The Giants have a coordinator they can’t afford to lose and other assistant coaches they likely can’t afford to keep.
Even if the Giants stick with head coach Joe Judge while changing general managers — as was the internal preference last week — change is coming to the coaching staff. Especially on the offensive side, where no NFL team has scored fewer points over the last two seasons combined.
Judge declined to discuss his staff Thursday, but he is deeply tied to defensive coordinator Patrick Graham. The question is whether Graham — who turned down an interview in the Jets’ head coach search last season — will get more requests when the number of head coach vacancies increases Monday from two to maybe six.
“The idea is to one day be a head coach,” Graham said. “If someone wants to talk to me, they want to talk to me. I’m sure I’ll consider it, but right now my focus is so much on [preparing to play] Washington, trying to figure out a way to win this game, get the guys in the right spot. I would be flattered to have an opportunity, but we’ll see what comes of it later on.”
How important is maintaining Graham to the Giants’ hopes of turning around five straight losing seasons? More than you expect based on the rankings (No. 20 total defense and No. 23 scoring defense). The defense might be a disruptive pass rusher away from taking the next step if other pieces remain in place.
Randy Mueller, head of the Mueller Football Advising firm and a former NFL Executive of the Year, wrote on Twitter that Graham is the Giants’ No. 1 asset and “losing him is the only way things get worse for Giant fans.”
The cold reality entering Sunday’s regular-season finale is that even snapping a five-game losing streak won’t do much to slow the inevitable. Do the players feel the added burden of playing to save coaches’ jobs?
“Nobody is trying to get anybody fired, nobody is trying to help anybody keep a job,” safety Xavier McKinney said. “We’re all just trying to win games at the end of the day.”
Judge kept his staff mostly intact after his promising first season, but he could soon be on to hiring offensive line coach No. 4 if Rob Sale leaves, as expected, for the University of Florida. The Giants have burned through three head coaches, four offensive coordinators, five offensive line coaches, four tight ends coaches, two receiver coaches and two running back coaches during their five straight losing seasons — with more upheaval on the horizon.
Freddie Kitchens’ six-game trial calling plays in place of fired coordinator Jason Garrett has been a backup-quarterback-fueled disaster, and having underachieving stars at other positions doesn’t foster a sense of security. Running back Saquon Barkley tried to spin the lack of continuity as a positive before admitting it can stunt development.
“Through that, you get to meet a lot of different personalities, grab a little bit from everyone and improve your game,” Barkley said. “But it does impact a little bit, to be completely honest.”
Special teams coordinator Thomas McGaughey has coached nine seasons in New York, including the last four in his second stint with the Giants.
“A lot of times when you’re building on swamp ground, you’ve got to go 10 times deeper before you start going up,” McGaughey said. “We’re all on swamp ground if you haven’t figured it out, and it’s a little harder here. It’s not Cleveland. It’s not other places. It’s New York City, and it’s harder to build here because you’ve got a lot of things that you’re working against.”
McGaughey said the staff’s “best case is building on the things that we’ve done … behind the scenes.”
“You’re going to get your teeth kicked in,” McGaughey said of the bad times in New York. “You’re going to get booed in the stadium. If you’re not strong mentally, you’re not going to be able to make it here. That’s the reason why they say, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
“When we’ve seen this city flip, we already know what it is. We’ve seen one week, ‘Eli [Manning] sucks.’ Now, his freaking name is up in the rafters after two Super Bowls. The guys that have been here, we understand. You just have to keep your head down, keep working, keep grinding and eventually get to where you want.”