Ben McAdoo twice watched Eli Manning defeat his Green Bay Packers
en route to winning the Super Bowl and being named MVP each time.
New York Giants: In What I Can Only Describe As An Act of Supreme Folly, Head Coach Ben McAdoo Culminates Season Long Criticisms of Eli Manning By Benching Greatest Quarterback in Team History.
Ben McAdoo served as the Green Bay Packers tight ends coach between 2006 through 2011, then served as quarterbacks coach through the 2013 season. During his time there, he won a ring and enjoyed a daily up-close look at two of the games all-time great quarterbacks.
As tight ends coach, McAdoo was in Green Bay for Brett Favre's final two seasons with the Packers. His arrival, however, came the season after Favre led the NFL with 29 interceptions. So perhaps that matter escaped him once bewitched by the likes of Aaron Rogers. Only Ben McAdoo was still tight ends coach when Rogers led Green Bay to a Super Bowl victory in 2010 over Pittsburgh.
Rogers had been starting for four seasons prior to McAdoo's promotion to quarterbacks coach. Therefore, how much did he actually contribute towards Rogers' continuing development during their two years working together?
By 2012 and 2013, Jerry Reese's failures as Giants general manager were making desperate people out of head coach Tom Coughlin and offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride. The latter would become the first scapegoat, and after the 2013 season was replaced as offensive coordinator with Ben McAdoo.
At that point, Eli Manning was coming off the third season of his career in which he led NFL in interceptions. I chalk up most of that to Kevin Gilbride's aggressive down field passing. He and Eli routinely led the league in most yards attempted per pass play.
Enter Ben McAdoo, who institutes a rather awkward style of West Coast offense. During his two seasons as coordinator, Eli set career highs in pass attempts (albeit much shorter attempts), career highs in yardage, career highs in completion percentage, and in 2015 threw a career high 35 TD passes.
That's all fine and well. But Jerry Reese's continuing failures as general manager nonetheless resulted in back-to-back 6-10 seasons requiring a second scapegoat, namely Tom Coughlin.
Ben McAdoo was then elevated to the position of head coach following the 2015 season. And as we know, Jerry Reese spent money like a drunken sailor trying to reinvigorate a moribund defense. And for a season, it worked. The Giants actually fielded one of the league's best defenses, and carried over Super Bowl aspirations heading into the preseason.
McAdoo, however, would inevitably become the latest victim of Jerry Reese's machinations as were Tom Coughlin and Kevin Gilbride before him. Much of the Giants present situation indeed falls on the general manager.
So why was it that Ben McAdoo would unleash harsh criticisms towards Eli Manning during the opening weeks of this season? In fact, he's implied in more ways than one how Eli doesn't quite fit his system.
And there's the rub ...
When your quarterback is getting sacked within three seconds or less, when he's been sacked at least 50 times in his last 28 games, there is no freakin system!
When the general manager has no interest in rebuilding the offensive line and reestablishing a respectable rushing threat, there's no system.
When you're the second head coach guilty of turning a blind eye every time Odell Beckham insults the 90-plus years of Giants tradition and lifts his leg to decorum, there is no system. How could there be with faux suspensions, and no repercussions for players guilty of giving up? Ben McAdoo lost his locker room. He did. There's no disputing that fact. Massage the situation all you want. There are players whom quit on him. It is what it is.
If the Giants are 2-9 this season, Jerry Reese is certainly to blame. All other attempts at change have failed. And so at the end of this season, he must go.
McAdoo must surely follow because Tuesday's decision to bench Eli Manning is just absurd. If I'm not mistaken, he watched up close as Eli Manning and the Giants beat Farve and his Green Bay Packers in that epic arctic NFC championship game of 2007, then watched Eli Manning and the Giants defeat his precious Aaron Rogers and the Packers again four years later. Each time Eli went on to win Super Bowl MVP honors. Yet, McAdoo has determined benching Eli Manning is in the best interest of the team, and a Giant first step towards a better tomorrow.
He is benching Eli Manning in favor of Geno Smith of all people, which is complete folly. Davis Webb is expected to get some reps over the final weeks of the season as well. But what can be learned about him when he will most certainly be playing under extreme duress due to the Giants inept offensive line? Not to mention, if the Giants indeed continue their losing ways, they will surely utilize what could end up being a top four draft pick on an available quarterback. So what exactly is the point?
Eli Manning, who this season became only the seventh quarterback in NFL history to surpass 50,000 yards passing, whose streak of 210 consecutive regular season starts is second only to Brett Farve, is being pushed aside in favor of Geno Smith?
Really?
Dan Reeves was an outsider who once dictated when the Giants career of Phil Simms would end. Now we have another outsider, Ben McAdoo, triggering the demise of Eli Manning.
Week thirteen ... Eli ... clip board duty.
Ponderous!
Damn tight ends coach.
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