He is not a favorite on this site (to put it mildly), and I don't disagree with many of the negative assessments, but I'd like to offer up another perspective.
Is it possible that one of his biggest mistakes was that he was so demanding of his subordinates to produce a winner that he forced their hand into numerous bad decisions?
The prime example would be his lavish spending on free agents in the hope of dragging his team out of the doldrums and into the playoffs even though the roster from 1 to 53 was simply not good enough to turn things around so quickly. (The one exception would be 2016 and that turned out to be unsustainable.)
Another example: Knowing full well that any rookie QB brought in here would not out-perform Eli in Year One, John Mara hesitated to pull the plug on his two-time Super Bowl MVP. (He finally did so in 2019.)
When a team owner comes out and says “we need to give our young QB weapons” or “we need to find a replacement for our franchise QB” or “we know this underperforming young player should be getting more playing time” (and Mara has done all of these things), it ties the front office’s hands and forces them into bad decisions and overpaying in contracts or draft selections.
Mara makes bad personnel selections but he also doesn’t seem to understand how the NFL market works. Just a terrible owner - he deserves all the flak he is receiving.
This really started when he gave Reese a win or else mandate after 2015. This forced them to buy a defense and then everything blew up. Regardless of what you thought about retaining Reese, if the decision was to retain him he should have been given a contract extension - GM’s cannot operate with short term win now mandates.
The same thing is happening with Gettleman now. After this year, there needs to be a full commitment to a 2-3 year rebuild plan. Playoffs should not even be mentioned.
The young injuries on the OL may have crippled them anyway, but they stated out with a Motley Crew....incluiding PEATR, who could not maintain a position over NS.
It appears that they don't know what NFL players look like. This is BOTH a GM and HC problem. They choose and they Play the wrong Guys
Maybe not a Super Bowl year but I think they would have been in the playoffs a few more times and we would be looking at things much differently.
You had the QB. You had the HC. What they didn't have were the players in box (front 7/OL) to influence the physical aspect of the game. Just look at the drafts from 2012 thereafter and you see a huge shift in the type of player drafted.
If you owned an NFL Franchise, you would stay in the background, with no input, I wouldn’t. I d want to be involved.
If he s overriding decisions of the so called professionals he hired, that s a problem, but still understandable,expectations to the contrary are unrealistic.
The problem with John Mara has not been being involved, it s about poor choices, a.k. a. staying to long with Reese. Hiring Dave Gettleman, loyalty to a family based business when an outside influence is needed, loyalty to Eli when it was obvious that era was over.
I get the Eli thing, were I owner back in the Simms days, I would never have allowed him to be released.
But the idea that Mara doesn’t care of course is wrong it might be his love of this team that hinders his decision making
This really started when he gave Reese a win or else mandate after 2015. This forced them to buy a defense and then everything blew up. Regardless of what you thought about retaining Reese, if the decision was to retain him he should have been given a contract extension - GM’s cannot operate with short term win now mandates.
The same thing is happening with Gettleman now. After this year, there needs to be a full commitment to a 2-3 year rebuild plan. Playoffs should not even be mentioned.
Good point about Reese’s mandate. Another stupid instance of meddling.
John Mara has a really easy job and he’s still bad at it.
Process-related stuff aside, it's undeniable to me that they kept Eli for at least 2 seasons too long, and cost themselves real cap dollars in the process. That was the biggest roster misstep they made, in my opinion (have to keep in mind, if they had moved on from Eli when I am suggesting, it's highly unlikely that they would have pursued Solder to the level of over-payment that they did).
Saqouns Rookie year was historic fwiw
Let's go back to MacAdoo. You have an owner that was actually involved in the decision to bench Eli and then overreacted when MacAdoo botched it. That overreaction set in motion a chain of events we are still dealing with. It meant the mandate for the next GM and coach was to build around Eli. Rather than having someone take a cold hard look at his declining skill set we hired someone, from the organization, who not only decided to build around him, but also did it in the image of the 70s oilers with Campbell or Rams with Dickerson. He talked about the run game at the peak of the passing era.
indo think he tries and cares. That is the problem. These decisions are hard and unsentimental. He cannot make them that way because he is always reacting. This is on Mara and no one else. Reese should have been gone with TC and a great GM should have been brought in the appraise the situation analytically not emotionally.
John Mara can never be accused of indifference.
Many have pointed out that he's just a trust baby who inherited the team, and that he makes huge amounts of money no matter what happens. That almost implies that he doesn't really care.
If anything, maybe John Mara can be faulted because he cares too much and the temptation has been for him to exert his authority rather than delegate critical football decisions to others.
The young injuries on the OL may have crippled them anyway, but they stated out with a Motley Crew....incluiding PEATR, who could not maintain a position over NS.
It appears that they don't know what NFL players look like. This is BOTH a GM and HC problem. They choose and they Play the wrong Guys
John Mara doesn't know what a modern NFL GM and organization looks like.
The fact that Dave Gettleman is here at all is proof positive of that. There isn't another NFL franchise that would have even considered hiring him for that role at that time - or ever again.
I don't doubt there was some win now pressure, but that was coming from the fact that the moves the team made in the first 3 years did not produce any tangible progress. If he "forced" bad moves in year 4, it was only because of the prior bad moves in years 1-3.
John Mara can never be accused of indifference.
Many have pointed out that he's just a trust baby who inherited the team, and that he makes huge amounts of money no matter what happens. That almost implies that he doesn't really care.
If anything, maybe John Mara can be faulted because he cares too much and the temptation has been for him to exert his authority rather than delegate critical football decisions to others.
of course he wakes up every day wanting to win. But does he care enough to look in the mirror and be critical of his own decisisons? Did he care enough to do a real search for a GM 4 years ago instead of interviewing mostly in-house and/or familiar candidates? Does he care enough to have a tough conversation with this brother regarding his role in the team? A brother who left during the draft one year to attend the Kentucky Derby....
Good post Sean, right on point.
As others have said, if Mara is putting his thumb on the scale (which many of us suspected anyway), I don't see how that reflects well on him. I appreciate his passion, and I know none of us want the Giants to win more than he does, but this only shows that his head is further up his ass than any of us thought. That he alone has all of the answers, when he has very few.
Quote:
John Mara can never be accused of indifference.
Many have pointed out that he's just a trust baby who inherited the team, and that he makes huge amounts of money no matter what happens. That almost implies that he doesn't really care.
If anything, maybe John Mara can be faulted because he cares too much and the temptation has been for him to exert his authority rather than delegate critical football decisions to others.
of course he wakes up every day wanting to win. But does he care enough to look in the mirror and be critical of his own decisisons? Did he care enough to do a real search for a GM 4 years ago instead of interviewing mostly in-house and/or familiar candidates? Does he care enough to have a tough conversation with this brother regarding his role in the team? A brother who left during the draft one year to attend the Kentucky Derby....
Don't confuse the results with the the methodology. Eli was there in 14-15 but the team was young across the board. Then they went all in for 2016-2017. It failed. Same with now.
The Giants have lacked a superior coaching staff since 2012-2013 when the bottom fell out and ownership/mgmt replaced Gillbride with McAdoo. They were taking on water at that point due to bad drafts and bad FA moves. That was domino #1. 2015 was domino #2 when they replaced Coughlin with McAdoo.
The whole thing is broken, but it starts and ends with the HC/GM.
They aren't drafting and finding enough good players and they aren't developing players and putting players in a position to succeed. Simple as that. The Giants LOVE to rebuild. They love to exhibit patience, sometimes to a fault. How many young players have they stuck with for far too long? Too many to count.
We now need a COMPLETE rebuild, orchestrated by someone completely different and detached from ownership, and we need it ASAP.
The best Giants draft pick of the past decade and a half is a perfect example of this, the Giants drafting JPP in 2010. They already had Kiwi, Tuck, and Umenyiora on the roster at D End. The regime had a recent championship, so had the ability to make such a pick. They weren't plugging holes in the current season's starting lineup to increase short term playoff hopes.
To be fair, the Giants did make a decision like this in 2021, when they traded down. I think that decision more than anything shows how high their hopes were for Judge and this current iteration of the team. They need to clean up the operation - but more decisions like that need to happen. No more See Hole Plug Hole. Build the goddamn trenches, and keep building them.
John Mara is Tommy Boy... the car is The Giants
Eli wasn't elite on his back 9, but he was good enough to win and still probably had some late game mojo left in that arm of his, but the team was shit.
And Jones would win if this team was built and coached correctly. Jones isn't elite either, obviously, but he's good enough to win with at this current moment.
John Mara can never be accused of indifference.
Many have pointed out that he's just a trust baby who inherited the team, and that he makes huge amounts of money no matter what happens. That almost implies that he doesn't really care.
If anything, maybe John Mara can be faulted because he cares too much and the temptation has been for him to exert his authority rather than delegate critical football decisions to others.
Agreed ...
A good leader know when how to listen and how to delegate when the time comes ...
Barkley.
He, Chris Mara and Tim McDonnell are part of the "committee" approach the Giants use. Gettleman is awful, but if he wants to go one way, and Chris Mara wants to go another, which way do you think the Giants will go?