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This is not about Eli Manning.
Eli Manning is impossible to gauge. He’s simultaneously the most and least stable player in NFL history. For all the weekly swings in emotion, there’s nothing that can truly account for the stability of knowing the most important position in sports was locked in every single week without fail. He was always there. Some weeks he was a quality NFL starter. Some weeks he was a bum. Some weeks he was completely average. And for two stretches in ’08 and ’12, he entered god mode and tore through the NFC before ripping out the hearts of the still hilariously bitter New England fans. The most rational outsider is torn between the value of stability and the importance of consistency. And the most rational Giants fan is torn between the innate reflex to be infuriated with every little mistake and the feeling of what those two Super Bowls meant. It’s impossible.
This season he’s been objectively bad. He’s been objectively bad behind the worst line in the league with no running game and with a receiving corps that was barren by October. Not even the most vehement Eli hater can look at this season and say “that’s Eli’s fault” without acknowledging those facts. But bad nonetheless. Awful, really. And we’ve all started looking towards this year’s crop of QB’s thinking about the future.
But this isn’t about Eli Manning.
This is not about Ben McAdoo.
Ben McAdoo is a fat fucking coward. He’s a gutless, pathetic joke of a human being who has repeatedly refused to accept responsibly for coaching a team with Super Bowl expectations into the gutter. He’s tossed Eli under the bus repeatedly, never took a necessary hard stance either defending or disciplining Odell while the media killed him, send Rodgers-Cromartie home before framing it as him “quitting”, and on and on. And now this. Now he’s attempting to pass blame to Eli Manning. Eli Manning, who again was given the worst line in the league, no running game, and a receiving corps that was decimated by October to go along with an overgrown childpredator reading an iHop menu to find the same eight plays to run. Eli Manning, who has shown up every day, never skirted responsibility or passed blame, and represented the organization with the utmost dignity for 14 years. And Ben McAdoo is such a fat fucking coward that he’s making a last ditch effort to save his job by scapegoating the one player who’s earned the right to a dignified end to his Giants tenure.
But this is not about Ben McAdoo.
This is not about Jerry Reese.
Jerry Reese is incompetent. Jerry Reese is so hilariously incompetent that however hard you search you will not find someone to argue otherwise. He rode the work of Ernie Accorsi and the success of Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning to two Super Bowls, then rewarded the latter two by bringing their respective legendary Giants careers to embarrassing endings that neither deserved. He let the offensive line crumble before our eyes and has drafted so few serviceable players in the last ten years that he had to spend $350 million in contracts to make up for it two summers ago. Seriously, his draft record is a fucking JOKE. Going into this offseason, with one single gaping obvious hole on this team at offensive line, he spent his free agent money on an old wide receiver, drafted a tight end with identical skill sets in the first round, and didn’t use a single pick on an offensive lineman until the SIXTH. He literally rolled back the exact same offensive line to get Eli slaughtered and ensure he had zero chance to get the ball to those receivers. It’s the most incompetent display I’ve ever seen. If not for Tom and Eli, Jerry Reese would be selling insurance in Tiptonville.
But this isn’t about Jerry Reese.
This is about John Mara.
Beavis faceass John Mara.
Because for all the cowardice of McAdoo and the incompetence of Reese and how much those two have gotten us to this point, none of what has transpired these last two days happens without John Mara’s say. None of it.
John Mara sits here and enjoys this label as the classy, stable owner of the classy, stable New York Giants. The truth of the matter is that in the past three years now John Mara has had no problem unceremoniously ousting the coach and quarterback that won him two Super Bowls.
Two guys who represented the organization with nothing but respect and class and every other trope the Giants claim to care about, and he allowed them to be embarrassed and disrespected at the end of their careers. He made Coughlin fall on the sword two years ago and hired internally rather risk losing the perception of “organizational stability” by clearing house like he should have. And now rather than canning this rat faced idiot in week six like he should have, John Mara is happy to scapegoat a franchise icon in hopes that the change can save him from having to fire Reese and McAdoo and admit that the strong stable Giants have fallen apart in all facets under his watch and the watch of the guys he’s chosen.
It’s embarrassing. It’s infuriating. But it’s not surprising.
It’s not surprising because John Mara is a well-documented asshole.
John Mara is not a “class” guy. John Mara is not some dignified leader. John Mara is not the General Kelly of the NFL serving his country as the “adult in the room” trying to keep Jerry Trump from blowing us all up.
John Mara is trash.
John Mara is the most powerful owner in the NFL and has been during the most tumultuous stretch in the game’s history. Nothing happens in this league without the say-so from John Mara and Art Rooney. And those two groomed Roger Goodell for years to be the scapegoat commissioner and shield attention from the owners as they–specifically the inner circle of Mara, Rooney, Jones, and Richardson–presided over the league.
What has class act John Mara presided over?
John Mara presided over a decade-plus sweeping of concussion and CTE research under the rug.
John Mara took part in years of ignoring and downplaying domestic violence issues, all the way through last season with Josh Brown.
John Mara allowed the fucking charade of Deflategate to carry on for two years because he knew it deflected attention from the CTE and DV issues he actively ignored for years.
John Mara bilked season ticket owners out of thousands of dollars through the scam of PSL’s and outrageous increases in premium seating–not one cent of which went to the players–for a new stadium that Giants and Jets fans hate.
John Mara participated in “mischaracterizing” $120 million in ticket revenue that should have been split with the players by creating a completely fictional exemption that was only caught through an audit by the Player’s Union.
John Mara gave his blessing to move two teams to Los Angeles and one to Las Vegas in a shameless money grab for relocation fees. Money that the players will also never see, of course.
John Mara signed a kicker that told him he’d abused his wife, but is actively blackballing Colin Kaepernick for a peaceful protest – a fact that I’d love to hear you dispute as Geno Smith quarterbacks the New York Football Giants this upcoming Sunday.
And John Mara allowed the league to receive taxpayer funds from the Department of Defense to “honor” our military. If you took some seedy prostitute into the swamps outside that godforsaken Meadowlands complex and made her pay to blow you, you still wouldn’t be getting as good a deal as the NFL getting to shamelessly wrap themselves in the flag while making the military (and thus taxpayers) pay them for the right to walk a soldier who’s risked their life out on the field for 25 seconds of applause by whichever fans aren’t out in the concourse waiting to piss out a $16 beer or to buy a $12 hot dog that John Mara is monetarily raping them for.
Paid patriotism in itself is maddening enough. It becomes mind-numbingly infuriating when you remember the way that people falsely framed the protests as anti-military. And it should make you want to put your head through a fucking wall when you realize that John Mara and the other owners only passed the rule demanding teams come out for the anthem in 2009 so that they could turn the anthem into a viewable event and thus a marketing opportunity for them to get advertising money from the Department of Defense.
Never ever forget that every one of these owners is a living, breathing pile of shit who will exploit anything from breast cancer to military service to make another dollar. Fuck every single one of them, starting with John Mara.
All of those things have happened under John Mara’s watch. All of them. Maybe they’re not all directly his doing. But Mara doesn’t get to skate responsibility for all of those things as the “adult in the room” because his dad Wellington was well respected. Concussions were covered up and domestic violence was ignored and money is still stolen from fans and revenue is still hidden from players and fraudulent patriotism is something he and the other owners are getting PAID for and it’s all happened/happening at a time where he’s arguably the most powerful figure in the league. There is no separating John Mara from those things.
He could have kept up the classy charade with Giants fans by giving Eli a dignified end to a lost season. He could have allowed this guy who has actually handled himself with class and represented the organization with dignity and played every fucking Sunday no matter what so that you could keep up this whole class and stability routine for 210 straight games. It’s really not that much to ask.
But when you’re trash then you’re just trash.
Go fuck yourself John Mara, and SMDFTB
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