Todd Monken began prepping for Giants reunion with ‘elite’ John Harbaugh before taking Browns job

INDIANAPOLIS — Todd Monken paused and allowed an ever so slight smile to crease his face. He was looking down from an elevated riser, and for a moment it seemed as if he was either annoyed or unappreciative of the question posed to him by The Post.

Not so. He was actually flattered by it.

It was no secret Monken was earmarked to accompany John Harbaugh to the Giants, coming aboard as the offensive coordinator. The offer was in place, and Monken was going to accept it. Yes, he was a candidate for the head coach vacancy with the Browns, but he was considered a long shot there. 

Had Monken been thinking about what he would inherit with the Giants’ offense and had he already started figuring out how his system would mesh with young quarterback Jaxson Dart?

“Of course,” Monken said, and paused once more.

“I mean, of course,” he said on Wednesday from the NFL Scouting Combine. “I was hopeful I would get the Cleveland Browns head-coaching job, that would be silly to say I wasn’t hopeful of that. But I was excited to go to New York with Coach [Harbaugh].’’

For more than a full week after his hiring by the Giants, Harbaugh expected he would land his first choice for offensive coordinator. He and Monken worked together for three years (2023-25) with the Ravens, and the pairing often was dynamic in Baltimore.

Lamar Jackson put together two of his best seasons working with Monken, and in 2024 the Ravens became the first team in NFL history to surpass 4,000 passing yards and 3,000 rushing yards in the same season.

It was easy to see why Harbaugh wanted Monken. When the Browns gave the 60-year-old his first NFL head coaching gig, Harbaugh had to pivot. He hired Matt Nagy, the former Bears head coach, who the past three years was the Chiefs offensive coordinator.

What will Nagy do with the Giants? Time will tell. How would Monken have handled the next phase of Dart’s development? We will never know.

What is certain is Monken would have been thrilled to continue his coaching journey by again joining up with Harbaugh, this time with the Giants.

“He’s elite in a lot of areas,’’ Monken said of Harbaugh. “I’ve said this many times: He’s got a gift for confronting anything that gets in the way of winning football without being confrontational. He just does. It’s unique. He doesn’t let it linger. He’ll come right down the hall and say, ‘This isn’t good enough. What can we do to change it? Where are we at?’ 

“And the other thing is, the offseason’s no joke. It’s football every day, man, it is. How are we going to get better? Every year I was with the Ravens it was ‘Offense 2.0, Offense 3.0.’ What are we going to do to improve? Take advantage of our players’ skill set. He’s nonstop, he’s about winning football.’’

Monken is now tasked with trying to inject some winning football into what has been a sad Browns situation. He will choose a quarterback between Shedeur Sanders and Deshaun Watson — quite a duo.

“Sure, I think it’s an open competition,’’ Monken said. “I don’t know why it wouldn’t be an open competition. I don’t think there’s enough on film over the last couple of years one way or the other to say we have a starting quarterback yet. Whether internally or externally.’’