Big Changes In The Big Apple

A week too late to reverse course and stop immense damage to a star player’s career and a franchise’s reputation, the New York Giants fired general manager Jerry Reese and coach Ben McAdoo.

The announcement on Monday was expected – it had begun to leak even before the Giants lost to the Oakland Raiders with Geno Smith, and not the benched Eli Manning, at quarterback.

Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo will be the interim head coach, taking over a 2-10 team that can play neither offense nor defense. Do not look for some radical reversal of form – the Giants lack the pieces due to injuries and Reese’s recent terrible drafts.

So Manning lost a string of consecutive starts (209, second longest in NFL history at his position) for nothing. The Giants lost to the Raiders for nothing. The Raiders even said Manning is a better quarterback than Smith – which is a little saying elephants are bigger than puppies. And Giants co-owner John Mara tried to take a little heat off the dismissed GM and coach with this remark about Manning’s one-game benching:

“You ought to stop blaming Ben and Jerry on that. If you want to blame anyone on that, blame me. I certainly had the power to overrule it if I wanted to. I chose not to do it.”

Well, we’ve yet to figure out how to fire an owner. He would not have had anything to overrule without the now-dumped duo bringing up the idea.

The next GM and coach have a massive rebuilding in front of them, just a year after Reese spent hundreds of millions to fix the defense and the Giants went 11-5 and made the playoffs. Their offense line is offensive, they have no running back, they desperately need injured Odell Beckham Jr. back to catch passes from whomever and the defense will take a bit of work.

Your friendly neighborhood blog never liked McAdoo (professionally). The blog thought Manning covered for McAdoo when he was offensive coordinator. And McAdoo’s suspensions of two defensive players this season this only gutted an underperforming unit and spoke to rampant dysfunction.

The Giants did the right thing. They did it way too late, after doing a terribly wrong thing to Manning.

We, as football fans, forgive (well, maybe in a few days). But we don’t forget. Reputations are hard to build and easy to ruin.

 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman