Players not giving up on him

When things went south under Ben McAdoo, they went south in a hurry. Players were obviously quitting, not showing up to practice, getting into fights with each other, leaking information to the media, engaging in physical altercation with coaches and so on. It was a legitimate dumpster fire.

Despite back-to-back losing seasons under Shurmur, we’ve seen none of that.

Yes, there were some issues with veteran cornerback Janoris Jenkins, who was also an offender under McAdoo, but that was really about the extent of the locker room disarray.

Under Shurmur, this team has stayed together, there is no in-fighting and they continue to both support their coach and play hard. And if you’ve been an athlete at any level, you know firsthand how difficult it is to maintain order when everything is going wrong and losing is a common experience.

“Not only me, speaking on behalf of the team, we strongly believe in coach Shurmur, we believe in this coaching staff, we believe in D.G,” Saquon Barkley told the New York Daily News in November. “Obviously things aren’t clicking the way we would like them to be right now, but we’ve just got to keep grinding, keep working, and we’ll turn it around.”

There’s a feather in Shurmur’s cap to be had over that. It may seem like something that should just be the norm, but it isn’t. And Shurmur very much deserves credit for that. It proves that these men believe in him and are willing to follow his lead.