Garrett Hire Makes Absolutely No Sense

I have just three words to describe the news that the New York Giants have hired Jason Garrett as their new offensive coordinator: WTF?!

Seriously, the most important coaching position on the team - next to head coach - and Joe Judge picks a guy whose teams have severely underperformed during his nine seasons at the helm, despite having some of the best talent in the NFL. What, Ben McAdoo was unavailable? At least he managed to make Eli Manning a better quarterback. In the four years Dak Prescott has played for the Cowboys, he has regressed as a quarterback under Garrett.

I've cut Judge a lot of slack, mainly because most of the men he's chosen to surround himself with have at least worked with him during his years with the Patriots. Sometimes the devil you know really is better. But this hire makes absolutely no sense, and for two reasons.

First, if you look at the Cowboys and the Giants, they each have one thing in common: both teams boast an immensely talented running back in their backfield. The Cowboys have Ezekiel Elliott, the Giants have Saquon Barkley. If you bothered to watch Dallas this year, it was painfully obvious that Elliott was seriously underutilized. Throughout the season, the Cowboys opted to pass 57 percent of the time. Among teams with elite running backs, only the Rams and Giants had a higher pass to run ratios: both around 62 percent. There's simply no excuse for this. Either Garrett was to blame or his offensive coordinator Kellen Moore was. As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter. Moore worked for Garrett. Case closed. Any coach who thought handing the ball off to one of the best running backs in the league wasn't a priority has no business calling plays for a team that ranked 19th in scoring and 23rd in average yards per game last season.

Secondly, it is a cardinal rule that you don't hire former head coaches to run your offense. For one thing, deep down you know they want another crack at running the show. I don't care how fond of the Giants Garrett is, or how much John Mara admires him, this is a ticking time bomb. Sooner or later, another team is going to ask the Giants for permission to speak to Garrett about a possible head coaching job. What are they going to say, no? And if Garrett decides to leave in a year or two, Judge will have to hire a replacement. That'll make three offensive coordinators with three distinct systems that Daniel Jones will have had in four years. Talk about screwing the pooch.

I smell Gettleman all over this move. After Judge hired two ostensibly unknowns for defensive coordinator and defensive line coach, I'll bet my severance package that Mr. "I'm Never Wrong" called up his new head coach and "suggested" he give dear old Jason a call. He probably mentioned how Mr. Mara would be very appreciative of at least considering the ex-Cowboys' coach. And no doubt the point was made that Garrett's familiarity with the Dallas personnel would be extremely beneficial to the Jints next season.

Bt here's the thing: Mike McCarthy is now the new sheriff in town. Whatever insight Garrett had with his former organization ended the day he was given his pink slip. And if this franchise really needs Garrett to remind them of how dangerous Elliott and Prescott are, Giants' fans had better get used to losing records for the foreseeable future.

Maybe I'm overreacting. I have a habit of doing that. Maybe Garrett turns out to be the best offensive coordinator the Giants have had since Vince Lombardi. Could be the next job I land will pay me seven figures. Hey, you never know. But given that I've never earned more than $88,000 in my life, I wouldn't hold my breath on either scenario becoming a reality.

Rhuled Out. Giants Go With Plan C

Me: Hey did you hear the Giants hired Judge to be their head coach?

Friend: You mean Aaron Judge is gonna be the Giants head coach? How's he gonna do that and play for the Yankees?

Me: No, you dunce, not Aaron Judge, Joe Judge.

Friend: Who the fuck is Joe Judge?

Me: Right.

Seriously, how bad do you have to be to go 0 fer on three top tier coaches that you knew were qualified to be the next head coach of your franchise? You want to give the Giants a mulligan for not getting Ron Rivera? I'm fine with that. Rivera was fired during the season and the Giants didn't fire Pat Shurmur until after the season. For all we know Dan Snyder might've been in contact with Rivera for several weeks.

But how do you explain not making an offer to a coach like Mike McCarthy, who's won a Super Bowl, been to another NFC championship game and who coached two hall of fame quarterbacks when you had him in your building and you knew his next stop was Dallas? And once you knew that McCarthy was taken, how do you justify not moving up your interview with a coach who's turned around two moribund college programs? There's no excuse for giving the Carolina Panthers first dibs on Matt Rhule, especially when everyone under the sun knew he was your top choice.

Look, t's possible Joe Judge turns out to be the next Bill Belichick; he did spend the last eight seasons with the Patriots, and before that three seasons with Nick Saban at Alabama. You don't get a job with either of those two men if you don't have something going for you. But being a good special teams coach is one thing; being a good head coach is quite another. Ben McAdoo was going to be the guru that revived Eli Manning's career. Shurmur was the adult in the room. Both are unemployed.

Since their last Super Bowl championship, the Giants have had exactly two winning seasons: 2012 and 2016; the latter a wild card playoff appearance that ended in a drubbing at Green Bay. What they needed was an established coach with a proven track record that could put the franchise back on an even keel; a reset, if you will. What they've done is taken another gamble that could set them back two or more years, depending on how long Judge's leash is. And given that they have a promising young quarterback in Daniel Jones and a stud running back in Saquon Barkley that would be nothing short of malpractice. John Mara better pray this move pans out.

One thing the Giants can and must do in order to give Judge a fighting chance is equip him with good assistants. Supposedly, he's been given the authority to hire his own. But one thing is certain: he won't be calling the plays like Shurmur did. Maybe Judge can entice Josh McDaniels to be his offensive coordinator, especially since the only other head coaching vacancy in the NFL right now belongs to the Cleveland Browns: a team so dysfunctional, they make the Giants look like the 49ers of the Bill Walsh era. McDaniels might opt to leave the relative comfort and safety of the Patriots for the chance to develop Jones into an elite QB. But if McDaniels isn't interested, Norv Turner would be an ideal choice.

For defensive coordinator, I'd go with either Wade Phillips or Steve Spagnuolo. With the exception of Belichick and Tom Landry, Spags was the best defensive coordinator the franchise ever had. Because he's currently under contract with the Chiefs, the Giants would have to wait until they were either eliminated or went on to win the Super Bowl.

But regardless of who Judge chooses to staff this team, Dave Gettleman is going to have to do a much better job of getting him the horses he needs to compete than he did with Shurmur. The offensive line was a problem all year long and the secondary was among the worst in the league. With over $60 million in cap space available to spend, the Jints have some giant holes to fill.

Am I overreacting here? Perhaps. Maybe this works out in the end. Maybe Judge turns out to be a pretty damn good head coach. After all, John Harbaugh was a special teams coach and we all know what happened with him. Then again, maybe Judge turns out to be the next Ray Handley.

Knowing this team the way I do, I have a nagging feeling it'll be the latter.

Belichick To Giants Isn't As Far Fetched As You Might Think

Twenty years ago, Bill Belichick shocked the football world when he resigned as head coach of the New York Jets - a position he'd been promoted to only 24 hours earlier - to become the head coach of the New England Patriots. Over the last nineteen seasons, Belichick, with the help of the best quarterback the game has ever seen, has coached the Pats to nine Super Bowl appearances, winning six of them. No franchise in NFL history has come close to accomplishing that feat; not the Steelers, not the Cowboys, not the Packers, not the 49ers, no one.

Now that the Patriots are out of the playoffs, having lost to the Tennessee Titans last night, there's a lot of speculation about what happens with Tom Brady. Does he retire? Does he re-sign with New England? Or does he leave for another team? And where does Josh McDaniels - Brady's offensive coordinator - wind up?

But no one has dared ask the most important question; the one that's on the tip of everyone's tongue. What happens with Belichick? He's been such a fixture in New England sports that no one can conceive of a life without him. But as in love as they may be with Belichick, the hall of fame head coach has a soft spot in his heart for another franchise, and it's the one where he got his start: the New York Giants.

Deep down, Belichick never forgave the Mara family for passing him over for the head coaching job when Bill Parcels stepped down, even though the decision was actually George Young's. For their part, I'm pretty sure the Maras probably wish they could have a do over, given that Ray Handley botched things up in his brief two-year stint. And even though Jim Fassel led the franchise back to the Super Bowl in 2000, it would take seven more seasons before another former Parcells' assistant - Tom Coughlin - allowed them to hoist the Lombardi Trophy. Imagine what might've been if the Giants had had the foresight Robert Kraft possessed two decades ago.

Look, this may sound crazy, but I wouldn't be shocked one bit if over the next couple of days Belichick announces that he is stepping down as head coach of the Patriots to become the next head coach of the Giants. I also wouldn't be shocked to learn that as a condition of him leaving the Pats, John Mara and Steve Tisch have agreed to give him complete veto power over all personnel decisions Dave Gettleman makes, including draft picks and free agents signings. In other words, Belichick would be in charge.

Far Fetched? Perhaps. After all, knowing how things are done at 1925 Giants Drive, it's much more likely that they end up signing Matt Rhule as their next head coach, especially now that Mike McCarthy has decided to stay an extra couple of days in Dallas. But I'm not so sure that this is as far fetched as most would think. Let me explain.

Belichick knows that Brady's days are numbered. In fact, you could say the entire organization has been holding its breath, hoping to squeeze one more year out of that magic arm. But the sad truth is that after an 8-0 start, the Pats came crashing down to earth. The offense became predictable and one dimensional, and the vaunted defense was simply unable to compensate. Put succinctly, there's nothing more for Belichick to prove here. Even if he retools during the off season, at best he'd still be the coach of a 42 year old quarterback who is doing his best to cheat father time one game at a time. At some point, reality is going to set in and hit this franchise hard. Belichick knows this, and deep down so do the millions of diehard fans in New England.

With the Giants, Belichick would have the opportunity to mold another young quarterback and rebuild a defense that once upon a time put the fear of God in opposing offenses. He'd also have Saquon Barkley in the backfield instead of Sony Michel. And if the current crop of receivers the Giants have manages to stay healthy for an entire season, Daniel Jones will have a nice arsenal of targets to throw to in 2020. Sterling Shepard may not be Julian Edelman, but he's younger and faster.

They say you can't go home. I beg to differ. I think if you subjected Bill Belichick to a lie detector test, you'd learn that he would jump at the chance to come back to his old stomping grounds and return Big Blue to the promised land. And if you did the same thing to both John Mara and Steve Tisch, you'd learn that, despite all their protestations to the contrary, nothing would give them greater satisfaction.

Twenty years ago, Bill Belichick shocked the football world. I wouldn't put it past him to do it again.

Gettleman Can't Afford To Screw Up This Next Decision

The question was never whether Pat Shurmur deserved to be fired; the question was why he was ever hired in the first place. With the possible exception of Ray Handley and Ben McAdoo, no Giants head coach was more in over his head than Shurmur. He's proof positive that not ever assistant coach turns out to be a Bill Belichick.

And that's why Dave Gettleman's next decision - naming his replacement - is the most important one he's made since he became GM. I won't mince words here. Gettleman should've been shown the door along with Shurmur on Monday. He's as much to blame for the sorry state this franchise is in as his sad sack of a head coach; more so, since he was the one who hired him and then saddled him with least talented bunch of players this side of Miami.

But the fact is John Mara didn't want to pull the trigger, so Gettleman gets one more shot to get this right. And for the sake of Big Blue, he'd better not screw it up. If he does, the organization might never recover.

Now that Ron Rivera has signed with the Redskins and Jerry Jones seems unwilling to fire Jason Garrett - go figure - there are several intriguing candidates the Giants could consider. I'll go through them in order of preference.

Mike McCarthy. The former Green Bay head coach guided the Packers to a Super Bowl title in the 2010 season and the best record in the NFC the following year before getting upset by the Giants in the divisional round. He has the experience and temperament needed to turn this franchise around and his no-nonsense approach will bring badly needed discipline to the locker room. He employs a west-coast offense, so if he's hired you can expect that Saquon Barkley will see a lot of play-action passes. The only red flag is his relationship with Aaron Rodgers. It led to his firing.

Matt Rhule. Currently the head coach at Baylor, he's turned around two programs and got his team all the way to the Sugar Bowl this year before losing to Georgia. The smart money is on him, but he's on record as saying he plans on remaining at Baylor. At least he has some head coaching experience, and he does know the organization having been offensive line coach under Tom Coughlin in 2012.

Josh McDaniels. He bailed on the Colts two years ago after agreeing to be their head coach, so any potential suitor would do well to be wary of hiring him. Still, as Patriots' offense coordinator, he does have a pretty impressive resume. Yes, Tom Brady is in a league of his own, but even the best need good coaching.

I think it'll come down to McCarthy or Rhule, and if I were a betting man, I'd put my money on Rhule. He's from New York and he's more of a teacher than McCarthy, something that will help with a young team. Either way, the Giants will wind up with a very good coach who hopefully will restore this franchise to the lofty heights it once enjoyed.