The Giants have fired defensive backs coach Jerome Henderson and safeties coach Mike Treier, sources confirmed to the Daily News on Wednesday.
Henderson and Treier both worked for the Giants for the past five seasons.
Henderson interviewed for the defensive coordinator vacancy filled by Shane Bowen one year ago and received a promotion to defensive passing game coordinator when he stayed for 2024. Treier grew from the team’s 2020 defensive quality control coach to their 2021-22 assistant DBs coach to their safeties coach in 2023-24. NFL Network first reported their firings.
The secondary’s performance in 2023 and 2024 fluctuated with changes in coordinator and personnel.
The 2023 Giants defense tied for an NFL-high 31 takeaways (18 interceptions) under coordinator Wink Martindale with Xavier McKinney at free safety and rookie corner Deonte Banks developing encouragingly.
Brian Daboll’s dysfunction led to Martindale’s resignation. Joe Schoen let McKinney sign in Green Bay in free agency. Daboll settled on Bowen after several other candidates didn’t take the job. And the 2024 Giants defense finished bottom five in the NFL takeaways (15) and 31st out of 32 defenses in interceptions (five).
When Banks regressed, Henderson was quick to hold his young corner accountable publicly but Daboll was not.
Another quieter change to the secondary was the defensive staff addition of former Northwestern associate head coach Matt MacPherson.
MacPherson, a former DePauw college teammate of Schoen’s, had been fired by Northwestern last January after allegedly witnessing players engaging in different forms of hazing, including naked pull-ups and dry-humping of players during a ritual called “running.”
MacPherson worked with the Giants all season, but his addition and presence since training camp was never officially announced by the Giants organization. It’s unclear why that is.
The firings of Henderson and Treier come nine days after co-owner John Mara complained that “I didn’t think our defense played very well this year at all” and added: “I’m tired of watching teams go up and down the field on us.”
Several NFL sources believed during the regular season that Bowen would try to reunite with his former Titans colleague Mike Vrabel wherever he landed next. And now Vrabel has the New England Patriots head coaching job and a defensive coordinator vacancy to fill.
Whether Bowen is staying or not, though, blaming the secondary’s coaches for the defense’s shortcomings adds up to how Daboll and the Giants were assigning blame during the season.
Defensive line coach Andre Patterson actually had the audacity during an early December interview to blame the secondary for the team’s horrific run defense while skirting blame for the line.
“Oh, I think we’ve done a good job against the run,” Patterson said. “It’s like I tell people all the time: you grow up in little league and in high school, ‘oh, the run game is the front seven. It’s the D-line and the linebackers.’ The NFL game isn’t that way.”
“They’re making those guys on the perimeter tackle,” the D-line coach continued. “They’re gonna make your corner tackle. They’re gonna make your safeties tackle. They’re gonna find a way to make those guys have to come up and make tackles. So our problem is not that we’re getting blown off the ball. That’s not our issue. We’ve just got to be better at when we get our hands on the guy, getting him on the ground.”
Obviously, that was not just a message being sold by the D-Line coach. It was coming from above him.
