NO SHUR THING

GIANTS COACH HAS 9 GAMES TO PROVE HE DESERVES THIRD YEAR

IF YOU are a Giants fan, it is fair for you to wonder whether Pat Shurmur is the right coach to lead you out of this desert of despair. Shurmur isn’t on the hot seat just yet, but his mandate now is threefold: Win some damn games, keep the locker room unified and, most of all, develop Daniel Jones. Because should Jones regress instead of progress, Shurmur’s seat will only get warmer and warmer. The growing pains are predictable, yes, but Shurmur better start making a convincing case to the jury now. No one in their right mind had the 2019 Giants pegged as a playoff team. The switch from Eli Manning to Jones after two games was definitive proof this season was always about next season — when Jones could hit the ground running the way Manning did in his second season after seven starts as a rookie. It pained John Mara to fire Ben McAdoo after only two seasons, because that is not the Giants Way. And Mara and Dave Gettleman — who didn’t sign Odell Beckham Jr. to trade him — didn’t hire Shurmur to fire him after two seasons.

Of course the won-lost record always matters in the end, although to be fair, Shurmur’s 7-16 record has to be graded on somewhat of a curve because it comes in the midst of a large-scale rebuild, with a rookie quarterback no less.

But Sunday’s 27-21 loss to the Cardinals raised red flags about Shurmur’s motivational skills — the Giants simply were not ready from the jump — and game management — that third-and-18 draw and eschewing the punt on fourthand-15 at their own 33-yard line.

“We gotta coach better, we gotta play better,” Shurmur said.

Coaching better wound have meant Shurmur being flexible enough to change his fourthand-15 pass attempt.

“The flip side of it is if you punt the ball away you may never see it again,” Shurmur said.

Coaching better would have been a more aggressive play call than Saquon Barkley’s 3-yard draw.

“Saquon took that same play and went for 68 yards against Dallas last year,” Shurmur said. “It popped through the first level. We didn’t probably block it as well as we needed to at the second level.”

Everybody can have a bad day, but that was an alarmingly bad day, and this is careening toward another bad season, because if you can’t beat the Kyler Murray-Kliff Kingsbury Cardinals at home, who can Giants fans expect to beat, other than the Dolphins and Redskins? Asked if he would do the same fourth-and-15 thing again, Shurmur said: “In the moment, that’s the decision I made. When you sit back and you look at it after the fact, you always evaluate it.”

Gettleman and Shurmur have extolled the virtues of the culture, which means Shurmur will be expected to keep the locker room from fracturing the way it did under McAdoo.

A former Hall of Fame Giants coach once told us that you are what your record says you are, and another 5-11 season — or worse — will not sit well with hierarchy or fans.

So these next nine games will be a referendum on his leadership — and, more than anything, on whether Shurmur can be the quarterback-whisperer he was hired to be to nurture Jones and get the arrow pointed up. Right now it is not pointing up. Jones’ predictable growing pains have gotten worse since he led that stirring comeback in Tampa and was hailed as Danny Dimes.

Sam Darnold fixed his ball-security issues coming out of USC and Shurmur needs to coach them out of Jones.

“I think just making sure I have two hands on the ball in the pocket,” Jones said.

Giants fans who immediately began crowing that Jones is better than Darnold have been hushed. Jones is still learning when to be aggressive and when to check the ball down, and when to trust to his internal clock to tell him when predators are lurking.

The Cardinals contained Barkley and Evan Engram and forced Jones to hold the ball long enough — or too long — to sack him eight times, and no one can blame it on Ereck Flowers. Jones could have helped himself by targeting Barkley more than five times out of the backfield, by the way.

“I’m not gonna lose confidence,” Jones said.

The development of Manning’s successor is far and away the organization’s top mission statement, and it is up to Shurmur, with help from offensive coordinator Mike Shula and offensive assistant Ryan Roeder, to execute it.

“He’s tough, he’s resilient, and I think he’s got a bright future,” Shurmur said.

For Shurmur, the future is now. And his future rides on Jones, because Shurmur will not turn back to Manning.