Ben McAdoo Fired By The Giants

The New York Giants have finally ripped off the bandaid of a terrible season.

Today, the Giants officially cleaned out their front office and coach, relieving head coach Ben McAdoo of his duties and firing longtime GM Jerry Reese, who was with the team when the Giants won the two Super Bowls.

Aditi Kinkhabwala of the NFL Network was the first to report this, and since then, many have retweeted and shared this story among others, and for me, it was a longtime move that I felt should've done weeks ago.

Reese had been with the Giants since 1994 and had been in the GM role since 2007. He was a scout before becoming director of player personnel in 2004 and under his leadership as GM, they won two Super Bowls, Super Bowl XLII and XLVI, and that allowed quarterback Eli Manning to become one of the most prominent quarterbacks of this time. But now things have changed, it seems, especially this season.

The Giants are now 2-10 after a loss to the Raiders on Sunday, and that is considered an unacceptable record by most, especially for a prominent team like the Giants, who are supposed to be good year after year. That record led to the dismissal of McAdoo, who basically wrote his own downfall after deciding to bench Manning for this game and letting Geno Smith get the starting nod. Before this game, Manning started 210 consecutive games and had two Super Bowl wins and MVPs during that time.

The benching of Manning led to public criticism from writers, sports fans, and even players like Chargers QB Philip Rivers, which forced Giants owner John Mara to go on the defensive and say that he was "furious" about the criticism, which leads to believe ownership is also in a turmoil as well.

Although Manning took the benching well, you can tell he was upset about it, telling reporters after the game on Sunday, "I don't want that. I don't want anybody to get fired...When a coach gets fired, it's usually because the team, the players and myself haven't performed up to our duties."

Manning is usually right. When the team's not playing well, it usually falls on the coach. The coach is usually the one responsible for being the leader and the game-changer in the locker room, not the players. When a team isn't producing or is falling short of expectations, the first place to get the blame is the coach. Although players would like to get the responsibility and have the blame fall on them, we, in this business, usually turn to the coach as the guy, who has lost the leadership of the locker room.

I feel bad that Eli Manning has to go through this. I don't believe this is all his fault and I think this team could've done a lot better this season. But, now things are taking a different turn with the Giants, and it's a turn that most of us don't like. When you do poorly in New York, it tends to send panic among its inhabitants. And that's what's happened to the Giants. They fell and they can't get up. They should've pulled the painful bandaid off a weeks ago after the Giants lost to the Niners, and they didn't, which concerned me. Now, they've pulled it off and it may have been too late. Eli Manning could've played in this week's game had there been a change sooner.

As for the Giants, they'll try to get some wins the last few weeks under Steve Spagnuole. Kevin Abrams will be taking over as interim GM, but the likely end game is that both positions will be changed over the offseason, and they're going to have to make an important change in those positions if they ever expect to return to prominent status again, let alone keep Eli Manning throughout the rest of his career.

It's definitely a mess with this Giants team and I believe they should've made this change a lot sooner, and I hope there's a direction with getting this team back to prominence. If it doesn't go like that, though, they'll be in bad publicly with the New York newspapers and tabloids, and when you're in a prominent market like that with this bad team, that's usually bad news. I hope it doesn't turn out like the Knicks. They need to get better and get better starting now.