Juggling play-calling along with coaching a heavy load
IF THE Giants’ offense continues to struggle Sunday against the Eagles in Philadelphia, there is sure to be more discussion about whether head coach Ben McAdoo should give up the play-calling duties. Jim Fassel has been there and done that.
Fassel was the Giants’ head coach from 1997 to 2003. He got the job after serving the previous six years as a quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator, including the 1991-1992 seasons with the Giants. He was considered to be an offensive guru, and along with his headcoaching duties, he remained the primary play-caller.
“I knew it was a big job,” Fassel told The Post on Friday. “Being a head coach isn’t just telling the coaches what to do. You’re dealing with the trainers, the video people, meeting with the general manager about personnel, scheduling and then dealing with the media. Then you’re putting the game plan together and preparing to call the plays. Time management is very, very important.”
Fassel called the plays until the 1999 preseason, when the death of his mother prompted him to hand those duties to his then offensive coordinator Sean Payton, now the Super Bowl-winning head coach of the Saints. The move wasn’t made official until that November.
“When you lose your mother and you’re flying here and there, it was time to hand it off, and I did,” Fassel said. “I told Sean, ‘I’m not going to tell anybody who calls the plays. If it goes well, I’ll tell them you did. If it goes bad, then I did.’ ”
It went well enough for the Giants to reach the Super Bowl in the 2000 season. But in 2002, the Giants’ offense began to sputter and Fassel reclaimed the play-calling duties from Payton.
“I wasn’t happy with the direction we were going,” Fassel said. “We had way too many formations. We’d shift and move and motion and they’d sit there and look at us.”
The Giants lost a heartbreaking playoff game at San Francisco that year, and Fassel was fired after the 2003 season. He was no longer viewed as the offensive guru.
There are questions about whether McAdoo should consider handing the play-calling duties to someone else after eight straight games of scoring 20 points or fewer. The Giants have opened the season 0-2 with an offense that ranks 30th in the league overall and 31st in points scored after losing 19-3 to the Cowboys and 24-10 to the Lions.
McAdoo insists play-calling is already a group effort.
“There are a lot of people who have their hand in playing calling,” he said. “One guy spits the play out to the quarterback.” Fassel says it’s more than that. “You’ve got to not let it get in the way,” he said. “Whoever is calling the game, it matters. You have to play the game in your head.”
Joe Gibbs and Bill Walsh called their own plays and won Super Bowls. It can be done. But calling plays can’t come at the expense of being a good head coach. Bobby Bowden once told Fassel it was important to get away from the game plan and think more about words than plays.
“He told me to take time to think about what I needed to tell the team,” Fassel said. “What do I need to get across to them to get them mentally ready? He told me, ‘You’re the head coach. If you’re not doing it, nobody is doing it.’ So after the game plan was done I would shut my door and think about what I needed to do as a head coach. Do I need to call a couple of guys in and chew them out? Do I need to lighten up and maybe shorten practice?”
McAdoo is doing it all right now and the results have been spotty, stretching back to last season. Another poor performance in Philadelphia and McAdoo might need to check his ego.