NEW YORK — Change is uncomfortable.

John Harbaugh’s delay in signing his Giants contract, which dragged deep into Friday, was a reminder that hiring him will come with a price.

Not just a price in years and money. But a price in creating necessary but uncomfortable change to how the Giants have done things for a long time.

Harbaugh, 63, was still expected as of 3 p.m. ET Friday to sign on the dotted line eventually and make this official. The Giants have been planning a Tuesday press conference to introduce their head coach.

Dragging this out from an overnight agreement late Wednesday to the end of the week, however, indicates there are hard conversations happening about what the Giants will be granting Harbaugh as their new leader.

As ESPN’s Adam Schefter said in an update early Friday afternoon, “the final issues aren’t over money; it’s over language.”

There were rumblings on Friday that GM Joe Schoen’s role in this new dynamic could be one of the factors creating a hangup.

Harbaugh has more leverage right now than he has ever had before, and than he ever will have again. He has participated for years in direct personnel conversations with former Ravens GM Ozzie Newsome, one of the best to ever do the job, and with Baltimore GM Eric DeCosta.

There is no reason for Harbaugh to accept this job without decision-making power in personnel.

Several sources told the New York Daily News during the Giants’ courtship that they expected Harbaugh to either want Schoen gone or to reduce his power in the Giants’ new structure. So this should be no surprise to anyone.

Harbaugh and the Giants presumably had those tough conversations prior to him agreeing verbally to be their coach.

But maybe those proposed changes sounded easier to navigate during lunch and dinner conversations with Chris Mara and Schoen last Sunday and Wednesday than they did on Thursday and Friday when the two parties sat down to put them in writing.

“Joe can’t negotiate,” one league source said. “It becomes personal.”

The other topics expected to create discomfort when the Giants began their courtship were any of Harbaugh’s proposed changes to departments around the building.

The Giants’ training room, video department and public relations staff are three areas of the organization, for example, that have been insulated even from the supposed sweeping firings of previous regime changes.

Jettisoning long-tenured personnel with ties to ownership is one of the most sensitive subjects in the building, and if Harbaugh’s desire to bring his own people into New Jersey means getting rid of some of the most protected personnel behind the scenes in East Rutherford, N.J., that promises to ruffle feathers.

Again, these should have been topics that Harbaugh and the Mara and Tisch families and Schoen all discussed prior to the former Ravens coach agreeing to take the job overnight Wednesday.

But something clearly struck a nerve and held this up when they sat down to put it in writing.

Giants fans have to hope that the presence of Schoen, a high-ranking employee protected to this point by ownership, does not prevent the organization from landing its No. 1 target to be their next head coach.

The Giants typically let optics govern their decision-making, and the best way to avoid looking bad here would be to give Harbaugh what he wants, keep Schoen in a marginalized role and try to prevent the reality of their new arrangement from leaking.

So that’s good news for Giants fans: the team usually does whatever it feels will make them look the best in the short term.

If Schoen’s power and control is the primary reason for the hangup in Harbaugh signing, though, the most productive action to take would be to clean house.

The Giants needed a fresh start at GM when the season ended. And this dragged-out negotiation could be proof that they still do.

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