The Giants are between coaches again, with no disrespect meant for their latest interim, Mike Kafka. The Jets might be in the exact same position a year from now. They thought they’d found their coach in Aaron Glenn, a proud ex-Jet, a Parcells guy. But there has been very little that’s happened this season to indicate that Glenn won’t be coaching for his job next season.
So here is where we are in pro football as we come to the end of another lost and dreary and unwatchable season for both our teams: Maybe there have been similar combined endings for the Giants and Jets. But there has never been one worse than this, whether it appears the Giants might have found their quarterback of the future or not.
We can make fun of the Browns, or the Raiders, or the Cardinals, or the Titans all we want, as if we’re somehow better than they are. We’re not. Neither one of our teams is better than any of them. The Giants and Jets, whatever happens between now and when this season is mercifully over, are at the bottom of everything again. Nobody in pro football has gone longer without making it to the postseason than the Jets, who still have a chance at their second 14-loss season in the last six. They thought they might be hiring a future coaching star in Glenn, and it might still turn out that way. For now, though, he has been as much of a disappointment as his team has.
Forget about the bad bet both Glenn and Darren Mougey placed on Justin Fields, which started a domino effect that now has them hiring quarterbacks off the street to back up Brady Cook, a kid whose name no Jets fan knew before the season started. It’s more than that. Right now, going into the Saints game, we are looking at what has too often been a tomato can defense coached by a defensive guy. Sometimes it seems that the biggest accomplishment from Glenn in his rookie season as HC of the NYJ was hiring a crackerjack special teams coach.
MetLife Stadium is even emptier and less lively for Jets games than it currently is for Giants games. Now, this late in the year, the Jets have fired their defensive coordinator, same as the Giants did earlier. You know where the football season really is in New York and New Jersey: Our teams only lead the league in that.
As bad as the Jets are, and as much of a wreck as they were last Sunday against the Jaguars in the game that did get Steve Wilks fired, they have still managed to win one more game than the Giants have. If both teams lose out – even with the Raiders on the schedule for the Giants and the Saints on the schedule for the Jets on Sunday – there is still a chance that the combined record for the year here turns out to be 5-29.
It is the Giants, though, who are once again in the market for a coach. If you count interims, the new guy will be their 7th since Tom Coughlin was shown the door. If the current general manager, Joe Schoen doesn’t make it, the Giants will also be hiring their third g.m. since Jerry Reese left. And, by the way, how do they keep Schoen around and ask him to help hire the new coach without offering him a contract extension, something that might have Giants fans considering putting more planes and banners in the air about the Stadium?
You know what the Giants need? They need a coach who is going to come in and change things the way Tom Thibodeau did with the Knicks. Because, really, what Giants football and Jets football have turned into lately is all those lost seasons the Knicks had until Leon Rose hired Thibodeau. Of course, it didn’t save Thibodeau in the end, even after he had the Knicks two victories away from the NBA Finals. And now that the Knicks are going good under Mike Brown – who is doing a terrific job – it is too easy for all the people from the Minutes Police after Thibodeau in his last season to conveniently forget who the Knicks were and what they were and what Madison Square Garden looked and felt like before Thibs showed up. Before Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns and OG and the ‘Nova Knicks, it was Thibs who gave the Knicks 33rd Street cred again.
I’ve quoted Ernie Accorsi plenty of times about how the NFL is a coaches league. It is. That is more apparent than ever this season when you look at the difference-maker Ben Johnson has been in Chicago; when you see Kyle Shanahan doing the coaching job of his life in San Francisco, where a wounded 49ers team still has a chance at being the No. 1 seed in the NFC. You look at the job Sean McVay is doing with the Rams, and the job Mike Macdonald is doing with the Seahawks, who also have their shot at the top seed. Throw the Packers Matt LaFleur in there, too. Guys like this are as much the stars of the season as quarterbacks.
Giants fans are already reading and hearing the names of hot assistants that are being thrown around, Klint Kubiak of the Seahawks and Jeff Hafley, the defensive coordinator of the Packers who has made such a big name for himself this season. Chris Shula will be in play, too, but with that last name you wonder if Mike McDaniel’s time with the Dolphins is finally about to run out and Shula will end up there. Ben Johnson was the hot guy a year ago because of the work he’d done as offensive coordinator with the Lions. Everybody can see the work he’s done with Caleb Williams and with the Bears as they’ve become more a surprise team than anybody else. Johnson has talent in Chicago, absolutely. We see the way the Bears can run the ball when Williams isn’t running around and throwing it. But it is clear, whatever happens the rest of the way, that Johnson looks like as much of an MVP as a coach as Shanahan especially has been in San Francisco.
In the last 50 years, the Giants have had two star head coaches: Parcells, Coughlin. Four Super Bowls between them. Parcells made them matter again, even though it took him a year. Coughlin came along 14 years after him. The Giants were in last place the year before Tom got here. They’re in last place again. Back at the bottom. They’ve been wrong too many times since Coughlin. Time for them to get it right. No question about that. Better question: Can they?
IF THE GIANTS HAVE TALENT HOW ARE THEY 2-12? TYLER KOLEK IS SHOWING SOMETHING & SAM DARNOLD DITCHED THE JETS STENCH …
Have the Giants and Jets considered blaming everything on Joe Biden?
I keep asking this question:
If the Giants are supposed to have all that talent on the defensive side of the ball, how is it that their record is 2-12 and you get the idea that the last time they won a game Eli was still the quarterback?
How come all those skill position guys can’t stop anybody when a game is on the line?
I still believe the Giants have to at least place a call to Marcus Freeman, the Notre Dame coach, during this coaching search of theirs.
Hey, he’s got all the time in the world right now.
It’s always fun at this time of year turning on a bowl game and the stands looking as if somebody just pulled a fire alarm.
Tyler Kolek is having a moment, isn’t he?
The game Sam Darnold played on Thursday night against the Rams, all the good and bad of it – and even the good luck – is the kind of theme-park ride Darnold is always going to be.
And guess what:
If Darnold were still a Jet, that backwards pass that turned into a two-point conversion would have turned into two points for the Rams, because one of their guys would have picked up the ball and run 100 yards with it.
You know what the Bills did last Sunday in Foxboro?
They gave you a Lee Corso game against the Patriots – “Not so fast, my friend.”
Fernando Mendoza seems to be a terrific player, a terrific teammate, a terrific son.
All that.
And maybe he is sure thing to be a star in the pros.
But put me down as wanting to see a little more, starting with the tournament.
The Thunder are a tremendous — and tremendously entertaining — team.
But tell me you’re not rooting for Lebron and Luka to at least make it as far as the Final Four this season.
If you’re not watching the rookie season Cooper Flagg is having, you sure ought to be.
I hope the Knicks and the Pistons go hard at each other all season at the top of the Eastern Conference, because I’m old enough to remember that rockfight of a playoff series they played against each other last spring.
Somebody’s going to be lucky to end up with Bo Bichette.
Is Heat Culture still a thing?
Hard to believe, truly, that it was 30 years ago this week that Coach Riley made his first appearance at the Garden as coach of the Heat.
Forget the Harry Styles banner at the top of the Garden.
The Knicks could have hung the new curtain next to the one for the Rangers’ regular season title.
Lane Kiffin is still at LSU, right?
You know the only news I want to hear out of the Giants before the end of the season?
That John Mara is getting better.
Finally today:
Merry Christmas to the readers of this column, and to all the readers of the Daily News.
We’re still here.
So are you.
May next year be better, for all us.
