For the second straight week, the Buffalo Bills planted their flag in the Meadowlands, whipping the Giants 28-14 on Sunday in a game uglier than the final score.
It's the first time a team not named the Jets or Giants won at MetLife in consecutive weeks. (It had been done four times at Giants Stadium.) And the Giants looked just as woeful in this game as they did in Dallas in Week 1.
Calls will be made for Daniel Jones, with the backup quarterback on a losing club always more popular than Abe Lincoln. Folks will point to the immobile Eli Manning, though you could have timed his 40 with a sundial when he played at Ole Miss. Fans will gripe about Big Blue's bloodied defense, which made Josh Allen look like John Elway. Others will say the Giants need Golden Tate to round out their roster.
But at what point do we point at the coach?
Saquon Barkley had 55 yards rushing on the team's first drive against the Bills, then had 8 yards in the second quarter. He had 61 rushing yards after the first quarter, then had just 46 yards the rest of the game. Sounds like the head coach slammed the brakes on his best player. It's not as if the Bills scored 21 points on their next possession. So why abandon the running game so quickly?
Over the first two games, the Giants have scored 14 points on the first possession, in 12 plays. They have scored 17 points in 110 plays the rest of the way. Sounds like curious coaching. Oddly enough, they ran 66 plays against their first two foes and were equally inept against both. Sounds like curious coaching. Dexter Lawrence didn't have enough sense to avoid hitting the center during a field goal. Sounds like curious coaching. Janoris Jenkins is already calling out the pass rush. Sounds like the coach doesn't have control over his club.
Point to Pat Shurmur's personnel, but there's no pulling your eyes from the team's performance since last year. This will be Shurmur's fourth full season as an NFL head coach after his two-year stint with Cleveland from 2011-12. Many men — including Shurmur's predecessor, Ben McAdoo — weren't able to coach nearly as long. Shurmur deserves a shot at this season, and to finish it (assuming the Giants don't lose their next six games, of course). But for the second season in a row, the Giants have staggered out to an 0-2 start, and this team has the same, doomed look as last year's squad.
The leap from coordinator to head coach is much longer than the nameplate on your desk. The promotion demands a quantum leap in leadership, play calling and handling those egos that are bigger than Barkley's quads. It requires you to handle obscenely strong and fast alpha males, most of whom make more money than you do and feel they only answer to the guy who signs their checks or the one who created the universe.
It's hard to control 53 men who have spent years in the weight room, years in the spotlight and more years getting their butts kissed since they were in middle school. That's why the NFL can't even fill 32 jobs with qualified candidates. There's a reason why we have a Black Monday body count at the end of every regular season, with a pile of head coaches stacked for burial.
Even the more accomplished canned coaches — from Jim Fassel to Brian Billick to Mike McCarthy — don't get to re-up for NFL duty. Fassel's record (all with the Giants) is 58-53. Billick is a robust 80-64 and bagged the Baltimore Ravens' first Super Bowl trophy. Mike McCarthy is 125-77, also has a Lombardi Trophy and was snubbed from a slew of jobs this offseason.
A football club has long reflected the character of its coach. The Patriots reflect the stoic, demanding nature of Bill Belichick. The Rams reflect the youthful energy and intelligence of Sean McVay.
What is the hallmark of a Pat Shurmur club? Are the Giants smart? Occasionally. Are they tough? Rarely. Are they fun? Never.
Teams coached by Bill Parcells were renowned for their bare-knuckle toughness, playing hard on every play and having an insatiable sense that they were always in the game. As the progenitor of smash-mouth football, Parcells suffered fools painfully. In an NFL Network documentary, Parcells said he built his Giants with "Jersey Guys" — gritty players from hardscrabble lives who thrive in the daily grind of his native Garden State.
The patron saint of the Meadowlands famously said that you are what your record says you are. By that metric, it says a lot about Shurmur, who is 15-35 as an NFL head coach. No matter the nuance of a dropped pass here or a missed tackle there, there's no pulling your eyes from 20 games under .500.
Shurmur seems like a swell fella, a smart man who has crafted some of the NFL's better offenses. He just looks more like a lieutenant than a captain.
After the game, he belched the coaching bromides, sounding a bit like another man on Gotham's hot seat (Mickey Callaway) when he said these fine fans deserve a win, and so far his gang hasn't won anything. It's the kind of nonsequitur from a coach with no real identity, no clear plan and a dim future. His only real chance to keep the fans engaged is to shove Jones into action and pray. But the Giants are so delicate with Eli because of the way they butchered his benching two years ago.
For Shurmur, it's a Hail Mary for a career on life support.
Follow Jason on Twitter @JasonKeidel.
