It doesn’t happen like this a lot. It doesn’t always fall as perfectly as it all fell for the Giants. The Giants, you may recall, fired Brian Daboll on Nov. 10. They played their final game under interim coach Mike Kafka on Jan. 4, beating the Cowboys (always a fun day, even when both teams are sprinting for the door) 34-17.
About 7 ½ hours later, in Pittsburgh, Baltimore’s Tyler Loop missed a 44-yard field goal at the final gun so instead of the Ravens sneaking into the playoffs at 9-8, the Steelers slithered in at 10-7.
And two days later, the Ravens fired John Harbaugh.
Now, it took 11 days before the Giants formally hired Harbaugh, but in truth the moment Loop’s kick drifted wide right (of course; the first of many hopeful omens for the Giants), a Harbaugh/Giants get-together was about as inevitable as the day on the set of “To Have and Have Not” in 1944 when Humphrey Bogart first locked eyes with Lauren Bacall.
