If you look at where the Giants are and where they’ve been, you can only come to this conclusion:
The hiring of the next coach will be as important a hire as they have ever made.
Oh, sure. Because of where they are and what they’ve become, it goes right in there with Pete Rozelle basically hiring George Young for them, and Young hiring Bill Parcells, and then the hiring of Tom Coughlin later. Coughlin: Who would win them the same two Super Bowls that Parcells did, and whose stature grows the more time goes on.
The Giants had fallen on hard times before Young and Parcells arrived at old Giants Stadium, had come out of a decade — the ’70s — as dreary as anything that had ever happened to them, all the way back to 1925. When Parcells did take over as coach, they were 20 years removed from their last trip to the NFL championship game, against the Bears in 1963.
It wasn’t nearly as bad, for nearly as long, when Coughlin showed up in Jersey. In fact, it was just a couple of years earlier that Jim Fassel had coached them to the Super Bowl.
Now it has been nearly 14 years since the Giants won their last Super Bowl, and second against Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. And even with two playoff appearances since then, and one playoff victory under Brian Daboll, the Giants have become part of their sport’s underclass. Over the last eight seasons, it is the Giants and Jets who have had the two worst records in the NFL. Now the Giants are 2-10 after a 3-14 record the year before this. They’re lucky there’s a team like the Jets in their world, and a Cleveland Browns.
The Giants presently have an interim coach in Mike Kafka. They have a new defensive coordinator. They haven’t won a game — even before Jaxson Dart went into the blue tent — since they fell apart in a rather epic fashion against the Broncos in Denver a month-and-a-half ago. On Monday night comes a game against the Patriots, their old nemesis but now a team they would very much like to be next season. That’s if they can find a coach like Mike Vrabel to pair with Dart, and work the kind of magic Vrabel is working with Drake Maye.
The Patriots are showing you just how fast things can change in the NFL. You know who else is showing you that, in real time and in-season? The Cowboys. They started out the season as a bit of a joke themselves, especially after Jerry Jones had traded away Micah Parsons. It was the second week of the season when the Giants went toe-to-toe with them, even with Russell Wilson as their quarterback. The sides actually looked even that day, even as we were also witnessing the first of so many late-game dumpster fires to come.
By the way? There was a time this season when the Cowboys couldn’t stop anybody with a game on the line. Now they can. Quinnen Williams, whom they got from the Jets, has helped mightily with that. The Cowboys are figuring things out, and have now beaten the Eagles and the Chiefs — the two teams that played in the last Super Bowl — and have given themselves a shot, if an outside one, to make the playoffs.
It means that even Jerry Jones, as bad as he’s looked the past few years, may have finally figured things out, including with Brian Schottenheimer, his new coach. Lately, it appears as if Schottenheimer’s team can play with anybody. The Cowboys could have stayed down when they were 3-5-1. They got back up.
The Giants can get back up, as early as next season, but only if they hire the right coach.
They thought they had one with Daboll, who was Coach of the Year as a rookie. Things went downhill after that. Before that they had Ben McAdoo, and Pat Shurmur and Joe Judge, who turned out to be the worst of all of them.
Ernie Accorsi was in the room with John Mara when Coughlin was hired. Accorsi, of course, is the man who pulled off the draft day trade for Eli Manning, the most important deal for any Giants’ front-office man since Young drafted Lawrence Taylor. And here is what Ernie himself has always said:
“This is a coach’s league.”
It took years for the Giants to properly replace Parcells. They are still looking to properly replace the great Coughlin, who put them back on top. Now it is the job of ownership and Joe Schoen — if Schoen still has his job when this season is over — to find someone like him; find the kind of young guy that Parcells was (42 at the time) when he got the job. They either need to find the kind of dynamic coach that Kyle Shanahan has been with the 49ers or Sean McVay has been with the Rams, or they need to find the kind of successful veteran coach that Coughlin had been with Jacksonville, or that Vrabel was with the Titans before he came home to the Patriots, where he had played once.
Listen: No one knew that Andy Reid would get to Kansas City and become one of the great coaches in the history of the sport. But Reid did have bona fides when he was with the Eagles, including a Super Bowl appearance. It turned out Reid sure did know how to do it. So did Parcells when he was the veteran coach leaving the Giants. Look what he did with the Patriots. Look what he did with a 1-15 Jets team.
“I’ll call somebody ‘dumb’ or ‘stupid’ if they make a dumb or stupid play,” Bill said one time. “I don’t know any other word for it, and if they don’t like the word, that’s too bad.”
The Giants have played dumb for far too long, about too many things. Even this year, they made the determination that a shot case like Wilson was a better bet to start the season for them than Jameis Winston. Genius.
You know that right now, this minute, the Giants are over-evaluating the talent they have. You know they’ll always wonder how everything would look if they’d somehow survived that game in Denver, and just gotten a few more stops against the Packers and the Lions. I’m sure that thinking is one of the reasons why Schoen is still around even if Daboll is gone, even if Daboll is the one who wanted the Giants to draft Dart.
Now Schoen is tasked with leading the coaching search. After getting a lot of things wrong, he needs to get this right. But John Mara will be a part of this, too. A long time after John got it exactly right with Tom Coughlin, I want him to hit it out of the park again.
THE LOST KNICKS MEMO, TIME FOR BILL TO DO HIS JOB & MARCUS IS A REAL HIT …
Slide, Jaxson.
Slide.
It might not just be the Pistons who didn’t get the memo about the Knicks automatically making the NBA Finals just as soon as Jimmy Dolan and Leon Rose could get rid of Tom Thibodeau.
It might be the Magic, and the Hawks…
Bill Riordan, who came out of boxing to so brilliantly manage Jimmy Connors’ tennis career in the 1970s, said this one time:
“You’re only in trouble when you start to believe your own material.”
I know about all the Lions’ injuries, but I’m starting to wonder if that might not be happening with Dan Campbell.
Notre Dame has absolutely come on strong after the way they started.
They still haven’t played anybody.
You know how famous Bill Belichick was for saying “Do your job” in New England?
Tar Heel football fans probably want to tell him to do the same right about now.
I mean, they know he can get a date.
Good for Elle Duncan, a pro, getting her new gig at Netflix.
And by the way?
You know what ought to be a Netflix comedy series?
That room with the members of college football’s Selection Committee in it.
I know I’m not nearly as interested in where Lane Kiffin is going to coach next season as I ought to be.
The Giants block better than the Eagles these days.
If only the Jets had somebody like Shedeur.
What, too soon?
I was so pleased to talk with Earl Monroe on the occasion of his 81st birthday last season.
It was not just a joy to watch this man play basketball in his unique and magical way.
It has been an even greater joy to know him.
One thing has not changed, across all the years:
He is one of the very best people I have ever known in this business.
One night this season, they should have a night where The Pearl and Clyde, the greatest Knick backcourt of them all, stand once more on the floor at Madison Square Garden.
Just the two of them.
Hearing the cheers — together — one more time.
Matthew Stafford got to leave the Lions before it was too late to become a big winner in pro football.
It’s a shame that Barry Sanders never got to do the same.
From everything I have been reading and hearing, it’s clear that Marcus Semien might be the best .230 hitter in all of baseball history.
OK, “The Morning Show” sure did go out with a bang.
Finally today:
Happy Birthday this week to our daughter, Hannah, the youngest of our four children.
I told her the other night at her party something I have told her plenty of times before:
I’m still happy every time she comes through the door, and sad every time she walks out.
One more time:
Boy oh boy, what a girl.
Check that.
What a spectacular young woman.
