The speculation on whether or not Pat Shurmur will remain the head coach of the New York Giants for the 2020 season and beyond has been rampant.
With the recent news of a current head coach now hitting the open market, it surely will make for even more speculation as to whether or not Shurmur remains past the 2019 season.
On Tuesday, the Carolina Panthers dismissed Ron Rivera as their head coach following almost nine seasons on the job.
#Panthers part ways with Ron Riverahttps://t.co/uXqUJpCnkq
— Carolina Panthers (@Panthers) December 3, 2019
Rivera was hired as the Panthers’ head coach back in 2011 and went 76-63-1 over that span. The Panthers won the NFC Championship in 2015 and appeared in Super Bowl 50 under him. With new ownership though, and sitting at 5-7, Carolina decided to relieve Rivera of his head coaching duties.
With Rivera now gone from Carolina, will that make him a possible front runner for the Giants’ head coaching job for 2020?
There’s the obvious ties to Dave Gettleman, who worked with Rivera while they were together in Carolina. Gettleman didn’t hire Rivera as the head coach — Rivera was already the head coach when Gettleman was named the general manager in 2012, but they were together for several seasons and for the most part, worked well together.
Although, whether Gettleman remains the Giants’ general manager or not also remains to be seen, as a lot of the fan base has expressed their displeasure in Gettleman and would like to see a complete structural rebuild in the organization.
While John Mara is the one who ultimately picks the head coach, if Gettleman does stay, he’d likely get some influence as to who could replace Shurmur and he could point towards his old coach in Carolina that he was paired with for years, and could cite that they even made it to a Super Bowl together.
The Giants have been partial towards offensive minded head coaches, as the last one with a defensive pedigree was Bill Parcells, and with Daniel Jones now in place, the general idea was that the Giants would want to stick with another offensive minded coach to go with Jones for the future.
But putting Jones aside, the Giants are more in a place where they need to re-establish some order in the organization and find someone with a proven track record in the NFL as is relates to picking the top assistant coach like the Giants have done over the last two coaching hires.
With Rivera now on the market, it gives another realistic possibility for the Giants to turn to if they do decide to part with Shurmur after the season.
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