Pat Shurmur was a players’ coach and the New York Giants locker room loved him, so after learning of his termination on Monday morning, there was plenty of disappointment and guilt to go around.
“It’s tough,” Jones told reporters. “Obviously, that’s I guess part of the business and part of being at this level. But it’s tough on me, tough on all of us.
“Just disappointed. Coach obviously believed in me, coach believed in all of us, and it’s disappointing. I’m grateful to him for the opportunity. I think he’s an excellent football coach and I really appreciate what he’s done for us.”
Jones’ opinion was shared by a multitude of other players, including veteran quarterback Eli Manning, who is also in his final days with the team.
“Coach Shurmur and I had a great relationship,” Manning said. “I think he is a great coach, I think he is a wonderful man and [I’m] just disappointed. I think you always feel responsible when a coach gets fired. It’s obviously because as players we didn’t do our part. We didn’t play well enough, we didn’t win enough games.
“I feel for him and all the coaches. They worked hard and did a lot of hard work and a lot of good things. Obviously, just didn’t win enough games for them to stay on and move forward, so [I’m] disappointed.”
Running back Saquon Barkley felt especially blindsided by the news of Shurmur’s firing despite the writing that has been on the wall for weeks.
“I was surprised by it,” Barkley said. “Upset, we’re all upset. I’ve been preaching all season whenever anyone asked me about what I think about if our coaching staff are the right people, I always kept saying it’s easy to point the finger at one person. But at the end of the day, kind of like what DG (Gettleman) said in the (team) meeting, we’re all responsible. We’re all responsible for these last two seasons. Coach Shurmur is a heck of a person, heck of a coach, and definitely helped me develop over these last two years.
“He’s one of the guys that believed in me, believed in D.J. (Jones), for us to get here and live our dreams of playing in the NFL. You don’t want to see anybody go out like that. It sucks because, like I said, you point the finger at one person. It wasn’t all him, it’s all of us. We just need to take that and learn from the lesson, and in the future, to be better.”
Veteran left tackle Nate Solder, who arrived on the scene with Shurmur in 2018, expressed a similar disappointment.
“It’s disappointing,” Solder said. “I know when he was hired here and I know when I came here, there were such high expectations and such high hopes. I do believe that they’ve built a foundation of something great here. It’s up to us to take a deep look at what we need to do better, those of us that will be here. We need to be a lot better.
“When you have a head coach, you just kind of think that’s always going to be the case. This business is brutal. I think there were a lot of good things that came out of the last couple of years. But that doesn’t matter if you’re not getting the wins. The margin of error is so small, so thin, between winning and losing in this league. You have to find a way to come out on top.”
For veteran players like wide receiver Sterling Shepard, the constant upheaval is becoming too much of a common theme.
“It’s a tough day,” Shepard said. “What we all do affects a lot of people. You really get a look at that today. We all look back and wish we could have been better in different areas. That’s the sucky part about this business.
“You build a relationship with people over the two years we had [Shurmur]. He’s a great person, a great guy, and it’s just unfortunate that everything didn’t work out here.”
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