7:30 AM
Tony Soprano had to be at the game. He was seated at the 50-yard line in the front row.
The New York Giants and New York Jets played in the state championship on Christmas Eve 2011. It meant something for a change. It was a virtual elimination game for both teams.
The late actor, who was a fan of the Jets, was bundled up in a black parka with a green wool cap pulled down to his eyebrows. He had a black pocket camera and was snapping photos before the game. He knew it was a special day.
It was one of the last big days at the stadium for the Giants and Jets.
The Giants won the game, 29-14, and went on to win the Superbowl. The Jets ended up at the bottom of the river in cement shoes. "The Giants rode it to a Super Bowl and we just rode it out of town," said former Jets coach Rex Ryan.
The Giants sunk after cleaning up the parade confetti. The New York team has been a source of embarrassment for a decade. The two teams have combined for 16 losing seasons. The Giants were a wild-card team in the 2016 season.
They've been the worst team in the league since then. We're not talking about the Sanitation workers' strike because there's a stench in the city.
The state of New York football is so bad that former Giants and Jets coach Bill Parcells, out of respect for the two teams, was unwilling to speak about it over the past decade. I also like the Jets. I like when the Giants win. That's what I watched as a child. That's all. I don't know about the last 10 years.
What happened to Sam Huff and Joe Namath? This is a closer look.
Go to:
Poor drafting and bad QB play.
What's next?
Adam Gase is a Giants fan.
There are cycles of failure.
The Giants missed the playoffs after winning Super Bowl XLVI. The wheels came off.
John Mara was sitting on the team bus after the awful loss to the Jacksonville team. The Giants had lost seven in a row. He thought it was rock bottom.
"I wanted to fire everybody from the equipment room through upstairs, because that was a low point for me," Mara said at the news conference after the Giants' season ended.
The equipment room personnel were quietly exiled years later following claims involving Eli Manning and fraudulent game-worn memorabilia. This was not a blip on the scale of problems to come.
The legendary coach was let go after the 2015 season. The farewell news conference went so well that the departing coach stiffed Mara of a handshake.
The goodwill from two Super Bowls in a four-year period has been lost. Giants Drive was falling behind the times.
You don't really adapt when you're stuck in your ways. You get left behind. Brandon Marshall is a former Giants and Jets receiver. I love the owners, but they're stuck in, 'This is how you're supposed to dress when you go to the practice field.' This is the largest road in the world.
What is the Giant Way?
Dave Gettleman said he didn't sign Beckham to a five-year extension to trade him. He traded him one season later. Josh Brown was re-signed by the team despite domestic violence allegations. Beckham proposed kicking nets and urinating on the field as a celebration after he fought Josh Norman.
The Giants could be distracted by Beckham Jr.'s plays.
Not enough? Ben McAdoo, the former coach who didn't last two seasons, became a laughingstock at his own introductory news conference because of his large suit. The 3-13 season was a disaster.
The Giants' inability to sustain success was something that former Giants and Jets defensive tackle Damon Harrison said was a little bit of everything. Our defensive backs were giving up big plays, we weren't stopping the run, and we couldn't protect Eli. It wasn't just the quarterback play.
Pat Shurmur was hired to get an "adult in the room" after just two seasons.
During their only playoff appearance in the past 10 seasons, it was overshadowed by the boat trip in Miami led by Beckham and Cruz before a loss at Lambeau Field. The Giants haven't had much success since. Since the last playoff appearance, they're 22-56.
The Jets were on the rise after reaching the playoffs in 2009, but a series of mistakes at the ownership level caused them to fall into turmoil. They're on their sixth general manager-coach pair of the decade, three of which ended with ugly divorces and one lasting only four months.
Woody Johnson is the great-grandson of the founder of Johnson & Johnson. Mike Tannenbaum, the former GM, said he was "unconditionally supportive", but other former staffers and ex-players had a less flattering view of Johnson. They said a man was influenced by his inner circle and public sentiment. One former member of the organization said Johnson kept people who were not qualified, but had his ear, after the playoff run.
The Giants are ranked.
The Jets are ranked.
Since the beginning of the year.
22-54 (31st)
21-57 was the last one.
Since 2012
61-97 is the 29th.
54-104 (30th)
Since 2011.
-499 (26th)
-1,023 (30th)
The total QBR since 2012
49.8 on the 27th.
40.6 was the last.
Johnson hired a search firm to find Tannenbaum's replacement, which was John Idzik, a former Seattle Seahawks cap specialist. The relationship became toxic. Ryan didn't want to change and Idzik wanted to turn the Jets into Seattle East.
Ryan said that his marriage to Idzik was not a good one.
The coach-gm relationship was a major influence on their downfall, according to Idzik in his first interview since being fired with Ryan. Woody is the guy to answer that question. I did everything I could to make it work with Rex and me.
Idzik was surprised that he only got two years. I was in the league for a while. I was not a Johnny-come-lately. He said that the constant turnover in the organization has resulted in quality casualties.
In 2015, Johnson cleaned house and enlisted the help of two former NFL GMs to find a coach and GM. They ended up with Todd and Mike, both of whom were not on any team's GM radar. Johnson snubbed Doug Marrone, who had opted out of his Buffalo Bills' contract for the chance to work with Maccagnan. Johnson was cold feet because of the negative press surrounding Marrone.
The Maccagnan-Bowles tandem, which lacked a clear vision, was an abysmal failure. They tried the win-now approach and then downshifted into a massive rebuild. The two men were not talking to each other.
Maccagnan was ousted in May, when Adam Gase won an internal power struggle that resulted in the coach's dismissal. The situation became so bad that Christopher Johnson, who was in charge while his older brother was overseas, was sent packing. Gase refused to sit next to Maccagnan in the draft room because it was so bad. Johnson told reporters that he regretted the timing of Maccagnan's removal.
One former player said that ownership starts with the Johnsons. You have to get the right people in. You have to have a game plan and a strategy. I'm not sure if they have that.
Poor quarterback play.
Manning was still with the Giants at the beginning of the 2010s. That should have fostered respectability.
The offensive line deteriorated and the team went through a 27 intercept season in 2013). After he was promoted to head coach, it crashed down, only to get back on track when McAdoo was hired as offensive coordinator. Manning's play dropped dramatically by the end of the year.
The year has ended.
The age.
The quarterback W-L.
QBR is a ranking.
The year 2015.
34
6-9
58.6 (16th)
The year 2016
35
11-5
45.7 on the 27th.
The year 2017:
36
3-12
48.6 (22nd)
This year
37
5-11
The 25th was the day.
The year 2019.
38
1-2
36.2
Manning had four starts.
Jerry Reese wanted to bench him. Mara was on the plane. The plan to phase out Manning and start Geno Smith late in the season was hatched by the co-owner. It wasn't the wrong thinking, but it was executed poorly.
The fans revolted, and former players threatened to show up on the sideline in their jerseys. Manning was reinserted as the starter after Mara scapegoated McAdoo and Reese.
The Giants were set back years. Mara said they regretted cutting ties with McAdoo so quickly. They hired Gettleman, who supported Manning. It led to two more seasons with Manning as the starter. Manning admitted that he wasn't playing at the level he used to be.
The Giants are paying for their mistakes, with Dave Gettleman almost certain to be out in the coming weeks with his record at 19-43, thanks to a roster that remains insufficient.
The first five quarterbacks drafted during the Manning era combined for 15 career passing attempts. Daniel Jones was drafted at the top of the draft. They're trying to determine if he's good enough with an offensive line that isn't good.
The Jets have used more top-5 picks on quarterbacks than any other team since 2009, but their passer rating is the lowest in the league.
Small return on big investments.
They filled in the spaces with a series of stop-gap vets and second- and third-day draft picks that didn't pan out. Christian Hackenberg, a Maccagnan reach in 2016 that angered people in the organization, was the worst of them. It's rare for a second-round pick to play a down.
In the playoffs in 2009, and 2010, he was a limited passer who was sabotaged by poor personnel decisions. They brought in Plaxico Burress and Santonio Holmes after cutting his favorite receiver, Jerricho Cotchery. The biggest regret of Tannenbaum was the Cotchery decision. One player said it created a "toxic locker room".
Jay Feely is a former Jets and Giants kicker. The chemistry that had been established in 2010 was tampered with.
Rex Ryan, the former coach of the Jets, said that the addition of Tim Tebow was an "epic fail".
Tim Tebow's presence turned the Jets into a sideshow and shattered the confidence of Mark Sanchez. They wanted him to be a gadget player, not a quarterback, but they didn't know how to use him, and it turned into a weekly embarrassment. A source said that at the end of the year, he told the coaches not to play him unless it was at quarterback.
Ryan thinks Tannenbaum was fired because of it. There were questions about Smith's leadership. His time ended with a broken jaw after a teammate sucker punched him.
The relationship between Ryan Fitzpatrick and the organization was ruined by a contract dispute that dominated the headlines the following year. Their only winning season of the decade was washed away. It was so tense that Marshall and Eric Decker didn't work out.
"I felt like they should have been more bullish on getting that deal done faster so we could get back to work and build on what we had started," said Marshall. There were too many things happening.
The Jets dumped him after three years because he never solved his turnover issues from college. Wilson has experienced the weight of expectations and is the new golden child.
Marvin Jones said that when you play for the Jets, you're paying for the history of the team. It's not a new start. When you don't have success, they go back to the old saying: "Same Old Jets".
The big-time draft misses.
Over the past decade, the Giants have produced five top 10 picks, including OT Ereck Flowers, CB Eli Apple,RB Saquon Barkley, and OT Andrew Thomas. The team no longer has flowers and Apple. For one season, the only one who has proved to be elite is Barkley. He has looked like a shell of his former self because of injuries.
These kind of misses are hard to overcome for a team that has been short on talent. It's especially bad when the middle to late rounds have been wastelands for the better part of a decade.
Cornerback Eli Apple was drafted 10th overall by the Giants in the 2016 draft but only played three seasons with the team.
Over the past decade, only five of their 50 picks have been consistent starters. Zero Pro Bowls. Zero all-pros. The Giants haven't had a big hit in the middle rounds since 2005.
Beckham and Collins were the two biggest draft successes of the past decade, but they were discarded by Gettleman to improve the culture.
Gettleman has tried four times at the draft. Injuries and inconsistent play have defined his three top 10 picks.
It was always the controversial selection of Jones that would determine Gettleman's legacy and whether he could accomplish his goal of being retired in Cape Cod and watching the quarterback he drafted lead the Giants to Super Bowls.
"Time will tell," Gettleman has said about Jones and his classes.
As losses mount, time is running out.
The Jets have four different general managers this decade, each with their own style of team-building. There's no continuity, that's part of the problem. The approach is different because ownership has no conviction.
Bad drafting is a common factor.
Two of their 76 draft picks have been selected to the Pro Bowl, one with the Jets and the other with Seattle. Adams and Demario Davis were voted All-Pro. Only six of the 76 got second contracts with the Jets.
Sam Darnold was drafted third overall. He was traded after three seasons with the Jets.
Tannenbaum's final year saw the draft performance take a bad turn. The college scouting director and personnel executive from Tannenbaum's staff were retained by Idzik. It was rare for Bradway to still have a seat at the big table. Bradway hired Bauer out of a high school coaching job in Kansas City, where he had coached his son. Bauer was a Midwest scout for 11 years. When Maccagnan replaced Idzik, his first order of business was to fire Bauer and Bradway.
Idzik ran a closed-door operation that minimized input from scouts and coaches. Ryan told the sports network that he begged Idzik to draft defensive back Tyrann Mathieu, who fell to the third round. Didn't happen. Ryan was a fan of tight end Kelce. Didn't happen.
The Jets had the worst draft in their history, with 12 picks. Ryan was angry that Idzik did nothing to move up for premium players.
Ryan said nobody in their right mind would draft all 12 guys.
Idzik claimed he was open to trades, but no one made sense. He said that they were Jets picks. They were not by Idzik or one individual. We felt good about the picks.
Maccagnan was beholden to his best player available philosophy, which led to some strange decisions, such as back-to-back safeties with Adams and Marcus Maye. Maccagnan will be remembered for going all-in on Darnold, dealing three second-round picks to move up for him, which hampered his ability to build a competent cast around him. It's a constant cycle.
They spent recklessly because of the draft mistakes. Le'Veon Bell was the worst signing because he made $28 million for 17 games and four touchdown.
When the Jets hit on a first-round pick, they usually trade him away, a tradition that goes back decades. They dealt six of their seven first-round picks from 2013 to 2018, and they are now a part of the league.
Will they turn it around?
Jones is not lost. A general manager, personnel executive and coach who have worked with quarterbacks believe Jones has a chance to be a good one.
How can you evaluate him over the last two years? The coach said it was impossible. He was moving quickly in a good offensive system.
It's possible that the Giants have the right quarterback. They ended Jones' season on Monday because of a neck injury, but are optimistic that it won't affect his long-term future. The offense can be salvaged quickly if they can get the offensive line right.
McShay's rankings are: Kiper's is:
The first mock draft of the future by Reid.
The draft order is Who's No. 1?
More coverage and full rankings.
