New York Giants: Betting odds say coach’s job in jeopardy, history disagrees

The odds are out for the first head coach to be out of a job during the 2019 NFL Season. New York Giants sideline boss Pat Shurmur is near the top of the list.

Entering only his second season as New York Giants head coach one would think Pat Shurmur had a little bit of job security. Especially with a team in an unofficial rebuild and grooming a rookie quarterback to succeed a legend. Not so fast, says SportsBetting.ag. They have Shurmur as the second favorite at 7-1, behind Washington’s Jay Gruden (3-1), to be the first NFL head coach to be fired or resign.

Whether they come out publicly or not, the New York Giants are in a rebuild. Sure GM Dave Gettleman tells everyone that the team can both win and rebuild at the same time, but, those two goals are often at odds with each other. Then again, he can’t exactly say to the fans, we were bad last year and you can expect the losing to last a few more seasons.

One of the side effects of that type of needless hype is that it puts added pressure on some key individuals, such as the head coach. It seems a bit unfair to put so much expectation on Shurmur. He’s dealing with several handicaps, to begin with, including but surely not limited to:

A GM who thinks the modern game is played between the tackles.

No pass rush.

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For those who follow Big Blue history, this is a sucker bet. In their entire 94 year existence, the New York Giants have changed coaches mid-season a total of three times. The first occurrence was in 1930, which led to the start of Steve Owen‘s 23-season tenure the following season. The second was in 1976 when Bill Arnsparger was canned following an 0-7 start. Most recently, defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo replaced lame-duck Ben McAdoo after a dozen games and almost as many public relations gaffs in 2017.

Although the New York Giants have had three coaches over the last two season’s, this is one of the more stable NFL jobs. Prior to 2016, the team had three head coaches in the previous 23 seasons (Dan Reeves, Jim Fassel, and Tom Coughlin). Team owners John Mara, and Steve Tisch don’t like change.

Remember, the odds are 7-1 that Shurmur is the first coach to be fired or resign in 2019, not to be fired or resign. So many things would have to go wrong for the team to even consider making a coaching change. As history shows, doing it mid-season is very out of character.

Shurmur has been on the hot seat before. As a former head coach in Cleveland, he knows it’s part of the job. Still, it’s hard to believe he won’t be traversing the New York Giants sidelines for the entire 2019 season, if not longer.