John Mara oversaw one hot mess and tried to lie his way out of another

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John Mara, the agreeable patrician who owns the New York Giants Football Team, explained the firings of his general manager and head coach as “having nothing to do with Eli Manning.”

This is of course a lie, badly told, unless . . .

. . . unless Jerry Reese, said general manager, and Ben McAdoo, said coach/piñata, got shown the door for having the seemingly unimaginable line on their resumes that read:

“Lost to 49ers and Raiders in same year.”

That’s what’s known as torturing the local angle, but in fairness, the 49ers are awful and the Raiders are not awful only because the Kansas City Chiefs are. And the Giants got beaten by both teams by allowing seven touchdowns between them – four to the 49ers alone.

Now if Mara had said, “The Raiders had no receivers and the 49ers had a quarterback who had been hit 16 times the week before and once by us,” maybe we could have bought his cock-and-bull story about Manning not being responsible – and when we say “maybe,” we mean “almost not at all.”

But it was certainly more plausible than the gouque-du-gobbledy he spat out in announcing the firings of Reese and McAdoo. After all, while Manning’s career may well be circling the airport waiting for final clearance, he deserved better than what he got from the owner who has Super Bowl rings on 20 percent of his fingers because of Manning’s work.

And now he will likely be starting again Sunday against Dallas at home, thus placating a fan base which had stocked up on hot tar and pitchforks for the occasion. That means Geno Smith, Manning’s replacement for the Raider beating, who did nothing but show up for work and do what he was told, will be vilified by a fan base who actually won’t have anyone else to boo.

In other words, Mara oversaw one hot mess and tried to lie his way out of another when all he really needed to do was point to the Bay Area and say, “Look, they’re the ones who did it, not us.”

I mean, it’s not like the Oaklands and San Franciscii have a rebuttal worth hearing. Besides, watching another team implode on your say-so has its own fleeting charms when everything else is mediocre with night and morning wait-til-next-year.

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