BY LESLIE MONTEIRO
(Photo credit: Rich Schultz/Getty Images)
The Denver Broncos, Miami Dolphins and Chicago Bears beat Joe Judge’s New York Giants this season, and they fired their respective head coaches on Black Monday because they have the audacity to demand better than their record showed this season.
Rather than participate on Black Monday, the Giants decided to keep Joe Judge as head coach for now while letting Dave Gettleman retire.
It must be nice to work for an organization that enables incompetence like the New York Giants. It’s amazing that a bumbling head coach may get a third year despite a 10-23 record in his two underwhelming seasons and an incompetent general manager gets to retire rather than be fired despite a 19-46 record in his four forgettable seasons.
It was comically amusing to see Gettleman getting a chance to take pictures with his family in front of the Giants bench. A general manager taking a bow despite him doing such a bad job, and he even got honored by the Giants for his service. You can’t make this up.
This is what we call a clown show that Judge insists the Giants are not.
This is John Mara’s production for the last 10 years. Plenty of losses (100 losses since they last won the Super Bowl) and so much circus.
The Giants missed the playoffs in all of Gettleman’s tenure, so why exactly he gets to retire? I understand he was fired in the guise of retirement. The Giants wanted to make this look good, but no one is stupid. Everyone knows he was fired. If the Giants were a playoff team, he would have been smug and employed.
Gettleman has done nothing to get a retirement sendoff. He said he would come in and kick butt when he took the job. Instead, he got his butt kicked with his arrogance and stupidity.
In his four seasons as general manager, he bungled draft picks after draft picks. He drafted Saquon Barkley and Daniel Jones, and both were question marks to start off. It was risky to draft a running back early in the first round because of the wear and tear on his body. Not surprisingly, Barkley struggled to regain his form after he tore his ACL against the Bears last season. He has now become a bust. As for Jones, he was a question mark from the beginning, and he did nothing to erase those doubts with a 12-25 record and his inability to score touchdowns from the red zone.
For good measure, the Giants general manager passed Micah Parsons for Kadarius Toney, who was as useless as Eli Apple.
His free-agent signings such as Kenny Golladay and Nate Solder turned out to be flops.
No wonder Gettleman decided not to talk to the media on his last day of work. Why make a fool of yourself on your way out the door?
As for Judge, he has been a fraud from day one. It’s good to know Giants fans have come around to know he is not an NFL head coaching material.
I was ahead of the curve going back to last season when he failed to lead the team to an NFC East title in a season where every team stunk. He had a losing season that season at 6-10.
He lost me when he whined about the Philadelphia Eagles tanking against the Washington Football team by taking their starters out in the fourth quarter of the final game of the season. It helped Washington win the last game that had them in the playoffs and the Giants out of it. This wasn’t leadership. It was a cry for help when he whined.
He failed to get better as a head coach this season. He made a fool of himself by campaigning for his job after a 29-3 loss to the Chicago Bears while taking a shot at Washington in the process by saying his team is not a clown show after Washington featured two of its lineman Daron Payne and Jonathan Allen arguing on the sideline. His team got worse as the season went on. The team quit on him by being outscored 163-56 during the six-game losing streak.
Judge failed to make a case to coach next season. His players never developed. They clearly stopped paying attention to him. He showed no leadership. He is not an NFL head coach material.
Maybe the next general manager decides Judge is not his guy. You have to think he doesn’t feel that way because there’s no way he wants to seal his fate with a head coach he doesn’t even want.
But here’s the problem: If Mara insists on the general manager to hold on to Judge, this eliminates great candidates. Even if he picks a guy to keep Judge, that general manager likely would be someone from the Patriots or someone from the Giants staff. It would be a waste of time.
This Giants organization screams for change. The record and the product speak for itself. The fanbase understandably has had enough.
On a day Mara should have sent a message, he bungled it as usual.
Is it any wonder why the Giants are now run like the Detroit Lions?