Tag: John Mara

Giants can’t afford a half measure: Fire everyone or keep the regime

The New York Giants can not afford another half measure — they need to fire GM Joe Schoen and coach Brian Daboll or keep the regime intact.

It was supposed to be a year of celebration for the New York Giants but has instead turned into a nightmare of historical proportions.

The team’s 100th anniversary got off to a bad start with “Hard Knocks: Offseason with the New York Giants,” which highlighted their failures to land a new quarterback while allowing running back Saquon Barkley to join the Philadelphia Eagles.

Fast forward to the present time and the Giants are 2-12, have lost a franchise-record nine straight games, and are 0-8 at home with one game remaining. Should they lose their MetLife Stadium finale in Week 17, they will become the first team in NFL history to lose nine home games in a single season.

The season from hell may also be punctuated with another embarrassment: Barkley breaking the NFL’s all-time single-season rushing record against the very team that drafted him.

Sprinkled in is the bungled release of quarterback Daniel Jones, ongoing fan protests that aim to embarrass ownership, a league-worst offense now being led by street free agent Tim Boyle, and seemingly endless mockery from the national media.

In just a few short weeks, co-owners John Mara and Steve Tisch will have to make a tough decision: Burn it all down and reset again, or risk a fan revolt by running it back with the current regime.

Those can be the only choices because a half measure will not suffice. The Giants can not afford to fire either general manager Joe Schoen or head coach Brian Daboll, forcing a potential replacement to inherit the other.

The reasons to fire Schoen are abundant, as Bobby Skinner of Talkin’ Giants recently laid out. His 2024 draft class should not be a saving grace, especially considering his failures in the previous two drafts have led the Giants to this point.

Daboll is equally at fault for the team’s failures. His inability to manage relationships with coordinators and assistants is alarming, his game-day roster management has directly contributed to two losses, and his play-calling has led to a points-per-game regression compared to Mike Kafka a season ago.

It’s almost like Daboll has gone from Bono to Bozo.

There are few, if any redeeming qualities about the 2024 iteration of the New York Giants. And each week, they somehow find a new, humiliating low. Things have gotten so bad that debate has stirred over this team compared to the 2021 version headed by Dave Gettleman and Joe Judge.

Who had that on their Bingo card?

But that’s also why ownership has to rip the Band-Aid completely off or leave it on for one more season. A half measure would merely kick the can down the road and continue the post-Tom Coughlin cycle that has gotten them here in the first place.

If they were to keep Schoen and fire Daboll and the general manager whiffed in another draft, the Giants would need to bring in a new GM who would then likely fire the lame-duck head coach and inherit whatever quarterback Schoen ultimately selects in the 2025 NFL draft. We’ve seen how that story plays out.

If they went the other way and fired Schoen and kept Daboll, it would force the incoming GM to inherit a head coach he didn’t hire. That’s not a recipe for success, especially when you throw in the upcoming quarterback decision.

The best decision for the franchise would be to part ways with Schoen and Daboll, hire a veteran executive with a strong resume as general manager, allow them to pick the head coach, and then go after their own quarterback of the future. A true clean slate.

But if Mara and Tisch are determined to show patience, then they need to be all the way in. Keep the current regime intact, allow them to draft a quarterback come April, and hope that it all works out and you don’t find yourself in this exact same situation a year from now.

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Plane protest architect wants to ’embarrass’ Giants owners

The second plane protest architect, who wasn’t responsible for the first, says his intent is to “embarrass” New York Giants ownership.

Before kickoff against the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday afternoon, the New York Giants watched as a plane flew over MetLife Stadium with a trailing banner for the second consecutive week.

This time, the message read “Mr. Mara enough. We won’t stop until you fire everyone.”

As it turns out, the architect was not the same fan who chartered a plane ahead of a Week 14 game against the New Orleans Saints, although he initially planned on doing it that day.

Instead, the anonymous fan pushed it back a week and changed his message to be in lockstep with the first fan, who also remains anonymous.

“I was made aware of the other group doing it, and thought it wouldn’t really help to do two planes in one week,” the second fan told NJ Advance Media on Sunday. “So I pivoted. I might as well piggyback off it with a new message to show the further frustration of the fans.”

The original message was intended to be “Fire Schoen and Daboll” but High Exposure Inc. rejected it because it targeted individuals. Ultimately, the fan opted to craft a message more similar to the Week 14 banner that read “Mr. Mara enough. (Please) fix this dumpster fire.”

The purpose, the fan said, is to embarrass ownership.

“The biggest thing that the Mara family prides itself on is pride in themselves,” he said. “And so, if you’re able to make it more embarrassing, it will further force them to take action.”

The fan describes themselves as “apathetic” at this point, which should concern co-owners John Mara and Steve Tisch more than anything else. It’s a sentiment shared by most of the fanbase.

“Pissed is the wrong word. I’m apathetic,” he said. “The product is so poor to where today we were losing so poorly that the only bright spot for the offense was the Ravens’ defensive penalties and Tim Boyle.

“And the worst part is that all evidence points to Schoen and Daboll doing a poor job. And somehow we have to have this conversation of, ‘Are they coming back?'”

Daboll and his players once again dismissed the fan protests after the game, but there’s no way this is escaping the attention of Mara and Tisch. Coupled with a half-empty stadium and loud cheers for the opposing teams, it has become a public relations nightmare for the Giants.

There is one more home game remaining — a Week 17 matchup against the Indianapolis Colts — and multiple anonymous fans have told Giants Wire they, too, are considering a banner protest.

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Giants fans continue flying banners in protest: ‘We won’t stop’

New York Giants fans continued their protest on Sunday, flying another banner over MetLife Stadium — this one with a warning to John Mara.

For the second consecutive week, New York Giants fans chartered a plane and flew a banner over MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey ahead of kickoff.

Before a Week 14 loss to the New Orleans Saints, the protest banner read “Mr. Mara Enough — (Please) fix this dumpster fire!”

On Sunday, ahead of a game against the Baltimore Ravens, a brand new banner read “Mr. Mara Enough — We won’t stop until you fire everyone!”

Giants fans originated the plane protest in 1978 when they flew a banner over the stadium, which led to mass firings and a complete overhaul aided by the NFL. It was 48 years before fans did it again and now just seven days in between protests.

After being made aware of last week’s banner, Giants players scoffed at the protest and mocked the fan(s) for wasting money.

The Giants have just one home game remaining this season — a Week 17 matchup against the Indianapolis Colts, who will undoubtedly be favorites again.

Considering the Giants are unlikely to fire general manager Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll between now and then, expect to see at least one more banner flying over MetLife Stadium this season.

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Report reveals why Bill Belichick wasn’t interested in potential Giants opening

An insider report reveals Bill Belichick had no interest in the New York Giants’ coaching job had it become available this coming offseason.

The University of North Carolina will officially announce Bill Belichick as their next head coach on Thursday, which is an unforeseen destination for one of the NFL’s all-time great coaches.

After a year away from the game, expectations were that Belichick would draw significant interest during the upcoming coaching carousel.

Among the teams speculated to have potential interest in Belichick was the New York Giants, assuming they move on from Brian Daboll (and/or general manager Joe Schoen) after the season.

Belichick has never been shy about his adoration for the Mara family and the franchise, where he served as an assistant coach and coordinator from 1979 to 1990. Despite his two crushing Super Bowl losses to the Giants, he always spoke highly of the organization and its former players, much to the dismay of his own players.

But even had Belichick opted to wait for Black Monday to gauge potential opportunities, Seth Wickersham of ESPN reports that the Giants were never going to be in play.

Maybe the Giants, where he had spent the ’80s, could work, but Belichick knew that it would be a rebuild, with the New York press at his heels. Plus, he believes the team would do best to retain its current coach, Brian Daboll.

Ah yes, the seemingly permanent rebuild in East Rutherford. The reset button has been hit so many times that everyone has lost count, and even Belichick’s love of the organization couldn’t overcome the reality of what he would have gotten himself into.

But again, there is no guarantee that opportunity would have even presented itself. While the Giants have become a complete laughingstock, co-owners John Mara and Steve Tisch appear resistant to further change, fearing they have grown too impatient in recent years.

Accordingly, expectations remain, at least as of Week 15, that both Schoen and Daboll will return in 2025 while Belichick leads the Tarheels.

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NFL insider expects Giants to retain Joe Schoen, Brian Daboll

One prominent NFL insider expects New York Giants owners John Mara and Steve Tisch to keep GM Joe Schoen and coach Brian Daboll in 2025.

The New York Giants are mired in one of their worst seasons ever and fans are beginning to show their frustrations in the form of protest.

Ahead of Sunday’s game against the New Orleans Saints, a fan-chartered plane circled MetLife Stadium with a banner that read, “Mr. Mara enough. (Please) fix this dumpster fire.”

Protests continued at kickoff with empty seats lining more than half of the stadium and tickets being sold for as little as $1 on the secondary market.

Then, to make sure the point was hammered home, fans cheered as the Saints blocked a Graham Gano field goal with seconds remaining, securing the Giants’ 11 loss of the season.

Out in the parking lot, a dumpster was literally set on fire.

Despite the circus the Giants have become, NFL insider Albert Breer believes co-owners John Mara and Steve Tisch will run things back, keeping both general manager Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll in 2025.

The Giants got their high-end evaluators multiple live exposures to seven different college quarterbacks — Sanders, Miami’s Cam Ward, Georgia’s Carson Beck, Texas’s Quinn Ewers, Ole Miss’s Jaxson Dart, Alabama’s Jalen Milroe and LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier — headed into the week they went out to see Sanders in a practice setting. Over Thanksgiving weekend, they sent guys out again to get one last live look during the final full weekend of college games.

So what does this show? To me, it’s two things. First, the Giants were under no illusion that they should bank on Jones breaking through to another level — the way he did in 2022 — again, to justify picking up the $30.5 million on his contract for next season. Second, it makes it apparent that the plan has been, as John Mara has said, to stay the course with the current regime and give Schoen and Brian Daboll the chance to draft a quarterback.

Schoen and Daboll have had multiple drafts to land “their own” quarterback. They passed in the first two and failed to trade up for their target in 2024. They also chose to pass on other quarterback prospects such as Bo Nix (Denver Broncos).

Instead, they made the decision to hitch their wagon to Daniel Jones before misreading the Tyrod Taylor situation and settling for Drew Lock.

Their quarterback decisions have been suspect at best, but Breer still believes both will get a pass and return in 2025 and potentially beyond.

There’s also the fact that the Giants have, as I’ve mentioned a few times, pulled the plug quickly three times in the past decade, and the premise that Mara most certainly doesn’t want to do it again.

Which is to say, yeah, I still think Daboll and Schoen will be back next year, with some changes on the staff. But given where the Giants are right now, it’s probably best to wait before saying that with complete certainty.

The Giants have found new and humiliating ways to bottom out each week and it’s unlikely Daboll manages to buck that trend over the final month.

But it’s beginning to sound like Mara and Tisch are willing to endure the seemingly endless embarrassment because they no longer trust themselves following multiple regime failures dating back to the unnecessary parting of ways with Tom Coughlin following the 2015 season.

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Plane flies over MetLife asking Giants owner to fix ‘dumpster fire’

A message in the air to Giants owner John Mara from a fed up fan

New York Giants fans are fed up with losing. Someone took it to a new level.

Someone ponied up the big bucks to have a plane fiy over MetLife before the game with the New Orleans Saints on Sunday pleading with owner John Mara to clean up the mess.

“Mr. Mara enough – plz fix this dumpster fire”

Giants fan flies plane around MetLife Stadium: ‘Fix this dumpster fire’

A New York Giants fan flew a plane around MetLife Stadium on Sunday with a banner delivering a clear message: “Fix this dumpster fire!”

The New York Giants may be celebrating their 100th season but things certainly feel a lot like 1978 in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

On Sunday, before kickoff of a Week 14 game against the New Orleans Saints, a Giants fan flew a plane around MetLife Stadium with a banner reading: “Mr. Mara, enough. Please fix this dumpster fire!”

The plane circled the stadium at least five times.

Back in ’78, a group of fans chartered a plane to fly around then-Giants Stadium with a banner delivering a very similar message: “15 Years of Lousy Football…. We’ve Had Enough!”

That protest is considered one of the most notable and impactful fan protests in sports history and it prompted a significant organizational overhaul.

This is not at all how co-owner John Mara planned to celebrate the team’s 100th anniversary and the banner undoubtedly puts even more pressure on him and fellow co-owner Steve Tisch to make some changes despite reports suggesting they’d like to keep the current regime.

The Giants have made ugly NFL history this season and have become the butt of every football joke. From the offseason fallout between head coach Brian Daboll and Wink Martindale to “Hard Knocks: Offseason with the New York Giants” to releasing quarterback Daniel Jones to a 2-10 record through 13 weeks and everything in between, it’s been a new low for the organization.

We’ll see what, if any impact this latest protest has on the direction of the team.

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Are Giants celebrating 100th season with worst year in team history?

The New York Giants planned to celebrate their 100th season in style but instead, have pieced together one of the worst in franchise history.

As summer began to fade, the New York Giants turned up the hype on their 100th-season celebration.

Brand new throwback uniforms, designed to honor teams of the past, were introduced, documentaries and podcasts were created, a list of the top 100 players in franchise history was revealed, and several other events were planned.

However, through 13 weeks, what’s happened in East Rutherford feels like anything but a celebration.

The team is 2-10, there are calls to fire general manager Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll, captain Daniel Jones has been released, fellow captains Dexter Lawrence and Andrew Thomas are out for the season, and several of the team’s former stars are dominating the league.

It’s more of a funeral and less of a party.

For co-owner John Mara, things could not have gone worse. The Giants are a doormat; a laughingstock and the butt of every joke. It’s been a humiliation.

They are setting records, but not of the positive variety. They recently became the first team in NFL history to go 11 straight games without an interception — an active streak they’d very much like to end.

Unfortunately for Mara and these Giants, things may only get worse as Ryan Dunleavy of the New York Post lays out.

Losing the final five games — as underdogs in each — would mean a .118 winning percentage that would be the franchise’s second-worst — ahead of the 1966 team that went 1-12-1 (.107) and behind other two-win outfits in 1947, 1964, 1973 and 1974.

Winless in the NFC East for the first time. Since permanently joining the division in 1970, the Giants have finished in last place 14 times, but never faced what would happen if they lose to the Eagles in Week 18 to go 0-6 against their three rivals.

Winless at home for the first time since 1974, when they were playing at the Yale Bowl while waiting for their first Meadowlands home to be built. The 2003 and 1983 teams both went 1-7 at Giants Stadium.

The fewest points scored in the NFL for the first time since 1953, when there only were 12 franchises.

As the late Billy Mays would say, “But wait! There’s more!”

The current seven-game slide is tied for the seventh-worst mark and is creeping up on the three-time record of nine in a row (1976, 2003-04 and 2019).

The Giants already own the modern record (since 1933) for consecutive games without an interception at 11 and counting. The 2018 49ers set the record for fewest single-season interceptions with two, and the Giants haven’t had a team with fewer than six (2022) since the statistic was first tracked in 1940.

It’s important to remember what Mara said about the 100th-season celebration before the year got underway.

“We’re all excited about it. A little nervous because we want to make sure that the 100th season, you’d like it to be a successful one,” Mara said, via Giants.com. “You’d like every season to be successful, but particularly this one. A lot of history behind those 100 years.”

How the mighty have fallen.

Leave it to the Giants to celebrate the century mark with arguably one of the worst seasons in franchise history.

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Giants’ Brian Daboll not worried about job security amid lost season

New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll says he has “no” concerns about his job security despite the team’s significant regression.

New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll says he’s not concerned about his job despite recording an 8-21 record since the beginning of 2023.

“No,” Daboll said when asked if he was worried about his job after the Giants’ 27-20 loss to the Dallas Cowboys on Thanksgiving Day.

“No, I don’t like the results. Nobody likes the results. But, again, I have confidence in the people. Just have to get better.”

The Giants are 2-10, tied with the Las Vegas Raiders for the worst record in the NFL this season. They are in line to select first overall in the 2025 NFL draft.

Last month, co-owner John Mara gave both Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen a vote of confidence. Since that day, the team has gotten progressively worse and is now becoming depleted due to injuries.

The parting of the ways with quarterback Daniel Jones last week took a lot out of the organization as has the blowback from the success of Saquon Barkley in Philadelphia.

Daboll is barely holding onto the locker room and it seems every move he’s made this season has backfired starting with him taking over the offensive play calling.

Mara said recently there wasn’t an “appetite” for firings, sticking to his guns about Schoen and Daboll’s job security, but the shot of him sitting all alone in a suite at AT&T Stadium on Thursday with that stern look on his face told a different story.

Since Tom Coughlin “parted ways” with the club after the 2015 season, the Giants are on their fifth head coach and third general manager.

Nothing’s changed. The firings had no bearing on the team’s performance. Although they’ve qualified for the postseason twice over that span, their overall record in the regular season is 50-92-1.

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John Mara’s nightmare: Giants flounder as ex-players thrive

The New York Giants are in complete disarray while the team leaders they’ve let walk in recent years are dominating with their new clubs.

The New York Giants (2-9) are hard to watch these days. From top to bottom, they seem like a rudderless franchise with no known direction.

No one is happy right now and almost every decision the team makes seems to backfire on them in an almost comical fashion.

The Saquon Barkley situation is just one of the personnel decisions that have come back to haunt the team. After the Giants were flattened by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at home on Sunday, Barkley had a record-setting game on national television on Sunday night, leading the Philadelphia Eagles to a convincing 37-20 road win over the Los Angeles Rams.

Barkley racked up 302 yards of offense on Sunday, 57 more than the entire Giants offense could muster against Tampa’s 30th-ranked defense.

It was the latest dagger to the heart of Giants co-owner John Mara, who lobbied general manager Joe Schoen to try to find a way to keep Barkley in the fold.

Instead, the Giants let Barkley test the free-agent waters. He signed with the Eagles on the first day of free agency.

Ever since then, Barkley has played at an All-Pro level, leading the NFL in rushing, and could be on his way to not only another 2,000-total-yard season but a possible Super Bowl appearance as well.

The reality is, Barkley isn’t really missed that much by the Giants. They have proven that they can run the ball without him and have a glut of young offensive talent on their roster.  They just don’t know how to use them.

Barkley was adroitly signed by the Eagles as the last piece to their puzzle. With the Giants, Barkley would have been the first piece of the puzzle. Big difference. Schoen is trying to build from the inside out, not the other way around.

Schoen was right to pass on McKinney, who was signed to a four-year, $67 million deal by the Green Bay Packers. Many believed that was way too rich for a player who almost blew up his career with a foolish off-field injury several years ago.

The fact that McKinney leads the NFL in interceptions (7) while the Giants have just one as a team this season is irrelevant. The Giants replaced McKinney in the second round of the draft this year with Tyler Nubin.

As for Leonard Williams and Julian Love, I would say I was disappointed they let Love walk. He was a versatile and productive player that they probably should have kept.

Williams was also a productive player but the Giants paid a king’s ransom to both get — and keep — him. They had to shed themselves of his contract.

So, Schoen, in an effort to undo all of the damage his predecessor Dave Gettleman did, is getting pounded for doing what the fans hoped he would do.

It’s just not working out for him right now, that’s all. And the optics are quite poor, especially if Barkley and McKinney end up wining the Offensive and Defensive Player of the Year Awars.

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