Straight to the point, the Giants fired offensive coordinator Jason Garrett for failures to score.
Garrett’s 26-game tenure ended Tuesday, on the heels of a “Monday Night Football” loss to the Buccaneers in which repeat issues — the NFL’s worst red-zone production, lack of aggressiveness and under-utilized playmakers — were highlighted to a national audience. The Giants are averaging 18 points per game — more than only the Jets and the Jaguars — since head coach Joe Judge took over and hired Garrett.
“This is not a snap decision,” Judge said, “but we have to make some moves to give our offense an opportunity to change some things up and ultimately score more points.”
The main argument for keeping Garrett this long was the risk of stunting Daniel Jones’ development through a lack of continuity. The Giants fired head coach Pat Shurmur and coordinator Mike Shula after Jones threw for 24 touchdowns and 12 touchdowns with five 300-yard games in 13 starts as a rookie, so now Jones will have his third different play-caller in three years and plenty of excuses for not yet demonstrating he is a franchise quarterback.
Under Garrett, Jones improved his ball security but at the expense of aggressiveness, as he totaled 20 touchdowns and 17 interceptions with one 300-yard passing game and zero 30-point outputs. A constant rash of injuries slowed progress, but the Giants had a near-full complement of weapons in Monday’s 30-10 loss.
“His offense is extremely archaic and extremely conservative,” one longtime NFL executive said. “To still be running the ball on first down almost every time is from 30 years ago, not even a decade ago.”
The Giants rank 28th of 32 teams in the NFL in frequency of motion at the snap (8.9 percent of plays) and used pre-snap motion on 18 percent of plays through the first four games (No. 32) and on 33 percent of plays since then (No. 30), according to ESPN. They scored touchdowns on only 44 percent of red-zone trips and neither $72 million free-agent signing Kenny Golladay nor first-round pick Kadarius Toney has scored yet.
“There is just no continuity and identity in who they are and what they are trying to accomplish,” ESPN analyst Jeff Saturday, a former Pro Bowl center, said. “Finding ways to be in sync as a group is what they are missing. The days of bringing guys in and making them fit our system is long gone. You have to use what players do best and apply your offense so everybody can be the best version of what they are.”
After Judge’s initial request to interview Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll for the same position was rejected in January 2020, Giants co-owner John Mara recommended Judge speak with Garrett, a former Giants backup quarterback (2000-03) who remained held in high regard through 10 years as head coach of the rival Cowboys. Asked Tuesday about the theory that a meddling Mara arranged the marriage, Judge said, “I hire the staff.”
“This isn’t a blame game,” Judge later added. “I’m not looking for a head to roll.”
It became clear last week where the normally vanilla-talking Garrett laid blame when he insinuated that the offense is tailored to compensate for a weak offensive line. That’s a sore spot with the Giants, who have failed for a decade to get it right, including countless personnel whiffs under general manager Dave Gettleman and Judge’s decision to fire Garrett’s close friend Marc Colombo as offensive line coach after their private spat last season.
But that doesn’t make it false. The Giants have used nine starters and 11 players on the offensive line (with four assistant coaches dedicated to the position) in Gettleman’s fourth season at the helm.
“Jason was severely handicapped,” one experienced NFL play-caller said. “It’s hard to call plays when you struggle to block and are always behind the chains. You can make the argument the offense lacked creativity, but the offensive line handicaps everything you do.”
Two plays from Monday’s loss epitomized the two-year struggle: a third-and-2 when three receivers ran man-to-man routes against zone coverage and wound up clustered, and a fourth-and-1 when the only receiver on the field was unproven Collin Johnson. Both ended in incompletions.
“One of the things that motivated me to accept this position was the opportunity to help rebuild the Giants into a contending team,” Garrett said in a statement. “We knew there would be many challenges. My expectations for our offense were much greater than what our results have been, and I accept full responsibility for that.”
