Clueless Mara embodies incompetent New York Giants

It’s hard to decide what is worse, what Big Blue did to quarterback Eli Manning on Tuesday, or John Mara’s explanation on Wednesday.

After 14 seasons and two Super Bowl championships with the New York Giants, clearly Manning deserved better. Anyone with a modicum of common sense understands that much. But common sense is not very common around East Rutherford these days.

Unfortunately, the New York Giants have thrived recently by making bad situations worse. Remember the infamous Josh Brown fiasco? The team made that one-day (cut the guy) story into a week-long sitcom.

They have a coach who conducted a back-up quarterback competition in training camp, while his offensive line sputtered. He never did realize that he was simply choosing between bad and worse. McAdoo acted like keeping Geno Smith was a transformational decision for the franchise. Bad will be on full display on Sunday.

Then, when given the choice between a veteran NFL kicker or some guy from Wossamotta U, they chose the latter. And Aldrick Rosas has not disappointed us.

While there are plenty more examples, so hopefully you get the point.

For the coaching staff, ownership and management, it’s been one bad decision after another. They all appear to be cut from the same cloth. So it should not be a surprise that a basic tenet of athletics was apparently a foreign concept to the guy who owns the team.

Ironically, however, Mara doesn’t just own the team, he grew up with the New York Giants.

New York Giants

Regardless of whose idea it was, someone, anyone, should have seen this proposal would turn out badly. First and foremost, there should be healthy skepticism that playing the other quarterbacks was in fact John Mara’s idea.

This scheme has Beavis and Butthead’s (i.e. – McAdoo and Reese) fingerprints all over it. After another epic fail by the tandem that can’t get anything right, leave it to Father Mara to bail out these wayward souls.

The current landscape is surreal. Who would have thought that the leadership of an NFL team could be so clueless and narcissistic? But the triumvirate of Mara, general manager Jerry Reese and head coach Ben McAdoo could not be more self-centered and detached if they wanted to.

It just shows that Big Blue was basically on autopilot last season.

Don’t mistake kindness for weakness

If Ben McAdoo is the smartest guy in the room, as Reese alluded to a couple of weeks ago, then how come he didn’t factor in that Manning would tell him to pound salt. After all, the smartest folks are always two steps ahead of everyone else.

So based upon Reese’s observation, if indeed that intelligence is in ample supply, then it must be arrogance, or dare I say it, narcissism, that tripped up the Holy Trinity.

After all the “streak” meant everything to Manning, until it meant nothing. And it took the one person in the organization to define dignity for the others. For the better part of a decade, Reese has filled the New York Giants locker room with mercenaries looking to cash in financially.

He obviously doesn’t know loyalty. It’s not in his DNA.

Here’s the way it worked.

First, Tom Coughlin molded them into a unit, despite so many challenges. Then Reese and Mara finally scapegoated Coughlin, so the last one standing was Manning. And then they did to Manning, what they did to Coughlin – stripping away assets required to be successful. After completing that task, they tried to strip away his dignity.

And then when Manning balked, the Holy Trinity was left holding the bag. Yet by making Manning run the scout team in practice, McAdoo is still chipping away.

Classy Professional 1 Detached Narcissists 0

Keep in mind, mercenaries simply play for money, and when the going gets tough, well they act like Janoris Jenkins. Because if the same plan was presented to Mr. Jenkins, he would have agreed to it in a New York minute.

Was Jenkins out there competing when the going got tough?

Hell no.

Yet he was welcomed back with open arms after his very intentional tardiness from the bye week.

Bleeding Giants blue

And if diehard New York Giants fans don’t get it now, they’ll never get it.  We’ll put it on a platter for you.

Why should you care more than these players do?

Great, you’re a loyal New York Giants rooter. And right now that means your passion is being taken for granted and your hard-earned money stuffs the pockets of folks who are at best extremely tone deaf, or at worst, intentionally toying with your emotions.

The New York Post reports that Mara gave a mea culpa that took public opinion from bad to worse. As Mara explained:

"“The timing of it could have been a little different, I wish I could have been here when that was all going down, but what I did not expect — and this is my fault, I was probably naïve — I did not expect Eli to react by saying, ‘Go ahead and start the other guys.’ ”"

Hey, why worry about Manning when you can rub elbows with the other owners? It’s not like your team is 2-9 or anything. The fact of the matter is that you could have been there, and should have been there for this franchise-changing decision. Being at the owners’ meeting was another dismissive shot at Manning. For the conspiracy theorists, Mara likely was trying to duck for cover when the you know what hit the fan.

What Mara did was tantamount to leaving the kids at home while you and the Mrs. head out for a weekend retreat. Then you come back to the smell of stale beer and a trashed house.

We shouldn’t dismiss the scenario being a set-up either. Just remember, McAdoo wasn’t allowed to say boo about the kicker, but he’s all talk when it comes to the franchise quarterback. And if the desired response wasn’t given, then why not wait until everyone gets on the same page?

It wasn’t like Mara was in Bora Bora.

So while Mara was hob-knobbing with Bob Kraft and Art Rooney, this all went down. If something similar was happening with Tom Brady or Ben Roethlisberger, those owners would have made damn sure to be there.

Displaced Loyalty

Here’s a sampling of the leadership in the New York Giants locker room. According to Pat Leonard of the New York Daily News, Jason Pierre-Paul took the news of Manning’s benching extremely well.

"“Not with Jason Pierre-Paul, an eighth-year veteran who should know better, yukking it up with teammates not 10 feet away from Manning’s locker as the two-time Super Bowl winning QB basically eulogized his own Giants career, which is essentially over. And with no one telling JPP to show a little respect.”"

Maybe Manning can garner some respect if he plays with fireworks while holding one his children. Because we all know that true leadership is doing something foolish, when an adult should know better.

But after all is said and done, knowing that your owner and your general manager love you unconditionally.

Or how about the brilliance of Damon “Snacks” Harrison, who decided to get in a Twitter war with Carl Banks. Banks had the unmitigated gall to be upset of the Manning situation.

Hey big guy, you wanna know who quit – it was Janoris Jenkins and Eli Apple. Everyone with two eyes and half a brain saw it. So take your righteous indignation and shove it. The team you play on is 2-9, so you should be seen and not heard.

But the team record doesn’t matter as long as you are individually playing OK. Yeah, Snacks, that’s leadership for sure.

At this point, Reese and McAdoo are beyond saving. Truthfully, Mara may be beyond saving, because the behavior he’s exhibited recently has been incredibly tone-deaf. So tone-deaf that it leads to conspiracy theories.

But that’s for another day. On this side of the equation no one should rest until every last bum is swept out of the Meadowlands.