Within any institution, failure breeds dissension, which leads to declining trust in the institution’s leadership. An absence of trust creates irreparable fractures that severely weaken the infrastructure. This eventually leads to significant and dramatic change to the hierarchy.
This is the state of the New York Giants. The team’s image and reputation as a stable, well run organization by co-owners John Mara and Steve Tisch has been tarnished by dubious decisions not just this season, but over the past 13 years. The Giants have had three general managers, Jerry Reese, Dave Gettleman and Joe Schoen, and six head coaches, Tom Coughlin, Ben McAdoo, Steve Spagnuolo (as an interim coach for four games), Pat Shurmur, Joe Judge and Brian Daboll. Since winning the Super Bowl to end the 2011 season, the Giants have made the playoffs just twice, in the 2016 and 2022 seasons.
They will take the field versus the 4-7 Dallas Cowboys today on the road at 3:00 p.m. as arguably the worst of the 32 NFL teams. They earned that designation with a 20-17 overtime loss to the Carolina Panthers in Munich, Germany, on November 10. Then, this past Sunday, coming off of their bye-week, the team presented a product that was an affront to their fans’ sensibilities and support in the form of expensive tickets and time spent watching what can fairly be characterized as trash.
The Giants, in front of the home crowd at MetLife Stadium, were collectively subjugated and shamed by the 5-6 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The final score of 30-7 doesn’t accurately reflect the alarming optics and measurable implosion that was damning evidence of a need for profound reflection and requisite change by everyone involved. The players themselves said so.
“…We played soft, and they beat the s–t out of us today,” said Giants Pro Bowl defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence after the game.
Rookie wide receiver Malik Nabers, who labeled his team “soft as f–k” speaking with the media in the locker room following the defeat, was more nuanced in his assessment on Tuesday but the fundamental view was the same.
“After I looked at the game, it wasn’t soft,” Nabers said. “It was just a lack of technique and communication, and we just didn’t have the authority to go out there and win, I would say. We didn’t have the grit to go out there and win the game.”
Whether there is a correlation between the Giants hitting rock bottom and the bosses making a financial move to bench and then release former starting quarterback Daniel Jones last week is indeterminable. The Giants, no matter what spin they spew, benched Jones to protect themselves from the $23 million he would have been guaranteed next season in the event he suffered a prohibitive injury. Subsequently, once he rightly asked for a divorce, many of Jones’s teammates spoke out in solidarity with the well liked 2019 first round pick of the franchise and in opposition to the team’s leadership placing economics over the best interests of endeavoring to be competitive.
The saga will continue for another six games and then soul searching and restructuring will earnestly begin.