Giants done, so it’s self-preservation time

IT’S JUST October, not even close to Halloween, and the season is already over for the Giants. The sickening sight of Odell Beckham squirming in pain on the turf in the fourth quarter with a broken ankle symbolizes this fractured Giants season that could end with GM Jerry Reese being told to clean out his office, and if things get 2-14 or 3-13 bad, Ben McAdoo could be calling the moving company, too.

This wasn’t Beckham spraining his ankle in Cleveland. This was one of those injuries where limbs are pointing in a direction they are not meant to go.

“It’s tough to see any guy leave the game,” Justin Pugh said. “Any of my teammates, my brothers, leave the game, it’s tough to see. He was in some pain. I’m just praying that he’s all right.”

It’s no longer about scoreboard watching for the Giants to see how the Cowboys, Eagles and Washington are doing. It’s not about tie-breakers and positioning for playoff seeding. It’s all about players and coaches and the general manager shifting into self-preservation mode to save their jobs.

Right before the season, I picked the Giants to beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Last week, I provided them a road map, even though they had not won any of their first four games, for how to get hot and finish 9-7 and still make the playoffs.

The Giants took one look at that road map and drove the season right into a ditch. They are now 0-5 for just the fourth time in their 93year history (1976, 1979, 2013), not counting the 1987 season when the strike replacement team accounted for the last three losses in the 0-5 start.

So, the last 11 games are all getting to the finish line to see whether John Mara and Steve Tisch are going to fire Reese and McAdoo or consider this season an aberration. Or was last year’s 11-5 team the aberration?

The 27-22 loss Sunday to the Chargers, who were 0-4 and even more dysfunctional than the Giants, was a microcosm of everything that has gone wrong since the 2011 Super Bowl season: It was the third straight game they’ve blown a lead in the fourth quarter, they lost their three top receivers in Beckham and Sterling Shepard and Brandon Marshall, who suffered ankle injuries of unannounced severity, and then the killer fumble by an undersiege Eli Manning at the Giants 23 with 3:46 left that set up Philip Rivers’ game-winning 10-yard touchdown pass to Melvin Gordon.

Mara and Tisch had every right to look at the progress made in McAdoo’s first season and believe it was just the first step back to the Super Bowl. Instead, the Giants will miss the playoffs for the fifth time in the last six years.

Wellington Mara, the late patriarch of the organization, always said he could deal with fans booing, as they’ve now done frequently in each of the two home games, but the red flag was raised by indifference in the form of empty seats. There were plenty of empty seats Sunday and even more in the fourth quarter when the game was on the line. Can you imagine the sea of drab gray at MetLife in December when they have four cold weather home games?

That could force Mara and Tisch into tough decisions:

lWhen I asked Reese after the game about OBJ’s injury, he said, “I can’t talk to you about that.” He would have given the same answer if I asked him the day of the week. He is not scheduled to speak until the bye the week of Oct. 23 and any other comments before then are considered a breach of his self-imposed protocol.

Reese’s drafts, other than big hits on Beckham and Landon Collins, have been non-productive in recent years. He covered up so many of his misses by spending a lot of the owners’ money last year on free agents Olivier Vernon, Snacks Harrison and Janoris Jenkins after Mara put Reese on notice when Tom Coughlin was fired after the 2015 season. Coughlin was bitter about being fired and Reese barely avoided getting booted out with him.

lThe Reese situation is complicated by McAdoo being in only his second year. If the Giants fire Reese, will it be fair to the new GM to make him keep McAdoo? That rarely works unless the GM is being promoted from within. McAdoo seems over his head this year trying to live up to expectations and hasn’t come up with an answer during the 0-5 start.

“Listen, I get paid to win, not merely compete, and right now we’re 0-5,” McAdoo said. “I look in the mirror and I have to do a better job.”

The fans have turned on McAdoo. The owners will notice.

lSuck For Sam or Josh or whoever. If the Giants have a top five or six draft pick and can get a potential franchise quarterback to take over in a year or two from Manning, can they afford not to take him? It all depends how they feel about Davis Webb, their third-round pick this year. We knew all along this would be a Suck For Sam season in New York. Manning has never had any escapability and can’t operate behind an inferior offensive line. He’s looked older than 36 in the first five games and it will get worse without Beckham. ara and Tisch will never say it during the season, but the entire organization is on double secret probation. Is it just a coincidence the Giants have not won a game since Capt. Beckham and his merry band of receivers went on the Miami boat trip before the playoff game in Green Bay?

Happy New Year. The Giants are on to 2018.

M