Ben McAdoo said after yesterday’s loss in Oakland that he’s “going to coach this team as long as my key card works.” The Giants allowed his key card to work just long enough for him to get in the door at team HQ, and then they fired him.
GM Jerry Reese, in his 11th season, is out too.
Steve Spagnuolo and Kevin Abrams will serve as interim head coach and GM, respectively.
It’s been a disastrous year for McAdoo, who went from an 11-5 record and playoff berth in his first year as head coach to 2-10 this season before the ax fell today. He lost the locker room. He failed to inspire. He handled the benching of Eli Manning—which probably had to happen—about as badly as it could have been handled.
Three weeks ago Giants owners John Mara and Steve Tisch basically telegraphed a coaching change, but said it would not happen in-season. The Manning debacle accelerated that timeline, but doing this now was the most painless way to do what had to be done, and to do it before McAdoo would have to face the home fans for the first time since Manning’s benching. Why let the poor guy twist in the wind for the last month of the season? And why subject players to more inspirational speeches like yesterday’s:
One person familiar with the meeting said that the mood was “somber” and that McAdoo’s speech about his childhood was more personal than his typical Saturday night messages. Another person relayed McAdoo’s message to NJ Advance Media.
“His father took him to the coal mine,” a source said. “And he was like, ‘If you don’t work your ass off or if you don’t stay out of trouble, you’re going to end up down here working with me.’ That was a big wake-up call for him. He was asking us, ‘What’s your motivation? That’s mine.’”
The Eli Manning era in New York ends with a clean break, a new coach and a new GM and presumably a quarterback taken with the Giants’ high pick in next year’s draft.