New York Giants: Pat Shurmur gets the ax, what’s next for G-Men

New York Giants ownership made it official Monday morning. As expected, Pat Shurmur is out as the head coach. The search is on for his replacement.

The National Football League prides themselves on their parity. In any given season at least half the teams should fall between 6-10 and 10-6. A hard cap, free agency, and rookie draft ensures the system works. That’s why the New York Giants 9-23 record over the past two seasons under Head Coach Pat Shurmur was unacceptable and he was removed.

Cycling through head coaches every few years simply isn’t the New York Giants way of doing business. They fancy themselves as a very stable organization that likes a standard level of continuity. In their 95-year history, the majority of Giants head coaches have been there for at least four seasons.

Really good ones such as Steve Owen (24), Jim Lee Howell (7), Allie Sherman (8), Bill Parcells (8), Jim Fassel (7), and Tom Coughlin (12), stay much longer. It’s also why they didn’t want to can Shurmur and start the 2020 season with their fourth head coach since 2015. Someone, however, had to take the fall for 2019’s failures.

This isn’t to say that Shurmur did enough to keep his job over the past two seasons. He made plenty of mistakes. Some of which bit him hard. Then again, with the collective talent he had to work with, a 16-16 record in his two years would have been a minor miracle. As Shurmur so often pointed in his press conferences, he had a very young team in 2019.

General Manager Dave Gettleman will stay (that’s a completely different article) and is tasked with finding a new head coach. He’s in a very awkward situation because some of the top candidates aren’t “yes men” willing to do it his way.

That ship sailed when Ron Rivera, Gettleman’s guy in Carolina, became a near-lock for the Redskins job. Among the favorites to take over as head coach, are men who won’t be micro-managed.

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One of the reasons Baylor headman Matt Rhule didn’t get the Jets job last year was his insistence on hiring his own coaching staff. Should Jason Garrett be let go in Dallas, he won’t take a job where the specter of his GM is constantly over his shoulder like it’s been for the last decade.

Paul Schwartz of the New York Post floated the idea on Sunday about Bill Bellichick coming back home to the G-Men. If he takes the position, his Patriots GM comes with him. Mike McCarthy has a Super Bowl Championship on his resume and in the later stages of his 13-year run in Green Bay had a high level of autonomy in staffing and player decisions.

For GMDG to keep the control he currently has, it leaves him with a bunch of ready to be promoted assistants, just like the New York Giants two previous head coaches Ben McAdoo, and Shurmur. Does ownership want to go in that direction again?

What do you think? Let us know in the comments section or on social media.