GREEN BAY, Wis. — Well? So how did he do?
If you can ease the camera back a little bit, and get a good angle shot of the big picture, you would have to say this: Ben McAdoo acquitted himself quite well in his first year as a head coach in the NFL (once he got out of that David Byrne Talking Heads oversized press conference suit, anyway).
There have been 17 men who have coached the Giants. Only one of them — Roy Andrews (13-1-1) in 1929 — ever won more than the 11 games McAdoo won in his first season. And only Dan Reeves (11-5 in 1993) and Earl Potteiger (11-1 in ’27) ever won as many as he did as rookies.
He ended the Giants’ four-year playoff drought. And if his quotes didn’t exactly jump out of the notebook and dance in the newspaper … well, that’s not what he’s paid to do.
Of course, the season ended Sunday with a 38-13 loss to the Packers, which is what will stand out and what will be remembered. So, how did he do?
“I think it’s a little early for that,” McAdoo said when asked about what his postmortem for the season would be. “Nobody is happy about anything right now. I think that we fought hard today but we didn’t play well enough. Give Green Bay credit: They played better than we did tonight.”
There were two things McAdoo did Sunday that raised the ire of Giants fans, and they happened within moments of each other. First, on a third-and-1 at their own 41 late in the second quarter, he called a play for Bobby Rainey — the Giants’ third option in that situation usually, behind Rashad Jennings and Paul Perkins — and Rainey was stopped cold.
Then, a few moments later, after allowing the Packers to sneak into their territory, the Giants’ defense turned in a mortal sin — allowing the Hail Mary dagger that turned the game around. Then again, McAdoo’s former mentor, Mike McCarthy, took his share of deserved criticism — and he won the game.
“It’s a tough way to end the season,” McAdoo said. “We struggled to play complete football in all three phases and we didn’t handle the ball particularly well. We didn’t handle the ball well enough to win against a good team.”
And he wouldn’t allow the weather to color his grading of his team’s performance, either.
“That’s no excuse,” he said. “Both teams were playing in it.”