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As the New York Giants’ 2021 season comes to a close this week, there’s been a ton of speculation what course of action ownership decides to take after another double-digit loss campaign.
Co-owner John Mara has been patient to a degree, but can’t possibly justify bringing beleaguered general manager Dave Gettleman back after an embarrassing four years which saw the team go from bad to worse. It’s hard to argue that the Giants are not the worst team in the NFL at the moment.
The decision to retain head coach Joe Judge, once thought to be a cinch to return in 2022, is not looking so promising after his 11-minute desperation rant following the 29-3 crushing at the hands of a marginal Bears team last week. That means his massive 21-man coaching staff is on notice as well.
Special teams coordinator Thomas McGaughey spoke to the media pool on Thursday and explained they know they haven’t gotten it done, but it isn’t easy to rebuild here in New York.
“The best case is building on the things that we’ve done. I know sometimes it’s always easy to second guess and critique and say, ‘Oh, they don’t do this.’ You don’t see a lot of stuff that’s going on behind the scenes. There are some good things that are happening, and we’ve just got to keep building and stay to the process,” McGaughey said.
“A lot of times when you’re building on swamp ground, you’ve got to go 10 times deeper before you start going up. We’re all on swamp ground if you haven’t figured it out and it’s a little harder here. It’s not Cleveland. It’s not other places. It’s New York City and it’s harder to build here because you’ve got a lot of things that you’re working against. It’s hard. You come get your head beat in. You’re going to get your teeth kicked in. You’re going to get booed in the stadium. If you’re not strong mentally, you’re not going to be able to make it here. That’s the reason why they say, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. It is hard here and you’ve just got to stay the course, keep pounding, keep grinding and eventually you’ll get to where you want to be, right? Because you’ll have some success and it’ll happen here.
“When we’ve seen this city flip, we already know what it is. We’ve seen one week, ‘Eli (Manning) sucks.’ We’ve seen that, right? Now, his freaking name’s up in the rafters after two Super Bowls. We’ve seen it here. We know what it is. The guys that have been here, we understand it and we know exactly what it is. Again, you’ve just got to keep your head down, keep working, keep grinding and eventually get to where you want.”
That’s a detailed explanation of what we already know. What we really need to know is why this team has failed and continues to fail. No one has any answers to that question.
The team has not taken the correct course of action thus far. Mara hired Gettleman, who by many experts’ estimation was no longer a top talent evaluator and was run out of Carolina for a reason.
Gettleman then went against the grain and drafted players either way too early, way too late or not at all. His free agent signings have been hit or miss and the team’s penchant for bringing in players coning off serious injury hoping to catch lightning in a bottle is getting tiresome.
The real culprit, however, has been injuries. The Giants have been at the top of the league the past decade in this infamous category and the team has taken very little corrective action in this area. It is no longer a coincidence. It’s sheer incompetence at this point.
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