The New York Giants love familiarity when it comes to handing out top positions in their organization. Many suspect they won’t wander from that philosophy in their current search for a head coach.
They have gone several times to the wide-rooted coaching tree of Andy Reid, the current head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs who before that held the same position with the Philadelphia Eagles for 14 seasons.
The Giants have hired from Reid’s lot before. Steve Spagnuolo was hired in the mid-2000s to run Tom Coughlin’s defense and won a Super Bowl. Most recently, the Giants inked Pat Shurmur, who was fired this week after winning just nine of 32 games.
The latest member Reid’s minions the Giants are interested in is Chiefs’ offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy, who is responsible for Kansas City’s high-flying offense with Patrick Mahomes under center.
“You guys know how I feel about Eric,” Reid told reporters this week. “I think he’d be tremendous. There’s a team out there — I don’t know the team, but there’s a team out there — that could really use him. Being the leader of men that he is, you’re not going to find people better than that in that category. And he’s a sharp offensive mind on top of that. So I’m a big fan. Don’t want to lose him, but reality is, there’s a good chance that happens.”
The Giants don’t want to disrupt the progress that their young quarterback, Daniel Jones, has made but could not continue with Pat Shurmur at the helm, who was clearly out of his depth as a head coach. Bieniemy, according to Reid, won’t have a problem handling the responsibilities of a head coach.
“This guy is a phenomenal coach is what they’re looking at,” Reid said. “And I think (all Chiefs players) would all stand on the table for him. … They’d all stand up and tell you what he’s all about. He’s a leader of men. And they all (know) he’s going to shoot you straight — honest, honest, honest. And then they also know and respect his mind. I give him, every weekend, I sit down, we put together this game plan sheet with 200-plus plays on it and he memorizes every play, every formation, just — boom — on recall like that. And every week, I go, ‘Listen, are you good with this?’ And he goes, ‘No problem. I’ve got it.’ But a lot of hard work goes into it. Plus, he’s a brilliant dude.”
The Giants have shown interest in Bieniemy for the vacant head coaching role and could go back to the Reid tree when its all said and done.