Fixing the New York Giants
FIXING THE NEW YORK GIANTS – It’s been a bad time to be a fan of football in and around New York. Over the past few seasons, the least embarrassing team to play in New Jersey has actually been Rutgers.
That’s a testament to Greg Schiano building the Scarlet Knights into something not horrible, but it’s also an indictment of both the New York Jets and the New York Giants. Over the past 12 years, the Jets and the Giants have combined to earn four winning seasons. At this point, the NHL might as well just assign the New Jersey Devils an outdoor game every season, because other than the 2014 Super Bowl, MetLife Stadium hasn’t seen a playoff game since 2011.
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I’ve written about the Jets here before. This time, I’m going to focus on the Giants. The NFC New York team has traditionally been the more competent of the two squads. The Giants have four Super Bowl trophies; the Jets have one. The Giants had a quality quarterback in Eli Manning for 13 seasons; the Jets have brought in two Packer retreads and found out why the Packers didn’t want them back. (Memo to whoever’s running the Jets in 2038: Don’t go get Jordan Love. Just don’t do it.)
But being better than the Jets just isn’t good enough for the Giants. They’re going into their 100th year next season, and their offense doesn’t look capable of carrying the load against anyone. Daniel Jones has been benched, and Tommy DeVito is the starter moving forward.
That’s a mess. Here’s a dive into fixing this proud franchise.
John Mara Needs to Step Back
The New York Giants have a long and proud tradition under the Mara family. However, they also have a tradition of holding on to power for too long.
Wellington Mara notoriously clung to the old ways of trying to build a team in the 1960s and 1970s, and the Giants stumbled badly in that stretch. It wasn’t until the notorious Miracle at the Meadowlands that Mara relented and turned to George Young as a full-time general manager. Once that change was made, the Giants became a power again, winning two Super Bowls.
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After Wellington Mara’s death in 2005, John Mara took over and showed much of the same acumen as his father and grandfather before him. The Giants quickly won another two Super Bowls under the younger Mara, and were generally one of the best-run franchises in that stretch. But John Mara is now 69, and his biggest flaw is that he’s too loyal to his guys.
Ben McAdoo got forced out of New York when he benched Eli Manning, at a time when Manning was probably a year past his expiration date. Dave Gettleman was allowed to retire as general manager at the end of four years when he probably should have been fired after two. The Giants handed out $160 million over four years to Daniel Jones, a staggering amount for a quarterback with one good year on his resume.
By all accounts, Mara is a decent man and the kind of boss you would love to have. But he should not be making the decisions on football at this time in his life. Loyalty is admirable, but the Giants have paid the price for it.
Foolish Contract Decisions
Obviously, quarterbacks are harder to find than running backs. In 90% of cases, you pay a quarterback before you pay a running back. Saquon Barkley is a rare exception, and the Giants watched him go to rival Philadelphia. The Eagles did not need the help from a New York perspective. The Giants essentially handed a rival that already had a quarterback a key weapon that they needed.
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In the process, they paid Daniel Jones $40 million a year. To their small credit, the Giants built an escape hatch into the deal after two years. That’s why they’re benching him now: they can get out of the deal after this year. They also don’t want to risk him getting a football injury and having his 2025 salary become fully guaranteed.
But the fact that the Giants had an escape hatch built into the deal says that they knew this was a bad bet. They were hoping against hope that Jones would turn into a quality starter and decided to spend two years and $80 million to find out. The reality is they should have already known. Jones has been in New York since 2019. The Giants had seen what he can do by now. And they should have known by now that he’s a replacement-level quarterback. Instead, they bet that Brian Daboll could make him what he wasn’t, and two more seasons have been wasted.
The Revolving Door
The Giants have largely done this to themselves by doing a terrible job of evaluating coaching talent. Once, this franchise was a model of coaching stability. Nobody can match the Steelers in that category, but the Giants did pretty well by hiring only five coaches (Bill Parcells, Ray Handley, Dan Reeves, Jim Fassel and Tom Coughlin) from 1983 to 2015. The Giants have had four full-time coaches and one interim choice over the past eight years.
It’s clear that this team has no stability right now. What probably needs to happen is a complete house cleaning. Brian Daboll hasn’t been the answer, and even though he wasn’t tied to Daniel Jones, it’s hard to see how he does any better with another quarterback. New York needs a total overhaul if it’s going to be elite again. And above all, the Giants need to find the right quarterback and surround him with talent. They didn’t address the line in Jones’ first few seasons, and that’s put him behind the curve in reading defenses.
They have to learn from this and get the right coach-quarterback combo. It worked wonders in Detroit, where Dan Campbell and Jared Goff have the Lions destroying everyone. It can work here too…if the owner can stay out of the way.
