NEW YORK — In the middle of Thursday’s numerous NEw York Giants developments, from concerning player injuries to a startling contract extension for underperforming GM Joe Schoen, the only thing that truly mattered was happening on the field.

Head coach John Harbaugh gave his first-team offense with the ball on the 46-yard line, trailing the game by one point on third-and-10 with 14 seconds remaining. The play was as live as a football play can be during OTAs, when players are not hitting in full pads. Corner Greg Newsome II broke up Jaxson Dart’s pass.

Then Harbaugh gave the first-team offense the ball on the 45-yard line with the game tied, 15 seconds remaining in the second quarter and no timeouts. Dart hit Calvin Austin III down the right sideline for a completion. Austin got down to the ground, sprinted the ball to the middle of the field and got the ball spiked and the clock stopped.

Then Harbaugh gave the first-team offense the ball on the 47 with eight seconds remaining in the first half, down seven points, with eight seconds remaining. Ryan Miller dropped Dart’s pass.

Then Harbaugh sent Brandon Allen and the second-team offense on the field to do it all over again against the second-team defense.

Why does this matter? Because Harbaugh is spending time on game situations, on details, on repetitions that this team has not gotten in the past.

He is spending a ton of time early in practices in positional fundamentals, on leverage, on the boring things that lead to penalties and cost teams games when they’re not done right in crunch time and players are tired.

He is showing the players what is important: Executing at full speed. He is showing them how to do it in games: By doing it in practice first.

Dart and the players see what Harbaugh is doing, and they know it’s badly needed. They know why they’re doing it, too.

“This fan base and everything around it, everybody’s been so hungry for so long, especially to have an established culture and identity as a team, a product that can be consistent on the field each week,” Dart said Thursday. “Lucky for us, we got a coach who is well beyond established in what he’s done in his career. And I think everybody within the organization, it’s been really unique to just see the amount of buy-in we’ve had so far. And everybody’s just hungry each and every day, and I think it starts with the guy at the top.”

The guy at the top is the key to all of us. Especially because right now, what’s happening around him isn’t especially encouraging for the team’s immediate prospects in 2026 and potentially beyond.

Defensive tackle Roy Robertson-Harris, who left Thursday’s practice with an injury, suffered a season-ending torn Achilles, depleting an already thin and unimpressive interior defensive line group that is trying to replace the traded Dexter Lawrence’s impact and production.

That news hit like a ton of bricks on top of Thursday’s Harbaugh update on Malik Nabers: The coach acknowledged for the first time what has been obvious for a while, that the Giants’ top offensive player might not be available to play in Week 1.

Then the Giants leaked Schoen’s contract extension shortly before Game 2 of the Knicks’ and NBA’s Eastern Conference Final, which flipped the offseason optimism about a huge change to the organization’s operations upside down on its head.

Inarguably, the GM’s new contract reflects that what still drives the Giants’ decision-making is relationships in their building over the results on the field.

The good news is their $20 million a year head coach looks to be instilling the right on-field habits into his team, so maybe the football on Sundays will actually demonstrate the progress that only the Giants themselves apparently can see at the moment.

“It’s more about I’m competing against myself, my technique, my assignment, my ability to execute really fast,” Harbaugh said of how he wants his players to attack OTAs.

Harbaugh even had his offense running the ball at times with Tyrone Tracy Jr. and Devin Singletary in Thursday’s third OTA practice, with the offensive line opening holes at high speed.

The defense isn’t allowed to tackle, but that isn’t stopping the coach from insisting upon reps to create a physical and violent identity. That’s what he promised left tackle Andrew Thomas when he was hired, and that’s what the players are seeing early on.

“He called me when he first signed, and we spoke about the offensive line and the identity of the offense that we want to have, and being physically dominate up front and that I would be a big catalyst for that,” Thomas said. “I’m excited for that pressure. I’m going to lead those guys and be a great dominating unit. So we just got to continue to work to reach that.”

The work is happening. That is the best Giants news right now.

Nabers’ outlook is concerning and unclear. Robertson-Harris’ season-ending injury is a blow. Schoen’s contract extension is confusing at best.

But the work on the field is underway. A new kind of work. Harbaugh’s kind.

And that just might set all of the Giants’ pieces in the right place.

____

©2026 New York Daily News. Visit nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.