Giants fire McAdoo and Reese
Sunday’s loss in Oakland proves to be the final straw. Steve Spagnuolo will take over as interim head coach.
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — The New York Giants made a rare in-season house cleaning, firing coach Ben McAdoo and general manager Jerry Reese on Monday, less than a year after the team made the playoffs for the first time since 2011.
Giants co-owner John Mara confirmed the moves at a hastily called news conference on Monday, saying no one incident led to the changes but that something had to be done with the team mired with a 2-10 record in a season where they expected to compete for a Super Bowl.
“This has been the perfect storm this season,” Mara said, who said he informed Reese and McAdoo of the decisions on Monday morning. “Everything that could have gone wrong this season has gone wrong.”
The dismissals came a day after the Giants lost in Oakland, with quarterback Eli Manning benched and the offensively inept team performing badly again. The firings cap an injury-marred season highlighted by the loss of catalyst wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. on Oct. 8.
Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo will take over as interim coach for the final four games. He coached the St. Louis Rams from 2009-11.
Mara did not know whether Manning will return as the starter this weekend against Dallas.
Assistant general manager Kevin Abrams will take over on an interim basis for Reese, who became general manager in 2007 and had two Super Bowl wins on his resume. But the Giants missed the playoffs four times in the last five years, and this year his failure to address offensive line problems played a major role in a horrible season.
Mara said Abrams and Spagnuolo will be offered the chance to be candidates for the head coaching and GM jobs. Former general manager Ernie Accorsi will be a consultant in hiring a new general manager which Mara wants in place before a coach.
The moves came less than a week after the 40-year-old McAdoo made one of his biggest mistakes of his short tenure, mishandling the decision to bench Manning, a two-time Super Bowl MVP. Mara was forced to address the matter the following day and said he wished the decision had been dealt with better.
McAdoo had a 13-16 record, and his firing is the first midseason head coaching move by the Giants since Bill Arnsparger was replaced seven games into the 1976 season by John McVay.
The 2-10 mark is the Giants’ worst 12-game record since they were 2-10 in 1976, and their worst since the advent of the 16game schedule in 1978.
A team that traces its NFL origins to 1925, the Giants have been an organization that for decades rarely shakes things up until after the season. Coaches get fired, but it’s at the end of a bad run and usually they get an extra season to fix things.
The general’s manager’s job has proceeded with orderly succession. The late George Young turned the team around in the 1980s and was replaced by Accorsi, who eventually gave way to Reese, who joined the team as a scout and worked his way to director of player personnel before getting the GM position.
Going into this season, no one could have expected that the Giants would be replacing a coach before it finished, coming off an 11-6 record in McAdoo’s first season.
Those expectations ended quickly. The Giants lost their first five games, the last three after the defense failed to hold fourth-quarter leads.
With the losses, word started to emerge that McAdoo was losing the team. His one-game suspensions of popular cornerbacks Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and Janoris Jenkins heightened the problem. According to several reports, some players also griped anonymously about having workouts on Saturdays, something the team also did last season.
Mara and co-owner Steve Tisch had come to McAdoo’s defense after an embarrassing loss to the then-winless 49ers on Nov. 12, saying his job was safe until the end of the season. His handling of the Manning benching seemed to seal his fate.
The Giants hired McAdoo away from Green Bay in 2014 to serve as Tom Coughlin’s offensive coordinator. He was elevated to head coach on Jan. 14, 2016, less than two weeks after Coughlin was forced out after missing the playoffs for the fourth straight season.