The New York Giants have suffered from a number of problems over the past years, where the team has had a number of losing seasons and has often found themselves picking high in the NFL Draft, but the man that’s largely at the head of the organization isn’t concerned right now about having lost touch with his role.
That man is of course John Mara, who co-owns the team but tends to be the public face with more of their decisions than fellow co-owner Steve Tisch – and during the past couple of offseasons, Mara has gained criticism for how he’s handled several things, not the least of which is decisions that have led to the Giants trying multiple half rebuilds instead of burning things down and starting from scratch… Something that has likely impacted their results in a negative way and kept the Giants from even having much of a chance going into their last couple seasons.
Despite the criticisms, Mara is still confident going into the 2020 season where he made the decision to bring on Joe Judge as the new head coach.
“I don’t fear that I’ve lost the touch. But I certainly understand our fans’ lack of trust in what we’re doing right now. And the only way to win that back is to start winning games. I get that,” Mara told NJ Advance Media.
“The record is what it is, and I can’t defend that. I don’t feel any differently about myself and my judgment now than I did in February of 2012. Certainly, the record doesn’t bear that out. But I have just as much confidence in myself now as I did in 2012,” Mara continued.
Objectively, however, the Giants are a worse team than they were in 2012, to put it lightly – it seems that a fair amount of blame for that naturally falls on Mara’s shoulders as the top decision maker and the one with the power to hire and fire General Managers and coaches. Just as a player or coach may be thought of as in decline, it should also be possible for an executive to be considered declining.
We’ll have to see how things turn out this season, however, to see if Mara really has lost touch with running the team or if the last years were an anomaly rather than the new norm – the new coaching hires look quite good so far, but in the NFL, nothing is certain until games are played in the regular season.