Time for coach, GM to move on
Bye, bye, Ben and Jerry. Eli Manning was the first to lose his job, but John Mara made it clear Ben McAdoo and Jerry Reese shouldn’t necessarily be using their time to devise a plan to turn around the Giants in 2018. In fact, now might be a good time for Reese and McAdoo to book elevator times at the Giants facility to move their stuff from their second floor offices out to the parking lot in another month. You know, it gets busy around holiday time. Maybe they can get a two-fer with the moving company.
“I’m not going to address their job status,” Mara said Wednesday. “We obviously have some decisions to make in the offseason.”
Mara would not even guarantee McAdoo’s job is safe for the last five games.
“There’s no guarantees in life. (We) made (our) statement on that a couple of weeks ago, but there’s no guarantees in life,” Mara said.
He was referring to his joint statement with co-owner Steve Tisch on McAdoo’s status on Nov. 13, one day after the disgraceful loss to the 49ers, who were 0-9. “It is our responsibility to determine the reasons for our poor performance and at the end of the year, we will evaluate the 2017 season in its entirety and make a determination on how we move forward,” it said.
That doesn’t sound nearly as ominous as what he said Wednesday. Really, how can he bring back either Reese or McAdoo? The organization needs an overhaul.
When a team that is expected to contend for the Super Bowl flops and instead is 2-9 on the way to 2-14, it takes an incredibly patient owner to declare it an aberration, even after an 11-5 season, and bring everybody back to give it another shot. Mara is not a patient man.
The Giants were valued at $3.3 billion in September by Forbes — third behind the Cowboys and Patriots – and this season is not good for business.
If Manning is going down, Mara is not going to let him take the hit for the entire organization.
Big Blue Nation is so disgusted with McAdoo for this terrible season, that the clumsy handling of the Manning demotion has pushed them to the edge and will get him run out of town. I wouldn’t be surprised if many Giants fans forfeited their PSLs rather than buy 2018 season tickets if Mara doesn’t fire McAdoo and Reese.
Reese’s return might prompt picketing outside MetLife Stadium. Reese is the most unpopular twotime champion sports executive this town has ever seen and McAdoo is by far the most unpopular Giants head coach since the two-year run of Ray Handley following Bill Parcells in 1991-92.
Just a few weeks ago, Mara said at the league meetings on Oct. 19 when the Giants were 1-5 that his support of McAdoo and Reese had not wavered. “It’s hard enough to win in this league,” he said. “If the general manager and the head coach don’t have the support of ownership, it makes it almost impossible.”
But when he was asked Wednesday whether Manning’s demotion signals the end of his Giants career, he gave a revealing answer.
“I don’t think you should be writing his obituary just yet,” he said. “A lot of things can change between now and next spring and next season. We obviously have some tough decisions to make at the end of the year. Who knows what is going to happen?” Well, he does. The tough decisions: Will the Giants release Manning or trade him to a team of his choice? Can Manning return with a new coaching staff? Will Reese be fired? Will McAdoo be canned?
I asked Mara specifically if he was acknowledging that he has decisions to make on Reese and McAdoo. “Well, you have decisions to make every year on people after the season,” he said.
“You didn’t have to make a decision on McAdoo after last year, right?” I said.
“Well, you always have decisions to make, yeah. I just saw three baseball managers get fired after making the playoffs. So, you always have those decisions to make,” he said.
Then he was asked to assess McAdoo’s job performance this season.
“We’re 2-9. We’re 2-9, okay?” he said. “I’m embarrassed about that. Nobody’s doing a good job.”
McAdoo has been inept this season with his play calling until he gave it up, controlling the locker room, controlling OBJ before he went out in the fifth game and even executing the plan to ease Manning off the field.
Mara wanted Manning to continue to start with no definitive limit on how much he would play. Such as: If the Giants led the Raiders 21-3 at the half on Sunday, then it wasn’t a given Geno Smith would start the second half. But McAdoo screwed it up and alienated Manning by saying he would start the first half in Oakland and Smith would start the second half. Manning had no interest and Mara said he understood.
“I was hoping that he would continue to play and then we’d work out at what point the other quarterbacks go into the game,” he said. “It was presented the way that Ben thought it ought to be presented and could we have done it differently? I guess you could argue we could have. Yes,” Mara said. “The point was we did not want him on the bench. We wanted him to start the game and play some portion of the game and at some point work the other guys in.”
McAdoo could not even find the right way to bench a legend.
It’s just about time to reserve the elevator.