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Giants Salvage Win Over Chiefs. But Is It Too Late for Ben McAdoo?
On Pro Football
By BILL PENNINGTON NOV. 19, 2017

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Giants Coach Ben McAdoo did not save his job with a 12-9 overtime victory over the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday. The Giants’ record is 2-8, which still qualifies the 2017 season as a disaster.

It’s going to take more than one good day — make that one less-than-dreadful day — to keep the Giants’ ownership in McAdoo’s corner.

And there is a relevant precedent that serves as proof.

Twenty-five years ago, Ray Handley, who, like McAdoo, had succeeded a two-time Super Bowl-winning coach and who also had no previous N.F.L. head coaching experience, was fired when his second Giants season ended with a 6-10 record.

McAdoo may have to win at least half the Giants’ remaining six games to avoid cleaning out his office after the season finale on New Year’s Eve.

But it will most likely take more than that. The former Giants owner Wellington T. Mara, the father of John K. Mara, the current co-owner most involved in the Giants’ football decisions, used to say that the sound of fans booing his team at home was bothersome. But what worried the elder Mara far more was silence in the stadium. It was the sound of fan apathy.

And that was the territory McAdoo’s Giants inhabited as Sunday’s game began. After all the losing this season, after insubordination that led to two embarrassing player suspensions, after reports of a locker room insurrection and after two lopsided defeats in which multiple players appeared to barely try at all, the mood of fans at MetLife Stadium on Sunday was understandably foul.

“The season is lost; I expect to be out of here by halftime,” James Harvey, a season ticket-holder from Staten Island, said in the parking lot before kickoff.

Harvey’s friend and neighbor, Richard Prendergast, who was standing nearby added: “Halftime? You mean when the Giants are down by 20?”

In other sections of the parking lot, scalpers were offering tickets for roughly 25 percent of their face value. There were few takers.

It was not much of a surprise, then, that MetLife Stadium was half empty on a sunny, if blustery, day as the Giants ran onto the field seven minutes before the start of the game. Those seated in the stands — and they remained seated — greeted the arrival of the team with indifference. There was neither cheering nor booing.

Wellington Mara would have certainly noticed. There’s a good chance that John Mara, watching from a booth at midfield, did, too.

McAdoo apparently not only heard the lethargic response to his team, but also anticipated it. Because for most of the next three hours, McAdoo’s coaching staff and players did their best to send a jolt through the fan base.

That is the hope of Sunday’s result for Giants fans. This season may yet be the franchise’s worst of this century, but for one day at least, the Giants purposefully and thoughtfully tried to breathe life into what has been a numbing, dispiriting experience for players, coaches and fans.

It was apparent from the opening minutes of the game, when McAdoo, whose sideline demeanor has had all the passion of a toll taker on the graveyard shift, was seen pumping his fist and yelling toward the field. McAdoo stalked the bench area and slapped players on the back.

“I don’t call the plays any more,” McAdoo later explained. “I’m just going to be myself.”

If that is McAdoo being himself, then who was that boring, undemonstrative guy in the headphones who had run the team for the previous 26 games?

But it wasn’t just McAdoo’s comportment that was different. The Giants successfully executed a fake punt. Then, six plays later, they tried a trick play, a halfback option pass.

Sure, the fake punt did not lead to any points because that halfback pass by Shane Vereen was underthrown and intercepted. But the dull-as-dirt 2017 Giants offense had tried something exciting and new. It woke up the crowd.

The team’s defense, so lifeless in recent defeats, was also playing with noticeably more vigor and even caused a mistake by the Chiefs.

The turnover, an interception by defensive tackle Damon Harrison, started a solid 26-yard drive into the end zone and the Giants were ahead, 6-0. They held the lead until the fourth quarter.

Kansas City (6-4) tied the game early in the fourth quarter and the Giants regained the lead in the final two minutes, only to see the Chiefs tie the score again with one second remaining and force overtime.

It had all the trappings of another disheartening, late Giants loss. But here was the difference: The MetLife Stadium crowd, which still filled only about half the seats, was on its feet and in full throat.

The Giants offense, tedious for most of the season, reacted with bold strokes, including going for it on a fourth-and-5 from its own 36-yard line. Quarterback Eli Manning lofted a precise, long pass — a specialty of his that has not been called on much lately — and the second-year receiver Roger Lewis Jr. grabbed it with one hand as he was tumbling to the turf at Kansas City’s 2-yard line.

Two plays later, with the crowd again bellowing, a 23-yard field goal had everyone on the Giants bench celebrating, not just the relieved head coach.

“I loved the energy,” McAdoo said.

It is a cure for apathy. It has not yet ensured that McAdoo will be around to lead the Giants in 2018. Major roadblocks are still in the path, even if the goal is a season with only a measly five victories. And McAdoo will have to keep his players as enthused and cohesive as they were on Sunday.

But as Giants fans left MetLife Stadium smiling for the first time this year, it was a single, aggressive step forward.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/sports/giants-chiefs-ben-mcadoo.html?