#McAdoolusional

After the Week 2 loss, our recap of the game brought up the H-word to describe the NY Giants Head Coach.

Ben McAdoo is failing as a Head Coach. This is not Ray Handley. But it is coming close. Anything in the Handley zip code is bad.

That was Week 2. After three more games of dysfunction and underachievement we are knocking on Ray Handley’s door.

The Dominique Rodgers Cromartie incident is smoke. Where there’s smoke there’s fire.

Yesterday we learned that Eli Apple’s three series benching vs LAC was not performance related. Everyone had just assumed that Apple wasn’t playing well, hence the lost start. In fact, it was disciplinary.

Ruh-Roh.

Handley lost the team in his 2nd year. McAdoo is losing the team in his 2nd year. He’s got rules for certain players but doesn’t have them for others. When a veteran walks out it is a sign of trouble. There is a fire brewing. We’ve seen other players who may or may not have needed discipline of some sort (OBJ, Flowers). With Apple and DRC receiving discipline, I suspect there may be a little hypocrisy going on in the uneven application of the rules. A little hypocrisy when you’re winning? Usually there will be enough John Madden deodorant to overlook it. A little hypocrisy when you’re 0-5? It’s a sh*tstorm.

McAdoo dispensed his justice on Tuesday and the players got addressed about it Friday, leaving the media to deliver the message in between. McAdoo downplayed that as well. The Head Coach is delusional if he thinks these things don’t matter. An integral veteran on your defense gets suspended and you don’t show respect to your players by notifying them what/why this is happening? That is more dysfunction on top of the dysfunction that was already there.

McAdoo said that part of being Head Coach was dealing with “three dumpster fires per day.” Welcome to being a manager. How in the world is this man calling the plays each week? I’ll tell you how- he’s calling them lousy. He calls a pitchout on 3rd & 1 because he’s too busy during the week putting out dumpster fires. He wants to coach but he is in over his head because he needs to be delegating. He is trying to do it all. He can’t. The result is one large mess of dysfunction, on and off the field.

In the early 1990’s Jimmy Johnson was the model. He resurrected the Cowboys. His coordinators, Dave Wannstadt and Norv Turner, were given opportunities as Head Coaches. Neither succeeded. It is but one of a plethora of examples where a Coordinator fails as Head Coach. It’s a completely different job. You are managing people and coaching less. You are steering a ship instead of powering the engine.

McAdoo’s template is Mike McCarthy. McAdoo thinks he can be Head Coach AND call the plays. In the history of the NFL, there are very few who have pulled that off with any success. We watch an 0-5 team and see a Head Coach who is overwhelmed plus out of touch. He’s delusional. The players are challenging his authority because they see the hypocrisy in how they are held to one standard while other players and the Head Coach himself are held to another.

This can be fixed. It starts with the Head Coach owning up to his mistakes. The moment he does that, he’ll earn back some respect that he has lost and he’ll get another chance. The problem as I see it is that right now McAdoo does not see himself as part of the problem. His responses to the media when they question him are one of the parent who thinks that the only way through this is to make sure that the children know he is in charge. The reason why that adolescent acts out is because they smell hypocrisy. The longer McAdoo digs in, the further detached he’ll get from the team. That’s part of what happened to Handley.

The Giants play vs the Broncos tonight. If Lombardi or Parcells or Shula or Belichick were coaching, they’d lose. It’s not a fair fight when injuries have hammered your roster from one week to the next. The problem is that on top of everything else, McAdoo will be there calling the plays, business as usual. It’s delusional. McAdoolusional.