There’s little doubt you’ve come here already on fire based on the headline alone, geared up and prepared to bury yours truly for daring to suggest something that feels so blasphemous, but hold your horses just a little bit.
There will be plenty of time to criticize me (is that really different from any other day?), but before we get to all of that, why don’t we collectively take a step back and play Devil’s Advocate for a moment.
In the coming days, you will hear and read an endless slew of material suggesting the New York Giants should part ways with head coach Pat Shurmur and not even think twice about it. Some of that material will also likely include general manager Dave Gettleman, but we’ll save that part of the debate for another day.
So, allow me to preface with this: I do not entirely believe Shurmur should be brought back in 2020, but I do believe that taking a look at some of the positives is only fair when everyone and their Mother seems to be coming down hard on him.
If you’ve made it this far without losing your mind, congratulations. See if you can keep your head as we now go over seven reasons the Giants should bring Shurmur back in 2020.
One win away from improvement
This is going to feel like a flimsy argument out of the gate, but why start with your strongest stance? We’ll build up to that just as Shurmur has led a slow build this season.
After netting just two wins through 14 weeks, the Giants appeared destined to take a full step or two back this year, managing to decline from their 5-11 last place finish a season ago.
However, after back-to-back wins, the Giants are actually positioned to take a step forward. Seriously.
With a win over the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 17, the Giants would finish the season with a 5-11 record, just as they had last season, but there will be one glaring difference: they will not finish in last place in the NFC East.
With their win over the Washington Redskins, the Giants guaranteed themselves a third-place finish in the division, which is the first time they won’t finish dead last since 2016.
Small victories.
This team is remarkably young
Some may want to dismiss this argument in favor in Shurmur, but the reality is that the Giants are one of the youngest teams in the NFL (based on snap counts vs. age).
Due to injury, inconsistency, large contract shedding and other factors, the Giants have been forced to play a seemingly countless number of rookies and sophomores, with the tally on the rise on a week-to-week basis.
In Week 3, the team benched veteran quarterback Eli Manning in favor of rookie quarterback Daniel Jones, which should have restarted the clock on both Shurmur and Gettleman.
Some of the decisions to go young have been made by Shurmur himself, while others were made for him. Either way, this team is a very young team — maybe not “historically young” — and that absolutely must be taken into account when evaluating Shurmur’s job.
So many of the team’s losses this season were due to inexperience, which will actually benefit the franchise at a later date. That’s a tough pill to swallow right now, but it’s the nature of development and evolution in the NFL.
The development of Daniel Jones
Speaking of development, no discussion about Shurmur would be considered fair and balanced without taking into consideration the play and progression of rookie quarterback Daniel Jones.
Ignore for a moment the fact that Shurmur and Gettleman were completely dismantled for their decision to draft Jones — which is also an argument in their favor — and focus instead on what the Giants have in their young franchise quarterback.
While some of DJ’s growth can be attributed to Eli Manning and Alex Tanney, there is no denying that Shurmur, himself, is a bit of a quarterback whisperer. And from moment one, he’s been in DJ’s ear helping him to learn as much as he possibly can on the fly.
The results? Jones is having one of the best rookie seasons in franchise history. Even on an all-time NFL level, it’s up there. He’s breaking records and setting marks left and right, and recently became the only rookie in NFL history to throw for 350-plus yards and five-plus touchdowns with no turnovers in a game.
Jones is also just four touchdown passes away from tying the NFL’s all-time mark for rookie quarterbacks (Baker Mayfield), and if you think that’s too much of a hump to overcome, just know that Shurmur’s QB has already done that three times this season — also an NFL record.
You don’t trip and fall into that kind of success, so not only does Jones deserve far more credit than he’s received to date, so does Shurmur.
Players not giving up on him
When things went south under Ben McAdoo, they went south in a hurry. Players were obviously quitting, not showing up to practice, getting into fights with each other, leaking information to the media, engaging in physical altercation with coaches and so on. It was a legitimate dumpster fire.
Despite back-to-back losing seasons under Shurmur, we’ve seen none of that.
Yes, there were some issues with veteran cornerback Janoris Jenkins, who was also an offender under McAdoo, but that was really about the extent of the locker room disarray.
Under Shurmur, this team has stayed together, there is no in-fighting and they continue to both support their coach and play hard. And if you’ve been an athlete at any level, you know firsthand how difficult it is to maintain order when everything is going wrong and losing is a common experience.
“Not only me, speaking on behalf of the team, we strongly believe in coach Shurmur, we believe in this coaching staff, we believe in D.G,” Saquon Barkley told the New York Daily News in November. “Obviously things aren’t clicking the way we would like them to be right now, but we’ve just got to keep grinding, keep working, and we’ll turn it around.”
There’s a feather in Shurmur’s cap to be had over that. It may seem like something that should just be the norm, but it isn’t. And Shurmur very much deserves credit for that. It proves that these men believe in him and are willing to follow his lead.
Weathered major storms
From moment one of the 2019 regular season, the Giants found themselves in trouble. Wide receiver Golden Tate was suspended four games for violating the league’s PED policy and it was a steady flow of issues after that.
Wide receiver Sterling Shepard missed multiple games due to a series of concussions, ditto tight end Rhett Ellison, who remains out. Evan Engram dealt with injury issues all season and ultimately landed on season-ending IR, while superstar running back Saquon Barkley missed time and was hindered by a high-ankle sprain.
Daniel Jones also suffered a high-ankle sprain, missing two games, and Tate later missed a fifth game, this time due to concussion. They also lost safety Jabrill Peppers to injury, and had to get through Week 16 without guard Kevin Zeitler. The list of injuries can just go on forever.
Then, of course, there was the whole Janoris Jenkins snafu and subsequent release, which only compounded the defensive issues and forced the team to go younger in the secondary.
Are the Giants alone with the injury issues and other sidebar stories? Of course not, this is the NFL and every team deals with that. But as a second-year head coach with an extremely young roster, that made things more difficult on the Giants than perhaps some of the other NFL teams with deeper rosters.
Through it all, Shurmur kept his team together and somewhat competitive (there have been a lot of games lost in the fourth quarter).
Play-calling has improved
The argument is immediately going to be made that the Giants looked better against “bad teams” (see: Dolphins, Redskins) over the last two weeks, and on some level, that’s a factual statement. But it’s not as if the Giants haven’t performed poorly against bad teams in the past (see: Jets, Lions, Cardinals). That’s also a factual statement.
The Giants have won back-to-back games they likely would have lost early this year, and they’ve done so with much more creative play-calling and necessary adjustments being made at halftime.
Too little, too late? Maybe, maybe not. We’ll see after Week 17 and a meeting with the Eagles.
However that final game plays out, the fact remains — Shurmur & Co. did a substantially better job over the last two weeks than they have at any other point this season. Their gameplans were sound, their opening series were scripted to perfection, their halftime adjustments were on point and we saw some creative plays designed to the talents on the team (hello, Da’Mari Scott).
Even Week 14 against the Eagles could be viewed as a step in the right direction despite the second-half collapse.
It’s been a rough season, but Shurmur has the arrow pointing up in recent weeks. There’s no way around that.
Consistency is essential in the NFL
Since 2015, the Giants have gone through four coaches (Tom Coughlin, Ben McAdoo, Steve Spagnuolo, Pat Shurmur) and would move onto coach No. 5 if Shurmur were fired.
There have also been two general managers, multiple offensive and defensive systems, a switch from the 4-3 to the 3-4, and a two complete roster overhauls.
That’s a lot of change — too much change.
Giants co-owners John Mara and Steve Tisch are consistently reluctant to repeatedly shake up their front office and coaching staff, and for good reason. Throughout history, teams who frequently cycle through GMs, head coaches, quarterbacks and systems remain in a near-endless loop of futility (see: Cleveland Browns).
The Giants don’t want that. The Giants can’t have that.
Most rebuilds take 3-4 years, and while the Giants were adamant that’s not what was occurring in 2019, it’s become abundantly evident that’s exactly what’s happening. Accordingly, Gettleman and Shurmur deserve more than 14 games (since DJ took over at QB) to show results. Even in the age of free agency, it’s difficult to turn things around in the blink of an eye — especially when cleaning up after a very poor GM/head coach combo.
If the Giants were to fire Shurmur and usher in another new head coach, it would be another complete reset. They would want to come in and clean house, building an entirely new staff, introducing new offensive and defensive systems, potentially different schemes and who knows what their demands would be as it relates to personnel.
Would the new coach want DJ at quarterback? Would they want a 3-4 or would they look to reshuffle again and go to 4-3 personnel? Would the new offensive system fit DJ’s style if the head coach retained him?
How much would a head coaching search be limited if the Giants weren’t willing to give up control of personnel? What would that mean if they didn’t want to fire Gettleman? Would they force DJ on a new coach and how would that limit their options?
There’s a lot to consider when it comes to firing Shurmur and ushering in yet another new era, and only one thing is guaranteed: more flux, more rebuilding and level of uncertainty that a new head coach would be any better.
You can only hit reset so many times before you simply have to play out your hand.
