The Draw Play

Ben McAdoo didn’t last long after that screw up. Last Tuesday to this past Monday will likely go down as one of the worst weeks in the entire Giants franchise, and it should. A bad joke of a head coach, in the middle of a garbage year, pointlessly tanks a franchise legend’s record for pretty much nothing, and the entire fanbase turned on the team to the point where it’ll likely be years before a lot of us feel any reason to trust the Giants again. I’ve always made fun of the Giants from a place of love, but this past week it came from a place of hate. It was weird. I don’t want to hate them, but I kinda do.

I don’t even know if I’m happy about the firings. I’m glad Jerry Reese got canned, because I was afraid he was going to get Ben to take the fall like he managed with Coughlin, so that at least gave me slight hope.

But firing them on Monday? It’s too late, Mara. You already committed to the mistake. Now you’re just undoing what flimsy justification you still had left! If you are going to tank Eli’s streak, to insult him and the fanbase for the sake of looking at the future QB situation, at least fucking commit. With the streak dead and the damage done, going back to Eli feels…pointless. It’s too late. You knocked over the card tower, don’t rebuild it, you can’t. See what the other deck has. At this stage the only game Eli should really start is the last week, so he can get an appropriate sendoff in case it’s his final game as a Giant. Now Geno’s chance to do something is ruined, Davis Webb’s chance to show something is ruined, all for nothing. Eli’s streak ended for nothing. Nothing. I don’t consider the firings worth it, because they would have likely happened anyway, and they only happened this soon because of how badly this whole thing got handled.

As far as I’m concerned, Eli’s streak should count till his actual first non-start due to injury or legitimate benching. It won’t go into the record books, but it should be considered as such. Rivers is now the Iron Man and he should pass Eli in the early 2019 season. I expect him to get it. I’ll be happy for him when he does, because he will deserve it. I’ll just be sad that the record he broke ended in such insulting fashion.

Mara’s been pulling out the PR talk all week, and he’s pretty good at it honestly. I can see why it was so easy to buy into his BS before this, he’s pretty smooth. This as just such a big dent he can’t quite buff it all out this time. Claiming he “never expected Eli to react the way he did”, or “that the plan was to let Eli stay in until the game was well out of hand and then Ben took that into a terrible direction”. He’s claiming a bunch of stuff that is just plausible enough that it could very well be true, and I’d be willing to believe if this hadn’t been such a blow to any trust the franchise had.

For one thing, he had roughly 4-5 days to prevent this shit. The news broke Tuesday and the outrage was immediate and loud. There was ample time to step in and curb McAdoo’s decision. But he didn’t. I think it’s because he straight up knew exactly what the plan was. I think they were all totally on board with this nonsense, made the decision expecting blowback, telling themselves “we made the hard choice”, then stuck with it. But the outrage was greater than expected and threatened their wallets. This wasn’t grumbly fans, this was calls of protest and sheer disgust on levels I haven’t seen Giants fans reach before. I think Mara waited to see if Geno would actually play well, because if he did and the Giants won, they could claim it was the right move and stick with it. But it obviously didn’t work, and Mara realized this was only going to get worse, so he cut his losses and hit the reset button. Now the team will limp to the finish line without any reason for us to care. At least before this we had Eli’s streak to be proud of. Now I just feel bad for Eli. What does he even have left to play for here? If I was him I would ask for a release at the end of this season.

McAdoo might find another job someday, probably as a position coach like Tomsula or something. He was always in way over his head. Reese…I won’t deny to be happy to see him gone but he did play his part in two Super Bowls. He was garbage at drafting past round 2 and only did anything in free agency when his job was threatened, but there are worse GMs and his 2007 class and 2010-2011 free agent acquisitions did help propel the Giants to a couple of championships. But during his tenure the Giants never really felt like a true championship contender outside 2008. The two wins are largely viewed as flukes or underdog stories by the public at large. That’s partially on him. The team was clearly good enough to win it all, but they never actually felt like it except the one year that got tanked when Plax shot himself. He just sucked at finding depth and building a complete team. He was with the organization for 20 years. The tenure ended poorly, but I think he deserves a friendly wave on the way out.

I’m done giving a shit about the team this year. I have no reason to care until week 17 when Eli gets a send off. I don’t know who we’ll get as GM or coach and I’ll worry about it when it counts. We’ll probably fuck it up.