Mike Kafka is not a guy who rocks the boat.
He kept his head down and accepted being essentially completely sidelined as offensive coordinator last season when Brian Daboll took over play calling and elevated his buddy and quarterback coach Shea Tierney’s influence.
Kafka, an obviously bright offensive mind, is reserved. He is young. He is cautious. His career is just getting started.
He is not the type of person who is eager to have the firing of a coordinator on his resume only two weeks into his first-ever NFL head coaching opportunity.
So Kafka can say it was “my decision” to fire Giants defensive coordinator Shane Bowen on Monday. But the reality is that GM Joe Schoen’s fingerprints are all over this.
All over the decision to fire Bowen now, and all over the decision to name outside linebackers coach Charlie Bullen the interim DC.
Schoen, sources say, is feeling the heat.
His Giants (2-10) became the first NFL team officially eliminated from the playoffs for a second straight season on Monday.
Last season, they set a new franchise record with 10 straight losses. Monday in Detroit, they stretched their franchise record road losing streak to 12 in a row dating back to early fall 2024.
They have lost six in a row overall. They are 0-7 in road games this season.
And Kafka not only acknowledged that he and Schoen made the decision about Bowen collaboratively, he also pulled back the curtain on how intimately involved Schoen is in the entire operation
“Absolutely,” Kafka said Monday. “All those decisions that go through the football side of it, I have conversations with Joe and make sure we’re both on the same page and united on it.”
Asked if he had consulted the GM on Bullen’s appointment, Kafka said, “Yes, I did. All those conversations that, whether I’m thinking – and it happens throughout the week. Any of these decisions on play time, scheme, thoughts — we talked about some of the trick plays before the game, when I was gonna call those, so he had some anticipatory things. When he’s up in the box he can see how the flow of the game’s going.
“Yes, I did. All those conversations that, whether I’m thinking – and it happens throughout the week. Any of these decisions on play time, scheme, thoughts — we talked about some of the trick plays before the game, when I was gonna call those, so he had some anticipatory things. When he’s up in the box he can see how the flow of the game’s going.
“But any of these big decisions that come up, those are conversations that we had,” he continued. “We talked about them after the game, talked about them this morning and are just making sure we make the right decision for the team.”
It may alarm outsiders to hear that Schoen is so connected to the gameday coaching operation that he is discussing trick plays with the offensive play caller. Schoen and some of the Giants decision-makers certainly would like people to think there is a significant separation between the coaches and the front office when it’s time to place blame and accountability.
But this how they operate.
Bullen, a nice enough guy, has never called plays before, has gotten next to no production this season out of rookie No. 3 overall pick Abdul Carter and has not been able to contain the run on the outside.
But Brian Burns is having a career season under his coaching. There are no other real candidates to do the job on staff, and Schoen and Bullen are friends who worked together at the Miami Dolphins from 2012-16.
So he gets a crack at five weeks of calling the plays to help save his friend’s job.
Not to say that Bowen didn’t deserve to be fired. He absolutely did, much earlier than this. But the belief was that Daboll was keeping him around to fire him at the end of the season in an attempt to save himself.
Schoen and Daboll actually looked into firing Bowen last January after co-owner John Mara lamented how bad the defense was. So Bowen was close to one and done.
Schoen’s preferred candidate to replace Bowen was 2024 Cincinnati Bengals defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo, and Daboll wanted 2024 Chicago Bears head coach Matt Eberflus, a source said. But Schoen and Daboll couldn’t lure either coach to New York for that job.
Anarumo accepted the Indianapolis Colts’ defensive coordinator position, and Eberflus took over the Dallas Cowboys’ defense. So Schoen and Daboll had to run it back with Bowen.
Remember how Schoen and Daboll got themselves into this Bowen mess in the first place, too:
Daboll fired defensive assistants Drew and Kevin Wilkins in an attempt to cut the legs out from under defensive coordinator Wink Martindale after the 2023 season, and Martindale responded by resigning out of his loyalty to those coaches and a lack of belief in the team’s leadership.
That sent Schoen and Daboll scrambling to find a replacement for the most valuable coach on their staff, and several candidates turned them down or leveraged the Giants’ interest into promotions at their current team before they hired their fourth choice, Bowen, a Mike Vrabel Tennessee Titans disciple.
That dysfunction was not an isolated incident.
Schoen and Daboll had never done these jobs before when the Giants hired them in 2022 away from the Buffalo Bills. So they have been learning sloppily on the fly the past four years, leaving a trail of losing and leaks and damaged reputations in their wake.
Daboll, it should be noted, didn’t have any solutions as the Giants’ head coach to help Bowen fix the defensive side of the ball. And Bowen, as a lame duck DC coming out of 2024, had little to no chance to keep his job at the end of this season barring a dramatic turnaround.
So coughing up five double digit leads in road losses eliminated any sliver of hope for him.
No Giants catastrophe would be complete without the medical staff being involved, of course.
The only defense for Bowen would be that his best player, defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence, has had an awful season. And when Bowen was blamed Sunday night for rotating Lawrence off the field for Jahmyr Gibbs’ 69-yard game-winning touchdown in overtime, the reality was that Bowen was not rotating Lawrence.
Someone had told Kafka to limit Lawrence’s snaps due to an injury that had Lawrence “in tears on the sideline,” in Kafka’s words. Kafka would not disclose who told him to do that.
But the team’s personnel deficiencies, the lack of leadership in the locker room, the selective effort on the field in critical moments and the lack of belief all point back to Schoen. Even his most talented draft pick, Malik Nabers, was accusing the Giants of losing on purpose on social media Sunday night for crying out loud.
“Sometimes I think they b makin us lose on purpose,” Nabers wrote in a tweet. “Cause it’s no way, bro you throw the ball instead of running it to make em burn 2 timeouts?? then you dnt kick the field goal?? Then they have to go down and score!!! Football common sense!!!! Am I missing something?”
It all points back to Schoen, not just because he is in charge of picking the players, but because he is also intimately involved in their deployment and in the coaching staff’s inner workings, key decisions and — as Monday evidenced — firings.
Schoen now has a 3-21 record (.125) in the Giants’ last 24 games, a 5-24 record (.172) in the last 29 games, a 5-17-1 record (.217) against NFC East opponents, a 2-14-0 record (.125) against the Eagles and Cowboys and a 20-42-1 overall record (.317) in four regular seasons.
A head coach, two defensive coordinators, countless assistant coaches and Daniel Jones all now have taken the fall as scapegoats for the Giants’ constant losing and dysfunction, all while Schoen keeps his thumb on the scale.
Kafka was asked where ownership stands on big decisions like Bowen’s firing.
“They’re tied into all of our decisions that we make,” he said. “We talk it through, me and Joe, on the football side of it, and then Joe loops them in, loops them into all of our decisions. So they’re on the same page and they’re supporting us.”
Joe loops them in. To the next big change that he hopes is going to save his job — as one by one, everyone else loses theirs.
