is in the mix with several veterans and other depth options, and that alone tells the story of how tight this battle is shaping up to be. For a rookie trying to carve out a role, every practice rep matters, because the margin between sticking around and being squeezed off the roster is already thin before the pads even come on. [Read more 🡒]
Giants Finally Took Something Back From The Titans This Offseason
The Giants added another body to a defensive front that needed one, bringing in lineman C.J. Ravenell and making a corresponding roster move to clear space. It is the kind of low-key summer transaction that can still matter for a team trying to sort out depth, especially when the player comes with some familiarity in the building and a track record of fitting into multiple systems.
Ravenells path has already taken him through Baltimore and Tennessee, and his connections to the current coaching staff give this move a little more context than a standard waiver pickup. For the Giants, the appeal is straightforward: add a player who knows the league, knows some of the people around him, and can help stabilize a position group that needed another option. [Read more 🡒]
Giants Week 1 Receiver Projection Sparks A Frustrating New Debate
A rookie receiver who has been turning heads in OTAs is already at the center of a familiar Giants conversation, and it starts with how the Week 1 depth chart might look. Malachi Fields, a third-round pick with the size and contested-catch skill set that can stand out quickly in camp, has given the staff something to think about as the summer rolls on, even with Darnell Mooney and Darius Slayton projected to open as the top wideouts.
Fields path gets more interesting because the Giants are still sorting out the rest of the room, and Malik Nabers is not a sure thing to be fully available when the season opens. That leaves the rookie in the kind of in-between spot that can change fast if injuries linger, and it is exactly the sort of situation that can turn a quiet projection into a much bigger debate by the time Week 1 arrives. [Read more 🡒]