Once upon a time, there was a man who coached the Giants named Ray Handley, and he was terrible at his job. This doesn’t make him unique in the NFL, of course; every franchise can point to its own designated Kotites, Bugels and Shulas (David, that is).
Not everyone can be Lombardi, Landry, or Shula (Don, that is).
Of course, Handley wasn’t just terrible at coaching football; he was especially bad at coaching football in a big-city market. He was paranoid. He was humorless. He alienated players just about every day he was on the job. He got into absurd feuds with TV guys. (He feuded with RUSS SALZBERG, for crying out loud, which is like picking a fight with your best next-door neighbor).
He was a fiasco here. But he would have been a fiasco in Chicago, in Los Angeles, in Philadelphia, in Boston — in any self-respecting sporting city that’s willing to forgive failure but will never tolerate unearned arrogance.
Ben McAdoo isn’t that bad. He isn’t Ray Handley.
(Here comes the “but” …)
He didn’t inherit a Super Bowl team, as Handley did, and he didn’t send it hurtling down the commode. He doesn’t sneer at the media. He doesn’t have open disdain for his players. He isn’t likely to get the unforgettable back-page treatment The Post gave Handley on the morning of Oct. 8, 1992, when, under the headline “GIANT MESS,” we superimposed a gas gauge on Handley’s (helpfully super-size) forehead with the arrow tilted toward “empty.”
(About the “but” … ?)
But …
He’s pretty damned close. Really, it may be no fault of his own, either. If you spent five minutes watching his performance Wednesday, there was one question that kept popping into your mind: How could you have possibly spent five minutes with this man and believed he was capable of coaching a football team in New York City?
(File that one away for our next installment of “87 reasons why Jerry Reese needs to be fired at once, too.”)
Full disclosure: I haven’t been to many of McAdoo’s Wednesday press gatherings. So I was a little surprised when he began by opening a binder (Note to all future coaches and managers in New York: LOSE THE BINDERS!) and started reciting facts and figures about the 49ers. It was the kind of stuff you can read all by yourself in game notes. (Or if you happen to know anybody who has access to the internet.)
“[Aldrick] Robinson is a Shanahan favorite at the receiver spot, has an 18.3-yard career catch average … [C.J.] Beathard is going to make his fourth start out of Iowa, with [Jimmy] Garoppolo waiting in the wings … they’re coordinated on defense by Robert Saleh, he’s a Pete Carroll disciple …”
I looked at another writer whose eyes, like mine, looked like two glazed Dunkin’ Donuts. “Every week,” he whispered.
But that wasn’t the fun part. The fun part was when someone asked what the message he’d delivered his players was, and it was a question fiery young Ben McAdoo ripped into with an eloquent, extemporaneous answer …
Um, no, actually what he did was go back to the binder and read his notes. Which had a lot of nice-sounding platitudes and neat-fitting talking points in them.
Such as: “Getting back to our identity. Sound, smart and tough, committed to discipline and poise.”
And: “Everything is fixable.” And: “We need to do simple better.” And: “You may think I’m a little out there, but I think we have a little run in us.”
And: “Don’t buy into the lies your feelings are telling you. These things aren’t about feelings, they’re about decisions.”
And: “We had another great day of practice.” (For God’s sake, man, ENOUGH with all the great practices you have. Save a little something for the games!)
And, because it must’ve been such a big hit the first time, the drop-the-mic finale: “Sound, smart and tough, committed to discipline and poise. Write it down. You’re going hear a lot of it.”
And even THAT wasn’t the fun part. This was the fun part: Someone asked defensive back Eli Apple about McAdoo’s message, the one preserved in his binder and soon surely to be sent to the Smithsonian. And this is what Eli Apple said: “What message?”
Which, in two words, on the record, probably says a thousand times more than the anonymous voices that surfaced Wednesday, reporting McAdoo has lost the team. Lost it? Honestly, after spending a day listening to him, it’s a miracle to learn he ever had it in the first place.