The New York Giants have lost too much.
Since they won the 2011 Super Bowl, the Giants have the fourth-worst record in the NFL (83-145-1, .369). Since 2017, the Giants’ 44-104-1 (.299) are a half-game behind the New York Jets (44-105, .295) for the worst record in the league.
That losing is, of course, at the center of everything for the Giants. The bad product they have put on the field the vast majority of time since 2012, though, is causing them to lose other things.
The Giants have lost relevance.
They are the league’s fourth-oldest franchise. They have four titles in the Super Bowl era, and eight in their history. They consider themselves an NFL standard bearer, a model franchise run the way NFL teams should be run. Yet, these days the Giants are a bottom-feeder franchise nobody talks about, nobody worries about, and certainly nobody holds up as an example of the way an NFL team should conduct business.
“I think the Giants are at a very ceremonious position right now with this coaching hire,” former Giant and current NFL Network insider Shan O’Hara told the ‘Valentine’s Views’ podcast this week. “They no longer have the luxury of ‘we can swing and miss again’. That’s it.
“Giants fans are at their wits end. Their patience rope is at the end. They have run out of patience. When you’re in this New York/New Jersey area the worst thing that can happen is you can be irrelevant, and that’s what the Giants have been trending towards. That’s when you know you are in trouble.”
Perhaps the Giants haven’t reached Brooklyn Nets-level irrelevance, but I would argue that they are mostly irrelevant to the rest of the NFL right now.
They are at risk of becoming irrelevant in another, perhaps more important, way for the long-term health of the franchise.
The Giants are at risk of losing a generation of fans. Of becoming a team that is no longer considered THE football team in this part of the country. There was a time when Giants’ season tickets were what everyone in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut market wanted, and that families passed down for generations.
I’m not sure that is the case any longer.
Pull up in the parking lot at MetLife Stadium for a Giants game and there are tailgates and people having fun. What there isn’t, in the parking lot or in the stadium, is excitement. There is often a helicopter circling above the stadium on game days, likely to protect the airspace from disgruntled fans wanting to send John Mara a message. The Giants are certainly not an event. These days, season ticket-holders are often selling their seats on the secondary market, resulting in home games rarely offering a home field advantage.
It had to be embarrassing for Cam Skattebo to stand on the field before the season finale with a microphone and try to get a “Let’s Go Giants!” chant going while hardly anyone responded before the Week 18 game against the Dallas Cowboys.
Let me bring this to a more personal level. My home is just outside of Albany, 145 miles or about 2½ hours from MetLife. Foxboro, Mass., where the New England Patriots play, is just slightly farther away, maybe three hours. Orchard Park, N.Y., where the Buffalo Bills will play in a new stadium in 2026, is 300 miles and five hours away. I know that because I drove it dozens of times when one of my children went to college there.
There was a time when this was Giants country. That wasn’t very long ago. The Giants trained in Albany from 1996-2010, and for the final time in 2012. The Giants were THE TEAM here at the time.
There were always a handful of Patriots, Bills, and New York Jets fans in this part of the state. If you wanted Bills or Patriots merchandise, good luck. Today, things are different. There are tons of Patriots fans in the area. There are more and more Bills fans. Turn on the local news around here, and the Bills are the team that generally gets the air time.
I see and feel this drain away from the Giants personally. One of my sons is a Patriots fan. My grandson, who is just a mile away, has a Josh Allen poster hanging in his bedroom and calls himself a Bills fan. For crying out loud, Mrs. Big Blue View is a Bills fan.
All of this is why the Giants desperately need John Harbaugh. It is why GM Joe Schoen has been aggressive in staying in contact with Harbaugh’s representatives. It is why Chris Mara, stepping into the breach with his brother, John, fighting cancer, went to Harbaugh’s home over the weekend to have lunch with the future Hall of Fame coach.
John Mara, cancer battle aside, seems to fully understand where the franchise is and the importance of this coaching hire.
The Giants need a coach who walks into their locker room, has instant credibility with the players, and can set standards. They also need a coach who makes them relevant. A coach who gets fans excited, who gets the talking heads discussing them, who gets kids to perk up and think “maybe I do want that Jaxson Dart jersey,” and makes them interested in what happens when the Giants play.
They would get some of that with a coach like Kevin Stefanski or Mike McCarthy. They might eventually get that with a first-time coach like Jeff Hafley or Klint Kubiak. They might, though, stay stuck where they are. A place called ‘Irrelevance.’
John Harbaugh could win a Super Bowl with the Giants, but that isn’t really the bar the Giants need to cross right now. They need relevance. Harbaugh gives them that the second he signs on the dotted line.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: O’Hara and Roman Oben, both former Giants, were available to be interviewed thanks to an NFL Alumni Association initiative to raise awareness regarding lung cancer. Listen to the podcast below to find out more about that, and what both former players think about the Giants.]
