Rangers Had Themselves A Pretty Good Day

I so seldom have the opportunity to say this about one of the teams I root for, but here goes. The Rangers had themselves a pretty good day yesterday. In fact, it was one of the best days the organization has had in quite some time. And that's saying something, given that last year they chose Kappo Kakko with their first-round pick and signed Artemi Panarin. Larry Brooks of the New York Post put it best: "The Rangers are finally back."

Going into the trade deadline, it was looking more and more like the Rangers were going to trade pending unrestricted free agent Chris Kreider to one of several teams for a first round pick and a top prospect. Supposedly, the Colorado Avalanche and the Boston Bruins were the most likely destinations for Kreider.

Both sides, it seemed, were at an impasse. Kreider, multiple sources said, wanted $7 million a year for six years, the Rangers were willing to go as high as $6 million per. Given that Kreider's market value as a free agent would probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of $7.5 million a year, a trade seemed imminent.

But then both sides compromised and met in the middle. They finally came up with a deal that will pay Kreider $6.5 million per year, but for seven years. The extra year was, no doubt, a concession from the organization to keep Kreider in a Rangers' uniform throughout the rest of his playing career.

One cannot overlook the significance of this deal. Ever since Jeff Gorton informed Rangers' fans in February of 2018 that the organization was going to rebuild, the Blueshirts have been in sell mode. There are now only four players left from the team that went to the Stanley Cup finals back in 2014: Henrik Lundqvist, Marc Staal, Jesper Fast and Kreider. And Fast, it should be noted, played only 11 games that year with no points.

A lot of talented players have been shipped out since then and a lot of promising prospects have taken their place. But prospects don't always pan out the way you think they will. And even for a fan base as loyal as the Rangers, management had to give them something to hope for. So Gorton and team president John Davidson rolled up their sleeves, sharpened their pencils and made it happen.

Kreider was having himself one helluva season going into the trade deadline, which usually translates into landing a bigger haul. Either those offers weren't enticing enough or Gorton and Davidson simply decided that it was more important to keep an integral member of this team in the fold. Regardless, it was the correct thing to do. Maybe the last three years of this contract don't equal the first four; that's the chance you take when you sign a player to a deal like this. There's always an element of risk, on both sides. Kreider undoubtedly left a lot of money on the table; and the Rangers compensated him by agreeing to the extra year. Both sides got what they wanted: Kreider got the security of a long-term deal; the Rangers locked up a valued asset at a reduced price.

But Gorton and Davidson weren't done. Now that they locked up Kreider, they had another problem: how to pay him. It should be no secret that next year the Rangers were going to be carrying a lot of dead-cap space, the vast majority of it courtesy of their decision to buy out Kevin Shattenkirk before the start of this season. The amount of that hit comes to $6.1 million, only $400 thousand less than what Kreider will earn. And with three restricted free agents to contend with during the off season - two of them in line to receive significant pay increases - the Rangers were looking at cap hell if they didn't get some relief, and soon.

So they traded Brady Skjei to the Carolina Hurricanes for a first-round pick. For all intents and purposes, it was a salary dump. Skjei was in the second year of a six year contract worth $5.25 million per. Without him on the books next year, the Rangers will have the resources necessary to retain all their RFAs in the off season, and maybe even add a depth player.

So why would the Rangers give up on a promising defenseman who's only 25, especially when they don't have a lot of depth on the left side? Apart from the monetary relief trading him gave them, the fact is that there are currently two players in the system who are projected to be better than Skjei and could compete for roster spots next year: the first is Libor Hajek, the throw in from the Tampa Bay  Lightning in the Ryan McDonagh and J.T. Miller trade two seasons ago, who is having an outstanding year with the Hartford Wolfpack; the second is 2018 first-round pick K'Andre Miller, who is currently playing for the University of Wisconsin, but could be playing for the Blueshirts next year. And let's not forget that Marc Staal and Brendon Smith are still under contract for 2020-21 and are hardly chopped liver.

To sum up, yesterday was a pretty good day for the Rangers. They kept an important cog in an engine that is a couple of years away from possibly contending for the Stanley Cup, and they did it while clearing the cap room necessary to keep their core together for the foreseeable future. To the fans who have been patient throughout this whole process, they can now take comfort in the knowledge that this organization, while not completely done retooling, has nonetheless committed to putting a winning product on the ice.

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.

Yes, Eli Manning Belongs In the Hall of Fame

That was quite a nice game Daniel Jones had against the Redskins. 28 for 42, 352 yards, five touchdowns and, most importantly, no turnovers. Whatever else you can say about this abysmal season, one thing's for certain: the Giants have found their quarterback. Jones is the real deal. Going into week 17, he has thrown for 2726 yards and 23 touchdowns - both franchise records for a rookie QB, going all the way back to Charlie Conerly in 1948. While he has had a problem with fumbles, his TD to Int ratio 23 to 11 is better than what Sam Darnold - his counterpart on the Jets - posted in his rookie year. It's now all too apparent that he was the best QB taken in the 2019 draft. Imagine where this team might've been if they had had any defense this year.

But while the future certainly looks bright with Jones under center, the man who started his last game for the team against the Dolphins last week will likely be out of football when the season comes to a close. And when that happens the discussion will immediately pivot to whether he belongs in Canton. Let me just cut right to the chase here. Yes, Eli Manning deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Just compare and contrast his stats with another Hall of Fame QB: Joe Namath.

Manning:
Completion %: 60.3; TD-Int ratio: 366-244; Total Yards: 57,023.

Namath:

Completion %: 50.1; TD-Int ratio: 173-220; Total Yards: 27,663.

Yes, Broadway Joe will forever be remembered for his "guarantee" win over the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, and, yes, he was hobbled by injuries throughout his career, but Eli beat the greatest quarterback in NFL history not once, but twice in Super Bowls 42 and 46. And he was the MVP in both games. You wanna say he was lucky? Fine, but was he lucky twice? I doubt it. Consider this: as incredible as Ron Swaboda's catch in the '69 World Series was, there's no way in hell he makes that catch again. Lightning never strikes twice in the same place.

My point is that every successful athlete at some point has lady luck shine on them, but the truly great ones, more often than not, make their own luck. And Eli, when his team needed him the most, came through in the clutch. No he wasn't as prolific as his brother Peyton, but in the postseason he was a better quarterback than Peyton. And as I wrote in an earlier piece, had this franchise done a better job of providing him with the weapons he needed, he might've had a third ring.

The sad truth is that Eli is going to be judged for the last six years of his career; a period that admittedly wasn't as spectacular as his first ten. And that's both unfortunate and unfair. Show me one potential hall of fame quarterback who could win with the team Eli was saddled with. I doubt even Tom Brady would be able to overcome this level of incompetence. What John Mara and Steve Tisch have allowed to happen to this once proud franchise is a disgrace. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Look, if it was up to me, Eli would be in the Hall of Fame in a heartbeat. Pound for pound, he was the best signal caller the franchise has ever had. He belongs in the Hall of Fame, right up there with fellow Giant Lawrence Taylor. To not punch his ticket to Canton would be to do a disservice to a good man who has done nothing but distinguish himself for an organization that in my opinion never truly appreciated what it had.

Memo to John Mara: Forget About Jason Garrett!

Look, I know I've been critical of your organization over the last six years, and with good reason. As principal owner, you've allowed a once proud franchise to deteriorate to the point where, were it not for the hapless Cincinnati Bengals, you'd be in line to get the first overall pick in next year's draft. Even with the Bengals in the mix, you're still the odds-on favorites to get the second pick. That would make two out of the last three years in which your team had a pick that high in the draft, and the other year you went sixth. Not since the '70s, when your father Wellington ran the show, has this franchise been this inept. Shame on you for letting that happen.

But as bad as things are now, they could get worse. I know that's hard to believe given the fact that you could finish the season with a record of 2-14, but yes, it could get worse. And that's because there's a rumor floating around out there that beleaguered Cowboys coach Jason Garrett would like the chance to coach the Giants should Jerry Jones decide to fire him at the end of the season.

Let me just be as direct as I can here. Jason Garrett deserves to be the head coach of this team the same way I deserve to be the starting center for the New York Knicks. Have you watched the Cowboys this season? They look like a herd of deer caught in some motorist headlights. Never have I seen a team this talented be this completely overmatched on the playing field. Despite outgaining their opponent on Thanksgiving day, the Buffalo Bills embarrassed the Cowboys on national TV by forcing three turnovers and converting on key down after key down. Josh Allen in his first full season at quarterback looked like a ten year veteran, while Dak Prescott played like a rookie making his first start.

Of course, the problem for Prescott is that this is his fourth season in the NFL, and not only hasn't he improved from his rookie year, he shows every indication that he's going backwards. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that Prescott isn't a good QB; it's just that given the level of talent around him, he's nowhere near where he should be. Compare and contrast Prescott's stats with those of Russell Wilson. While Prescott has averaged more yards per game than Wilson - 315 to 267 - he's thrown eight more picks. And his passer rating is 13 points lower than Wilson's, and five points lower than what it was in his rookie season. Put succinctly, Prescott has not improved as a quarterback over the course of his career, and that is a direct result of having a head coach who doesn't know how to get the best out of his players.

Think about it: a team that has Ezekiel Elliott in its backfield, the best offensive line in the game and a front seven that can instill fear in opposing quarterbacks and running backs alike, and they're 6-6 with four games to play? And that's after they got off to a 3 and 0 start by beating the likes of the Giants, Redskins and Dolphins. There's no excuse for what's going on with this team. The mystery here isn't how Garrett has somehow managed to last this long as Cowboys' head coach, but why any team in its right mind would want to hire him for anything more important than, say, ball boy.

He's a terrible clock manager who has virtually no abilities as a play caller. Just last week in a game against the Patriots in Foxborough, Bill Belichick badly outcoached him. And it's crystal clear from all the available evidence that Garrett doesn't command the respect of his players, either. No less a Cowboys' legend than Jason Witten, when given the chance to back his coach, instead threw him and his assistants under the bus. As every sports fan knows all too well, when you lose the locker room as a coach or manager, you're toast.

What the Giants need is a teacher; someone who can develop young players like Daniel Jones and Saquon Barkley. But they also need a no-nonsense coach who will bring discipline to the sidelines. This team hasn't just been bad this year, they've been sloppy. The amount of mistakes that are committed on both sides of the ball are indicative of a team that not only doesn't know how to make critical plays at critical moments in the game, but is not held accountable when it fails to do so.

The play calling has been equally abysmal, both offensively and defensively. While it's true you can't overcome a dearth in talent - not in this league anyway - you can mitigate it if you know how to utilize the talent you do have. A good coach can give even the least talented team a fighting chance on Sunday. But instead, Pat Shurmur and his assistants look like a pack of absentee landlords in a slum.

If the Giants do in fact fire Shurnur and his assistants at the end of the season - as they should - and if Jerry Jones does the same with Garrett and Co. in Dallas, both franchises should do themselves an enormous favor and hire replacements that can bring out the best in their respective teams. For the Giants, that means looking outside the box and going with someone who, for lack of a better expression, kills both birds with one stone.

And after considerable consideration, there's only one name that comes to mind: Jim Harbaugh. Yes, I know he's currently coaching at Michigan and, yes, I'm fully aware that he hasn't exactly done a bang up job there. But that shouldn't disqualify him from being the next head coach of this team. It certainly didn't disqualify Pete Carroll when the Seattle Seahawks were looking for a head coach and I'm fairly confident that nobody would argue that his hiring hasn't transformed that franchise, and indeed the entire city. Were it not for a bad call late in Super Bowl 49 against the Pats, the Seahawks would've won back to back titles.

But getting back to Harbaugh. When he took over as head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, that franchise hadn't made the postseason in almost a decade and he managed to get it to three consecutive NFC championship games and a Super Bowl appearance in four seasons. And let's be honest, Giants fans, if Kyle Williams doesn't fumble that punt in overtime, it might've been two Super Bowl appearances. That's how good the 49ers were under Harbaugh.

Prior to Harbaugh's arrival in the Bay area, Alex Smith was at best an average quarterback. But in Harbaugh's first year at the helm, Smith not only became a solid signal caller, he led the team to a 13-3 record and an appearance in the conference title game, which as I mentioned above, might well have been a Super Bowl appearance had it not been for some shoddy ball handling.

Then the following season, Harbaugh took the biggest gamble of his coaching career by benching Smith for second-string quarterback Colin Kaepernick. At the time, the 49ers had a record of 6-2-1. With Kaepernick under center, the team went 5-2 down the stretch and made it all the way to the Super Bowl before losing to the Baltimore Ravens, who were coached by Harbaugh's brother, John.

The bottom line is that Jim Harbaugh knows how to win in the NFL. He reversed the fortunes of a moribund franchise that was going nowhere fast. He also turned two mediocre quarterbacks into championship caliber quarterbacks; just imagine what he could do with Daniel Jones. Think about this for a moment. If Harbaugh had had a running back as talented as Barkley in his backfield, he might've won that Super Bowl against his brother. Hell, he might've won two of 'em. Here's another morsel to chew on. Had 49ers' CEO Jed York not fired Harbaugh after the 2014 season, as his GM Trent Baalke wanted, he might've been spared the ensuing four years of losing records. There's a lesson to be learned here: great coaches, unlike their general managers, do not grow on trees.

Now before we all get carried away, a reality check is in order. No matter who the Giants hire to replace Shurmur, it will not be an easy task putting this franchise back on the winning path. A lot of bad decision making went into creating this catastrophe masquerading as a football team. But while hiring the right football coach may not be the silver bullet Giants fans have been dreaming of ever since Tom Coughlin was shown the door, hiring the wrong one again could set things back a decade or more.

Consider this. Barry Sanders, the legendary running back Barkley is most compared to, had exactly one postseason win to show for his ten seasons with the Detroit Lions. As tragic as that fact may be, the Giants are in jeopardy of one upping it.

Food for thought this holiday season, Mr, Mara.