What Giants, Jets can cling to as 2026 NFL season journeys begin with different feelings

That’s the Giants, and Andy is correct: Hope is a good thing. Hope has sustained you through acres of bad football the past decade and a half. Hope has nourished you these past eight months, ever since the arrival of John Harbaugh, who drove north on I-95 with his boundless supply of energy and optimism riding shotgun with him.

To say nothing of his .614 winning percentage across his first 18 years as a coach.

“They say New York is a different kind of place, and I would say that’s probably true, man,” Harbaugh said in January, the first words he ever spoke as the freshly introduced coach of the Giants. “This is pretty amazing right here. This is incredible. To see those players back there, see those guys smiling and ready to go to work, that gets me fired up, too.”

That enthusiasm has been contagious. After an extended winter of despair, Giants fans seem reengaged and fully recalibrated. You see blue everywhere.