Photo: ESPN
December 31, 2015
Peter Solari Follow @4PeteSakeNY
Dan Graziano, who covers the New York Giants for ESPN, had a wonderful piece up on Monday that should make every single fan of the team, fear the impending termination of coach Tom Coughlin.
Graziano didn't offer a defense for Coughlin, nor did he attempt to make the case that the team shouldn't fire their embattled coach, though he may have inadvertently done just that.
Graziano merely offered this "grim warning," as he put it, which everyone within the organization, as well as every fan, should take to heart: Look 90 miles south, at the Philadelphia Eagles!
Like Coughlin in New York, Andy Reid was a very successful coach in Philadelphia for more than a decade. After a couple of subpar seasons, the Eagles decided it was time to make a change at the end of 2012, and not many people objected. The Eagles excited their whole fan base when they hired the hottest coach in the college ranks, Chip Kelly, whose offense was supposed to take the NFL by storm. Things were looking up in the city of brotherly love.
Fast forward to today, and the Eagles are once again looking for their next head coach. The Kelly experiment in Philadelphia was nothing short of a disaster. His revolutionary offense had a shorter shelf-life than the wildcat formation, as the league's defenses caught up to it in no time. Sure, Kelly won 10 games in each of his first two seasons, but for the most part, he did it on the backs of a Reid-assembled roster, and the decisions he did make, were questionable at best. Prior to the 2015 season, Kelly was given complete control over personnel, including players, coaches, and to an extent, the front office. He preceded to blow up the entire roster and fill it with players that he thought best fit his system, but it didn't work out. The end result was a 6-9 record and a trip to the unemployment line, before the season even ended. Kelly, like so many great college coaches before him, simply couldn't make it work at the professional level.
This is exactly why the Giants can't fire Coughlin! Who are they replacing him with? As we saw with the Eagles, screwing this decision up could potentially set the franchise back years. Is that really a road the Giants want to go down?
The Giants don't have a viable candidate lined up to take Coughlin's place, and unless some of the better NFL teams decide to inexplicably fire their coaches in the next month, one isn't going to become available. There just isn't a coach out there, at any level, who brings as much to the Giants' table as Coughlin does. Even the potential replacements Graziano mentions in his piece, do little to excite the fan base. Ben McAdoo or Brian Kelly aren't bringing this team to the promised land any time soon. That's why the team shouldn't even involve themselves in a coaching search, at least not right now. Coughlin is on the hot seat every single season; it's nothing new. Is there any harm in keeping him around another season, and reassessing the situation after 2016? What are the chances a new coach is going to be able to get the team into the playoffs in his first season, anyway? Perhaps in a year, a new candidate will emerge.
If the Giants are determined to make a change this offseason, even if it's just to shake things up, it would make more sense for them to look at the front office, and not the sidelines.
Former Giants' offensive lineman Chris Snee came to the defense of his ex-coach/father-in-law on Monday, telling Paul Schwartz, of the New York Post, that the team's struggles are a byproduct of their talent deficiency, not their coach. He isn't wrong. Even before half the team went down to injury, they weren't that impressive on paper. When your starters are only mediocre, and half of them get hurt, how much can you really expect from their backups?
It's General Manager Jerry Reese's job to piece the roster together. When that roster fails to live up to expectations, or can't stay on the field, the buck stops with him, and he should be held accountable.
While talk of Coughlin's demise is buzzing, somehow, Reese has kept his name out of the conversation. That's unfair, to say the least. No coach should be expected to succeed with the players he's given, when the process by which they're acquired goes unevaluated. I'm not advocating for Reese to be fired, just reminding the organization that they need to look at the whole picture, and the potential impact these changes will have on the team's future.
Replacing the GM would be far less chaotic for this franchise than bringing in a new coach. Marc Ross, the team's Vice President of Player Evaluation, is a rising star in the NFL. He's going to be an NFL GM, and it's going to happen sooner than later. Whether or not that opportunity comes with Giants, remains to be seen. Ultimately, the franchise will have to make that decision on their own.
Should they decide to let Reese go, at least the Giants would have a direction to move forward in.
If they're dead-set on making a change, and truly believe that's the only way to right this ship, doesn't it make more sense for the Giants to bring in a GM who they've groomed, and whose player-evaluation they trust, as opposed to settling for whatever coach happens to be available this year?
Let's thank Chip Kelly for reminding the Giants how terribly wrong things can go if they make a coaching change, and here's to hoping the franchise thinks long and hard, before pulling any triggers.
