MARA HAS TO OWN UP TO IT
Giant ax falls on Ben, Jerry
A fog hung over East Rutherford on Monday morning. Around 10:30 a.m., Giants coowner John Mara fired GM Jerry Reese. Then he fired head coach Ben McAdoo. And then the day ended with Reese packing his car in the dark at 5 p.m. under the floodlights, while McAdoo left unseen.
Dec. 4, 2017, forever will be remembered as Blue Monday — a total house-cleaning of a franchise gone wrong.
Assistant GM Kevin Abrams will take over as interim GM, and defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo will take over as interim head coach.
“I met this morning with Jerry Reese and Ben McAdoo and relieved both of them of their responsibilities,” a solemn Mara said to open a 2 p.m. press conference in the Giants’ auditorium. “(Co-owner) Steve Tisch and I met after the game (in Oakland Sunday) and agreed to talk this morning, which we did. And we agreed that wholesale changes needed to be made to this organization to get us back to the team that we expect to be. And we also agreed that it was pointless to wait any longer to make these changes.”
Mara said the general manager search “starts right away,” with ex-Giants GM Ernie Accorsi serving as a consultant to the process. And he hopes to have his GM in place before the head coach in an “ideal scenario.” He admitted firing Reese and McAdoo now “is somewhat of a tactical advantage” to start looking at candidates immediately with a franchise-defining draft and likely top-three pick awaiting in April.
Reese, 54, departs with two Super Bowl wins, in 2007 and 2011, but was on his way to missing the playoffs for the fifth time in the past six years primarily due to mismanagement of the roster and draft.
Reese’s first draft in 2007 contributed meaningful players to that year’s Super Bowl run with a roster mostly assembled by Accorsi, who now will direct the Giants’ search for a new GM. Reese also hit big in the 2014 firstround on Odell Beckham Jr. and in the 2015 second-round on Landon Collins.
But only 10 of Reese’s 43 draft picks from 2010-15 remain on the team. And his refusal this offseason going into Year 11 to upgrade the offensive line was nothing short of malpractice, while the signing of Brandon Marshall was a dud. He was spared two years ago when Tom Coughlin was shown the door but couldn’t survive a second historically bad season in three years.
“I don’t think there was any one final straw,” Mara said of the tipping point for Reese. “I just think that where we are as a franchise right now, you know, we’re 2-10. We’ve kind of been spiraling out of control. I just felt like we needed a complete overhaul. I don’t think there was any one event or one final act to precipitate that.”
McAdoo, 40, meanwhile, completed a dramatic fall from grace following a promising rookie season in which the Giants went 11-5 and snapped a four-year playoff drought. He was fired with two years remaining on a fouryear contract.
“I’ve been around long enough not to get shocked by many things, but I certainly did not see this coming,” Mara said of the startling turnaround.
McAdoo lost 11 of his last 13 games beginning with last January’s 38-13 blowout Wild Card playoff loss in Green Bay and finished with a 13-16 (.448) record as head coach, a position he took over after two seasons as Coughlin’s offensive coordinator coming from Mike McCarthy’s staff in Green Bay.
The deciding factor, even though Mara tried to deny it Monday, was McAdoo’s benching of Eli Manning that — while directed by Mara — sent the fan base over the edge, watching a coach with no credentials make their quarterback’s eyes well up with tears and end his consecutive start streak at 210 (second alltime to Brett Favre’s 297).
McAdoo’s Manning fiasco was only the latest embarrassment in a season rife with player suspensions, effort problems on defense, injuries, poor game plans, and anonymous player quotes ripping the coach and Spagnuolo.
All of that is why the Giants fired a coach midseason for the first time since 1976, when Bill Arnsparger was let go seven games into his third season at 7-28 (.200). LeRoy Andrews in 1930 was the only other Giants coach released in season. Jim Fassel announced his own firing with two games left in 2003 but coached the last two games.
The beginning of the end for McAdoo was that wild week in January before the 25-point loss in Green Bay: Odell Beckham Jr. and the receivers took a boat trip in Miami six days before the game, and then Beckham punched a hole in the wall at Lambeau Field after the loss. McAdoo did nothing to discipline Beckham, as he also did nothing when left tackle Ereck Flowers had shoved a reporter in Green Bay earlier that season.
Then this season, when Beckham lifted his leg and pretended to pee like a dog in the end zone in Philadelphia, McAdoo did nothing. Mara called Beckham’s actions unacceptable.
Mara said he spoke to several players concerned by blowout losses and poor efforts but said he did not get feedback that guys were quitting on the coach, and yet Sunday’s 24-17 loss to the Raiders at the Black Hole in Oakland was the Giants’ fifth loss in their last six games.
And three of their final four games will be home against NFC East rivals in the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday, the Philadelphia Eagles the following week and Washington on New Year’s Eve, and the threat of empty seats and more over-the-top outrage was a factor, too.
“I was certainly cognizant of what the fan reaction was likely to be over the last four weeks, but that wasn’t the final determining factor,” Mara said.
The Giants co-owner accurately did not blame injuries for the team’s horrible record and laid some of the responsibility at the feet of underperforming players.
“We still started out 0-5 with a relatively healthy roster up until that fifth game when all of our wide receivers got hurt,” Mara said.
The time for moving players out will come in the offseason. Monday, it was time for the GM and coach to go.