Well, sure, it probably would’ve spoiled the mood. But John Mara had to know he had the power at halftime Sunday afternoon to turn the boos cascading out of every corner of MetLife Stadium to cheers. He was preparing to officially retire Eli Manning’s No. 10 — one spasm of joy in what has been a monthlong football blooper reel for the Giants.
All he had to do was edit his prepared remarks a little:
“ … and, finally, Eli, what more can I say, thank you for everything you’ve done for the New York Giants for the last 16 years, for being such a role model for our players, for everything you’ve done in the community … BUT FIRST, I AM CLEANING HOUSE, TOP TO BOTTOM, TOMORROW MORNING FIRST THING …”
Yep. That would’ve turned the boos to cheers quicker than if Springsteen halted “Outlaw Pete” mid-refrain and jumped right into “Rosalita.” He didn’t do that, though. And, frankly, as mad as he may have been Sunday — and he was Michael-Douglas-in-“Falling Down”-level furious — it wouldn’t be his way to even consider such a corporate apocalypse after three weeks of football season.
But it sure would’ve felt good, certainly for the 75,307 folks who packed MetLife to salute Manning in between booing the present incarnation of the Giants, which would fall 17-14 to the Falcons. It can be a cruel world sometimes; 17-14 was also the final score of Eli’s greatest hour as a Giant, the Super Bowl XLII upset of 18-0 New England.
This time it was a loss to Atlanta, which entered lugging several unwanted adjectives like “woeful” and “brutal” and “lowly,” played about 55 of the 60 minutes Sunday looking every bit a 2-15 team … and won the game at the gun. Which begs the question:
How do you describe the Giants right now?
“I would boo too,” Mara told a couple of reporters at halftime, the anger still undoubtedly fresh in his auditory canals. “We’re 0-2 and down at the half.”
Later, postgame, when that 7-6 deficit had officially morphed into 17-14 catastrophe, the Post’s Ryan Dunleavy ran into him and asked for further comment. Mara didn’t look up. “No,” he said.
This was a few minutes after Younghoe Koo’s 40-yard field goal split the uprights at the gun, dropping the Giants to 0-3, 0-2 at home, a second-straight walk-off field goal loss. It was also a few minutes after someone loudly kicked over a couple of garbage cans just outside the Giants’ owner’s box. Was it Mara? Another Mara? A random Tisch? A guest?
Either way, those toppled Waste Management trash cans provided the perfect symbol for a football season that already seems destined to land in an incinerator — if it isn’t already there. They underline the abject frustration of watching a team in Year 4 of a vast rebuild that simply and inexplicably seems to keep going backward.
“I think the guys are frustrated, disappointed with the results,” said quarterback Daniel Jones, one of the few hopeful elements of this team so far, though his obvious year-over-year improvement has yet to yield any tangible results. “We all want to win and expect to win. I feel that today as we move forward this will motivate us to see what we’ve done well and what we need to correct, and how we attack this week going forward.”
He has certainly mastered Joe Judge’s script. They all have. Sadly, this has become almost entirely a weekly valedictory of explanation, never celebration. The Giants play just good enough to lose every week. In some ways, that’s more infuriating than the weekly slapstick the Jets produce. You can make an argument on the Giants’ behalf almost every week.
Until they actually play the game.
“We didn’t finish,” Judge said. “That’s coaching. That’s playing. That’s everything.”
It’s not doing better than one touchdown in three red-zone visits. It’s not figuring out a way to neutralize the ghost of Matt Ryan in the fourth quarter. It’s not making two gimme, gotta-have-’em interceptions, notably Adoree’ Jackson’s drop in the end zone three plays before Ryan’s game-tying toss to Lee Smith.
(And no: it doesn’t help to lose Blake Martinez, Sterling Shepard and Darius Slayton in the same game, but as Judge himself said: “By now, everyone is a little banged up.”)
The Giants, of course, are more than a little banged up. They are a junky jalopy, puttering aimlessly up and down Route 3 and Route 17 and the Turnpike and the Parkway, spewing gas and leaking oil — and that’s with the “easy” part of the schedule now in the books.
As Judge left the podium Sunday he said, “We’ll be all right.” He has to feel that way in order to get out of bed Monday morning. The rest of us? We see what we see. We hear what we hear: at halftime, after turnovers, walking out of the stadium, boos that rattle souls. We’re all a little less certain. Prove us wrong.