John Mara poked his head out of an entrance to the Giants locker room, saw a small media stakeout and headed back inside. An hour later, with that stubborn tape-recorder-toting group still waiting in the MetLife Stadium corridor, word filtered out that he had found another exit. The co-owner had avoided the questions about his mess of a football team.
For now.
The Giants had just lost to the injury-depleted Eagles, 34-17, with a few thousand giddy Philadelphia fans singing the team’s fight song in the final minutes. “Fly Eagles Fly!” they cheered in the rain, knowing they’ll enjoy something next week that the Giants haven’t had in eight years (and counting): A home playoff game.
Playoffs? The loss was just another reminder of how far this Giants team is from competing in a league built on parity, and more than that, how far Mara’s franchise has fallen since its last improbable Super Bowl title. Once upon a time, the Giants head coaching vacancy was the most prized in the NFL, but now it looks like a career killer.
The news around the league on Sunday night was proof of that. Ron Rivera, the best coaching candidate on the market, was already headed to Washington for an interview on Monday that almost certainly will lead to a job offer. Rivera could have a deal with Washington, the only team that made the Giants look good this season, before Black Monday is over.
Imagine: The former Carolina Panthers coach would rather sign on with owner Dan Snyder and his dysfunctional Redskins than reunite with his former boss, Dave Gettleman, and the Giants in East Rutherford.
That’s how toxic the Giants are. Even the Cleveland Browns got ahead of the Giants on the coaching carousel on Sunday, firing the overmatched Freddie Kitchens. The Giants are expected to do the same with Pat Shurmur, but the players and assistant coaches exited the stadium without knowing what the hell was going on with team leadership.
“We’ll talk Tuesday,” Gettleman said as he left the locker room. That’s a clear sign that the general manager expects to be giving a media address about the state of the team and not cleaning out his office. Which begs the question, of course.
Why?
I can make a case -- albeit a weak one -- to keep the head coach. He was handed a roster devoid of defensive playmakers, then handcuffed with a fading veteran quarterback in Eli Manning during his first season and a mistake-prone rookie in Daniel Jones in his second. Ask yourself this: How many more games do the Giants win with a better coach? One? Two?
To be clear: He should still go. But, if he does, how does Gettleman get to stay? What has the GM done aside from drafting the Duke quarterback last spring that gives anyone confidence that he’ll turn things around in the coming years?
Sometimes, stability is a crutch. Sometimes, staying the course isn’t proof of confidence and conviction, but to the contrary, it is a sign of stubbornness. Mara won’t be declaring that they believe in Gettleman if they keep him. He’ll be sending a message to the rest of the NFL that they have assessed his performance and, well, he doesn’t have a better idea.
Remember: The last time the Giants “blew things up” was anything but a dramatic change. Mara turned to his old GM, Ernie Accorsi, to lead a search that landed on a man in Gettleman who had spent 13 years in his team’s front office. Gettleman slid into the corner office, and for the most part, this was business as usual for the franchise. And not in a good way.
Every Giants can chronicle Gettleman’s mistakes. He doled out big contracts to unworthy free agents -- Nate Solder ($62 million), Kareem Martin ($15 million), Patrick Omameh ($15 million), on and on -- and made win-now moves like trading for Alec Ogletree when the team’s roster demanded a complete tear down.
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The Giants should be hoarding draft assets. Instead, with the team at 2-6, Gettleman traded two picks to the Jets for a woefully underachieving defensive tackle in Leonard Williams. He’ll have the inside track to re-sign Williams, but given that he record just a half sack for this defense in eight games, why would any GM give him the fat contract he insists he wants?
The problem with Gettleman runs deeper than evaluation mistakes. He is 68-year-old go-with-my-gut dinosaur in a league trending toward analytics. It wasn’t just that he took a running back -- and yes, I know, an elite one -- with the No. 2 overall pick in his first draft. It was that he openly mocked the idea that he would pass on his “gold jacket guy” even when all evidence points to the diminished value of his position.
Gettleman never considered trading back for more assets in 2018. He never fielded other offers for Odell Beckham Jr. when the Browns came calling this offseason. That trade might be a rare notch in the win column for the GM -- Beckham hasn’t produced much other than headaches in Cleveland -- until you remember who made the combustible wide receiver the highest paid player at his position. That, of course, was also Gettleman.
He has badly mismanaged the team’s salary cap, failed to draft offensive linemen despite ample proof that blocking was the team’s most overwhelming need and declared that Manning had plenty in the tank when any objective observer saw the quarterback’s needle pointing to E. Is this really the man Mara and co-owner Steve Tisch are going to trust with another high draft pick and an armored truck filled with cash for free agents this offseason?
In a perfect world, the man who would take the fall for the Giants failures is the one at the top. This mess falls on Mara, who once was consider the NFL’s gold standard when it came to owners. The most encouraging news to emerge from the holiday week was the New York Post report that Tisch, long the silent partner in the Giants marriage, “wants a fresh start.”
Maybe Tisch will demand a shakeup when the two men meet early this week. Chances are, though, he’ll fall in line. That’s always how it works with the Giants, a franchise that reverses course as nimbly as an aircraft carrier.
The Giants should thank Gettleman for having the conviction to draft Jones, who (if he can solve his turnover issues) looks like the longterm answer at quarterback, and hand him the title of “special adviser.” Then they should pair an up-and-coming head coach like Baylor’s Matt Rhule with a forward-thinking GM who can bring a modern approach to one of the NFL’s oldest franchises.
Odds are, they won’t. They’ll take another half measure, casting aside Shurmur and letting Gettleman hire his replacement. There is a reason the best candidate on the market is looking elsewhere. And to think, Giants fans thought the misery ended on Sunday.
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Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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