The New York Giants have a lot of people to blame for their losses during the past decade, so it may be hard to name their biggest scapegoat of the 2010s. But Bleacher Report attempted to name each team’s biggest scapegoat around the league, and of course, the Giants were one of the 32 teams on that list. The name that was listed for the Giants may be somewhat surprising to Giants fans that are still very familiar with this specific coach’s tenure: Ben McAdoo.
McAdoo proceeded Pat Shurmur, and in the eyes of many, is the worst coach between the two. While Shurmur moved on to become an offensive coordinator again quickly after his stint with the Giants, McAdoo took longer to find a job again and is currently the quarterbacks coach of the Jaguars, a lower ranking position.
McAdoo coached the Giants to a 2-10 record before being fired in 2017. Along the way, he benched longtime starting quarterback Eli Manning—in a thinly veiled attempt to spark change and save his job.
“At the time, we were 2-9, beat up, and I told Eli we wanted to see the other quarterbacks on the roster—including our promising rookie, Davis Webb,” McAdoo wrote in Peter King’s inaugural Football Morning in America column.
Instead of Webb, though, McAdoo gave the start to Geno Smith, signaling to fans that the quarterback change wasn’t about the future of the position. That decision, by the way, ended Manning’s consecutive starts streak at 210.
It’s arguable, though, whether or not McAdoo is a true scapegoat. Usually, a scapegoat is a figure who receives most of the blame despite others being significantly at fault too. McAdoo, however, was legitimately one of the worst parts of the Giants franchise when he was the head coach. He lost the locker room quicker than Shurmur did and left with fewer redeeming narratives than Shurmur, with most considering his hiring to be one of the largest mistakes in recent franchise history.
The Giants have had a number of players and other figures over the past ten years who have also received plenty of blame, and some of them perhaps make more sense as scapegoats. Players such as Odell Beckham Jr., Landon Collins, and Damon Harrison have received a fair amount of criticism for their attitudes despite performing well on the field for the most part, but the Giants haven’t quite bounced back ever since getting rid of them. In fact, the entire 2016 Giants team that went to the playoffs could easily be considered a scapegoat.
Head coach Tom Coughlin could also be considered one – not necessarily by the fans, but for the organization itself. The Giants rushed Coughlin out to move on to McAdoo, but of course, that decision will be remembered forever as a misstep rather than a stroke of genius. The team would have likely dropped off whether Coughlin was kept or not, but the decline of the Giants was accelerated by bad coaching which also saw the team implode in 2017 during a season where they returned a decent amount of talent from their 2016 playoff team.
Momentum is important in the NFL, and if the team was under good leadership, it’s possible they could have reloaded after 2017 rather than being forced into the rebuilding process that’s still going on right now.
All in all, it’s easy to call McAdoo a scapegoat because of the amount of hate he’s gotten from the fans – but McAdoo did take a team that wasn’t yet fully on the rebuilding path and contribute to a 2017 performance that was bad enough to be shocking to much of the fanbase when it was first happening. Was everything McAdoo’s fault? No, but on the other hand, before calling him the team’s biggest scapegoat, it’s worth looking at others who gave more to the team and still ultimately found themselves taking blame for its fall.