When former Giants head coach Ben McAdoo broke his post-firing silence last week, he said he “wouldn’t have stood on the table to draft” any of this year’s top prospects to be Eli Manning’s successor.
McAdoo’s thoughts on that front may be surprising to those who recall how his tenure with the Giants ended. McAdoo benched Manning prior to a Week 13 game in Oakland and gave Geno Smith the start in what some thought was the beginning of the end for Manning with the Giants.
The move was met with a lot of dissatisfaction from the team’s fanbase, particularly when it came to communication from McAdoo and other team brass about how the decision was made. That backlash was followed by McAdoo’s firing after the team lost to Oakland and McAdoo reflected on the move as part of Peter King’s Football Morning in America.
“Right or wrong, I am at peace with how I handled the decision to play quarterbacks other than Eli Manning down the stretch of last season,” McAdoo wrote. "... I was not ending Eli’s career with the Giants; I was making sure we knew what we had behind him with a high draft choice prior to a big quarterback draft. I gave him the option to start the games to keep his streak alive. I understand why he said no, and he was a true pro about it. My bedside manner hurt me that week. I’m working on that. I do think it was special how his former teammates and the fans rallied around him that week. But if there’s one thing I want fans of the Giants to know, it’s that I made this call to try to make the Giants stronger for the future. It probably got me fired, but I believe I did the right thing for the right reasons.”
McAdoo’s overall “bedside manner” loomed large in the piece as he also wrote about the need to be more engaging with the media whenever he returns to coaching. McAdoo said a friend told him he sounded like “an oaf” and needs to work on finding a way to “expand on my answers without giving away any secrets.”
