MIXED SPAG'
Coach loses debut, but signals change
AMID the silence of a devastated Giants locker room, Steve Spagnuolo went from one defensive player to another and whispered in his ear. First he chatted with Landon Collins, then Jason Pierre-Paul, and then on to linebacker Kelvin Sheppard.
What was said remained private, though it probably was similar to something he revealed to the media after the Cowboys scored 20 points in the fourth quarter to turn a close game into a 30-10 trouncing of the Giants at the Meadowlands on Sunday.
“I’m going to put a little bit of that on me,” Spagnuolo confessed seconds into his postgame press conference. “I didn’t like a couple of calls I had in the fourth quarter that resulted in bad plays for us defensively. I don’t want that to be on the players.”
The Cowboys had pass completions of 81, 54, and 50 yards in the fourth quarter, all of them coming when the Giants tried to blitz. Two of the completions resulted in touchdowns, the other set up a score.
“When the play doesn’t go right, I always think that there could have been a better call,” Spagnuolo said. “That’s just how I am.”
Collins appreciated hearing that. He was burned for the 54-yard completion to Cole Beasley.
“That’s a coach that knows his mistakes and he knows how to take ownership,” the Giants safety said.
Maybe this is where the Giants start to take baby steps back to respectability. Maybe it starts with everyone taking accountability, starting with the head coach, who will point the finger at himself before throwing his players under the bus. All the Super Bowl hopes the Giants entered the season with started to fade when Ben McAdoo blamed Eli Manning for “sloppy quarterback play” after a Week 2 loss to the Lions.
Everything seemed to go off the rails from there. The breach between the players and the head coach became a wound that couldn’t be healed. McAdoo was fired last week. Spagnuolo, the defensive coordinator, was elevated to interim head coach.
Spagnuolo won’t be named the permanent coach. He is too closely tied to this season of misery.
The Giants fell to a disgraceful 2-11. After all, it was his defense that underachieved long before its fourthquarter meltdown Sunday. The Giants are a bad football team with a patchwork roster that isn’t going to get any better no matter who the quarterback or head coach is.
But if the head coach can finally take some accountability, admit his own mistakes and not be quick to publicly call out his players then maybe the players will be accountable as well. Perhaps that can be the start of something positive that can carry over into the off-season and OTAs during which the Giants seemed to have a half-hearted approach last spring.
Spagnuolo tried to accentuate the positives. That’s what coaches do.
“I’m really proud of the men in the locker room after all we went through this week,” he said. “The way we came out and the way we played for 3 ¹/2 quarters was something we could be proud of.”
We’ll give him that. The game was tied 10-10 before the Cowboys scored three touchdowns in the span of 4:41 using big-play pass completions. Only the 54-yarder from quarterback Dak Prescott to Beasley didn’t reach the end zone. A mixture of blown coverages and missed tackles contributed to the Cowboys outburst. Those mistakes won’t be fixed until new personnel arrive on the field and on the sidelines in 2018.
Right now, it’s about keeping their collective chin up and somehow getting through the final three weeks of the season with some dignity.
“I thought the adversity revealed a lot of good things in our football team,” Spagnuolo said. “I do believe that unity strengthens and I saw unity and that’s a sign of a stronger football team in my mind. I would hope they would continue to do that going forward.”
That’s all the Giants can hope for.