Here is what happened with the Giants this week when John Mara decided to keep Joe Schoen as his general manager and Brian Daboll as his coach: Two guys on hot seats stayed right there, like they should be paying rent. That’s the reality of the situation in which the Giants find themselves after the worst and most embarrassing season in their 100-year history, and so is this:
All the owner did, by acting as quickly as he did once the season was over, was try to look confident giving both of them what sounded more like a no-confidence vote the longer he spoke with the media.
“[It] better not take too long [for them to get results], because I’ve just about run out of patience,” Mara finally said.
Of course that begged a question from just about any Giants fan I know:
You mean the season we all just witnessed didn’t get you there, patience-wise? Because if 3-14, if the bottom falling out the way it did, really from the time the Giants got thrown down a flight of steps on the opening Sunday of the season against the Vikings, wasn’t enough to make him run out of patience with his current operation, what’s it going to take?
After the mistake of having Dave Gettleman as their general manager — and, to be fair to Gettleman, both Schoen and Daboll really made the playoffs a couple of years ago with what was essentially Gettleman’s team — and the coaching mistakes that were Ben McAdoo and Pat Shurmur and the immortal Joe Judge in succession, ownership has now decided not to make any major changes between the merciful end of this season and the beginning of the next one.
Now the current management team is given the responsibility of finding the team a quarterback if Cam Ward or Shedeur Sanders doesn’t fall to the Giants at No. 3. But why would anybody think that Schoen in particular is the right guy to make as important a personnel decision, either in the short run or the long run, as any Giants general manager has ever made at quarterback?
We’ll never know how much input Mara had when the Giants decided to extend Daniel Jones, and for big money, after Jones won them the one playoff game the Giants have won since their last Super Bowl 13 years ago this February. All we know for sure is that Jones’ contract goes on Schoen’s permanent record, even if they were basically able to get out from under it after just two seasons.
And Schoen is the executive who, having seen what we all saw from Jones before Jones hurt his knee in the fall of 2023, came into this season with no-backup plan, none, unless you consider Drew Lock and Tommy Cutlets a big-boy solution at backup quarterback. Jones was coming off an ACL injury, it had become clear early last season that he was never going to be the player and thrower and leader that Giants so desperately wanted him to be after taking him with the No. 6 pick in the draft. So, there was no safety net, not after Schoen realized before the last NFL draft that he wasn’t going to be able to swing a deal with the Patriots and move up to draft Drake Maye.
Now there is speculation that if the Vikings decide to keep Sam Darnold and let J.J. McCarthy go, that the Giants might be in play for McCarthy if either Ward or Sanders doesn’t fall to them. Please remember something, though, if the Giants really are sweet on McCarthy now, then why weren’t they sweet on him last April when they could have taken him with that same No. 6 pick that Gettleman had once used on Jones?
There is so much that is going to happen between now and the draft this coming April, but if it really does play out this way, you have to say it would be a very Giants thing, just because of the way everything has gone with them and for them over the past several years, if they had to perhaps put a No. 1 pick into a package for a quarterback they could have had when he was coming out of Michigan.
Listen, I like John Mara. I loved his father and I loved his mother and I grew up a Giants fan in central New York. There isn’t an owner in pro sports who has more skin in the game, just because of legendary family history, than Mara does. This has been a family business for 100 years. It is a family football business here the way it is in Pittsburgh with the Rooney family and with the Halas/McCaskey family in Chicago where, by the way, as much of a mess as the Bears are, they at least go forward with Caleb Williams.
The Ford family only goes back to 1963 with the Lions. The Cowboys only go back 36 years with Jerry Jones. By the way? It is practically a national pastime, with America’s Team, to make fun of Jones for talking too much, and having one coach after another be on the hot seat down in Dallas. But lately John Mara has started to act like Jones on training wheels. He just has. He said way more than he needed to the other day when he met with the media, as a way of trying to appease his fan base for the decision he’d just made with Schoen and Daboll.
Schoen, you bet, is the guy who let Saquon Barkley, a 2,000-yard rusher, walk out the door, amidst all of his tough talk on “Hard Knocks.” We keep hearing about what a good draft he had last time around. He had a decent draft, after taking Malik Nabers at No. 7, Nabers being such a supremely talented kid and such a baller that he put up the kind of numbers he did when it sometimes had to seem as if the ball was being thrown to him by you and me.
Now Schoen stays, if for no other reason that Mara doesn’t want to hire his third general manager since the Giants won their last Super Bowl with Jerry Reese in that job. According to Mara, Daboll stays, at least in part, because he was Coach of the Year two years ago. I like Daboll, too. He did go 9-7-1 with Jones as his quarterback and the Giants did win that playoff game, on the road, with Jones at quarterback. As I’ve said before, that ain’t nothing. It also ain’t enough for Giants fans these days.
The Giants have been a hot mess. They did not become less of one last Monday morning. All John did was kick the can — what has become a tomato can — down the road. He’s been wrong about a lot of things lately. He needs to be right about this, because the ones who have run out of patience are fans as good as we have around here.
NOTRE DAME’S FREEMAN CAN REALLY COACH, BRING BACK PETE & NOT MISSING AARON THAT MUCH …
That interception Drew Allar threw at the end against Notre Dame made you wonder, in the moment, if Allar were still right-handed.
But Allar isn’t the first quarterback to throw a pick that felt like a walk-off home run, and won’t be the last.
But as bad as Allar’s throw was on Thursday night, it wasn’t nearly as bad as Steve Sarkisian calling for that boneheaded sweep at the goal line at the end of Ohio State vs. Texas on Friday night.
Always remember that Peyton Manning, one of the greatest of them all, cost the Colts a Super Bowl one time when Tracy Porter of the Saints jumped a route on him in Miami.
If it can happen with somebody as great as Manning, it can happen to a college kid in the biggest game of his life.
Incidentally, and whatever happens in the championship game?
Marcus Freeman of Notre Dame has shown himself to be a total coaching star, before he turns 40.
Though you still sort of kind of have to wonder how in the world his team got beat by Northern Illinois.
If Uncle Steve can pony up $765 million for Juan Soto, there has to be a way for him to find enough money under the bed to bring back Pete Alonso.
Right?
The biggest reason of all to think that this Knicks season can end up being better — and longer — than the last one is Karl-Anthony Towns, who continues to put up Patrick Ewing numbers.
The Red Sox getting Garrett Crochet could turn out to be as big a pitching move in the AL East as the Yankees getting Max Fried.
And the Sox are spending a lot less money to do it.
How long before Kyrie gets tired of Dallas?
The Cavs and Thunder played a game the other night that reminded you of how, even in the regular season, the NBA can be so much more than a glorified game of H-O-R-S-E from out there beyond the arc.
Somehow the two teams managed to provide a terrific show while only combining for 26 made 3-pointers.
Imagine that.
The next time you’re watching one of those NFL pre-game shows, see how long they go in any given segment without cracking themselves up.
As a tennis guy, I love the Australian Open, just because it’s on when I go to bed and still on when I wake up in the morning.
I haven’t missed Aaron Rodgers this past week nearly as much as I thought I might.
I’d be perfectly fine if the Mets retired David Wright’s number twice.
Is there some way that the Giants and Jets can get clipped for congestion pricing over on Route 3?
People who still deny that climate change is real also believe that pigs can fly.
