New York Giants head coach Ben McAdoo is on about as hot of a seat as they come. I’m talking about a seat floating in boiling water with the seat heater cranked all the way up and broken in the on position. Also, all he has to eat is ghost peppers. And…well, you get the idea.
The Giants aren’t exactly turning heads through 11 weeks of the 2017 NFL season, mainly thanks to a non-existent offense (thanks to mainly to McAdoo, in my opinion). The Giants are so bad that they lost to the then-winless San Francisco 49ers. That prompting some soul-searching in the organization, and many people expected McAdoo to be gone.
Giants owner John Mara put those rumors to rest but expressed his severe disappointment with the way the organization was heading.
“Ben McAdoo is our head coach and has our support,” said Mara. “We are in the midst of an extremely disappointing season. Our performance this year, particularly the past two weeks, is inexcusable and frustrating. While we appreciate that our fans are unhappy with what has occurred, nobody is more upset than we are. Our plan is to do what we have always done, which is to not offer a running commentary on the season. It is our responsibility to determine the reasons for our poor performance and at the end of the year, we will evaluate the 2017 season in its entirety and make a determination on how we move forward.”
Of course, things don’t look great for McAdoo. And while this season was a bit of a fluke with guys like Brandon Marshall and Odell Beckham Jr. going down with injury. The head coach can’t be worried about his own position on or off the hot seat though, he just needs to worry about winning games.
“We’ll have to see how everybody responds,” McAdoo said late Monday afternoon. “Again, my focus is as it always is, on the week of preparation, to try to put a good plan together, help these coaches and players any way I can putting a good product on the field, and finding a way to get better.”
It’s certainly been tough on McAdoo, but there are still games to be played. And, hey, a second-half resurgence might just win his job back.
“I am disappointed, but I am determined to find a way to get it fixed,” continued McAdoo. “That’s where my focus is. No one expected our record to be what it is at this point, or us to be playing the type of football we are playing at this point. But we are, and we are what our record says we are, and the film reflects it. We need to find a way to improve.”
Let’s hope not on the whole keeping McAdoo thing, though. People like to blame Eli, they like to blame OBJ, they like to blame the defense, but we need to put a lot more of the Giants issues (not just this season, but last season as well) on McAdoo.
McAdoo does the same thing, he likes to blame Eli when the team doesn’t perform well on offense. He likes to tease at things like “Oh, we’ll evaluate, the quarterback position this week.”
No, you aren’t, Ben. You’re not going to bench a two-time Super Bowl champion because the offense has its troubles.
And let’s address the elephant in the room here: McAdoo can’t call a play to save his life. It’s hard to say that Eli is 100 percent at fault when he has (well, had) one of the best receiving corps in the NFL. He never had a problem scoring more than 20 points in a single game under Tom Coughlin.
So, what needs to be done? Well, for starters, the Giants need some sort of elixir for their wide receivers. Nothing much else to say there. But secondly, McAdoo should not be calling plays. Give it to literally anyone else. Let Eli call his own plays. Peyton Manning was basically doing that under Jim Caldwell with the Indianapolis Colts, and they made the Super Bowl under it.
Then, fire McAdoo—unless he can next to win out. And hey, beating the Kansas City Chiefs was a great start. 12-9 in overtime on all field goals. I’m not sure if that says more about the Giants or the Chiefs. But a win is a win, no matter how ugly.
Now, do the Giants have much going for them moving forward with a NFC Easy heavy schedule? Probably not. Although I’d love to see them hand it to the Philadelphia Eagles and make the path to a first round bye a little easier for the New Orleans Saints.
But that’s wishful thinking. In reality, the Giants should be thinking about who they’ll take with that top five draft pick.
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