Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
I wish the clocks would all slow down Running half their speed But even having twice the time Would not be all I need There's only twelve months in a year It needs twelve added to it Then I could love you twice as much And twice as much I'd do it
Welcome to Giants Nation. I'm your host, Bobby Skinner, here with my co-host, the football grump. And it is the mega head coach preview episode. We're going to look at all 11 candidates. We're going to give you who they are, talk about them, pros, cons, and pros. Very excited, Grump. We're going to give our rankings of 1 through 11.
Can I also say, actually, I'm going to save some takes for it, but I hope this list actually does get a little bit longer, unless they're just going to get John Harbaugh. In that case, I don't care. But how are we doing, Grump? It's the Head Coach Candid Preview episode. Man, I'm ready.
This is a ton of stuff to get into. A lot of work went into this. all the research for this episode. And like you said, like there are still a name or two, I think that we are interested in adding to this list. Especially if Harbaugh is going to be like a long drawn out interview around all 32 teams process.
Yeah. So like I've got like 50 plus pages of notes on these guys. And so we've got to make it, you know, just a good episode and not just my, you know, just like, you know, they run cover too at the 13th most rate in the NFL. And that's the difference between him and his time with the Bucs. So we're going to get into all of it first.
I do want, we want to talk about the Harbaugh sweepstakes, which continues to get like crazier and crazier by the day without actually getting anything. any movement from John Harbaugh himself. First, this episode was brought to you by some special people. We got JK Sauce. He's got the Just Kidding Sauce. It's not serious, guys. Enzo Baldanza.
Enzo, that's the restaurant in Stranger Things that they all say they're going to go to, and they finally see it, and it's just like a normal restaurant at the end. Chris Chapman. This is Elijah Chapman's younger brother. He also plays fullback and defensive tackle. And Zachary Labaffe. Zachary is so clean, so clean because he takes so many little baths. Grump, who are these special people?
These special people went to Enzo's and Patreon.com slash Giants Nation where they subscribe for one of the two tiers available. They get to receive stickers in the mail directly from you, Bobby Skinner. They get entered into a monthly free t-shirt raffle.
And most importantly, they have access to hang out during recordings of these episodes as they're being recorded and chat with each other on YouTube. And they also get weekly game tape breakdowns throughout the season, which are absolutely worth it. Patreon.com slash Giants Nation. They were glad that they did.
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Chapter 2: What are the latest updates on the John Harbaugh sweepstakes?
Because I don't think John Harbaugh is going to Make a quick decision on where he wants to go after 18 years of being in the same spot. And I'm pretty sure at the start of this year had no inkling that he was going to be on his way out by the end of this year. So I think that he's going to take his time, cast a wide.
net you know he's got a lot of suitors you have teams that had head coaches now are are you know firing head coaches to be in the mix that's a lot of pressure and a lot of bombardment and a lot of stuff to consider and i don't think that he's going to make a rash decision anyway so i think that this is the kind of thing that media salivates it over and gets us to salivate over and we really don't need to because i don't think that anything is going to happen fast so yeah
I've been hands off for a little while now. If there weren't actual playoff games going on, I don't think I would be on Twitter more than like 20 minutes a day for the last couple of days.
I think the most interesting thing from a Giants point of view that's like to look at is like, oh, Chris Mara was the one who went there, right? You know, we've had questions of... What the ownership dynamic is with Steve Tisch not being overly involved. John Mara, you know, battling with cancer. Joe Shane not being the actual decider of who's the head coach.
And then, like, all right, who's involved? Is it Tim McDonald who works closely with Joe Shane? Is it Chris Mara? We still don't know, but it is a little bit telling that Chris Mara was the one who went and represented the Giants. uh, and that sit down. And I, I, like you said, I don't feel like building conspiracies off of that of like, oh, well, this could mean this for Joe Shane or John Mara.
It just kind of, all right. Just a mental note to see how things play out going forward with the, with the giants, with John Harbaugh and then just everything else in general. Uh, but yeah, the, uh, The rumors, like you said, it's just like little by little. And I'm like, you know what? I don't care. I'm just I'm just waiting until he starts interviewing.
You know, you may hear, oh, he likes this or like that. But it's like, well, is that coming from the the point of view of the teams? Because I don't think most of them are going to come out saying, man, he really just hated us in that interview. He thinks we're just incompetent. So go Giants. Get me damn John Harbaugh. And we're going to break him down as a candidate here in a second.
But I just wanted to talk about the overall John Harbaugh sweepstakes and how nuts it has felt over the last five days.
I think the Chris Mara thing is probably the most interesting because it relates directly to the Giants' ownership and what we've been talking about for the last couple months in terms of John Mara's health, Joe Shane's role in the head coaching search, and what's going on in the building. Yeah.
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Chapter 3: How do the Giants' ownership dynamics affect the head coach search?
Oh, it's worse. It's the worst. I think it might be the worst trade in the history of pro sports.
It's very, very, very debatable. Like it's it's horrible. And, you know, you can even factor in the fact that what they knew at the time of the trade and and what they were willing to give up money wise to make it work is just kind of gross on top of it. And, you know, we don't know how much Kevin Stefanski had to do with any of that, you
But I don't really get the sense that Deshaun Watson really fits what Kevin Stefanski likes to do in terms of what I've seen. So I don't think that Kevin Stefanski had a lot to do with wanting Deshaun Watson that badly added to his roster. Obviously, there's a hole when you move on from Baker Mayfield. You need to get a new quarterback, I'm sure.
You know, the prospect of getting Deshaun Watson did not make Kevin Stefanski groan and, you know, whatever, rub his eyes. But I don't know that he wanted him that bad. And that situation really screwed him up. But, you know, you have some good hires in here with Kevin Stefanski. You know, moving on from Joe Woods and then bringing in Jim Schwartz is a huge, huge shift for the Cleveland Browns.
And I think you could even say contributes to one of the Coach of the Year awards that he got.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, absolutely. And I want to talk about that Jim Schwartz angle with the Watson stuff. Watson doesn't fit what he does offensively. Now, Stefanski is somebody who kind of like he has an offense that he wants to run, but he really hasn't run it since he first got there, really. You know, they've adjusted it completely.
They've had different offensive coaches, which I think has been a little bit of a mess and giving a play calling, which we'll get into. but like the quarterback situation has been a total mess
let's let's talk about the jim schwartz thing because that like so the first year they coach a year 2020 they go 10 and 6 make the playoffs um or sorry they went 11 and 5 make the playoffs absolutely deserved coach of the year you know the run game was awesome that year now granted they had a very good offensive line they had bill callahan as the offensive line coach like they had all the tools to have a great offensive line but he hired bill callahan
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Chapter 4: What are the pros and cons of John Harbaugh as a head coach candidate?
It's one of the more meaningless awards, but I don't think he deserves this. He did a terrible job coaching offensively. It's not his fault that they weren't good offensively, but to just have that type of turnover issues there. The last two years, they've been a mess. I mean, the quarterbacks that he's had the last three years, Deshaun Watson, Dorian Thompson-Robinson, P.J.
Walker, Joe Flacco, Jameis, probably their best quarterback, Bailey Zappi, Dylan Gabriel, and Sador Sanders. I've got no issue with them not having good offenses. In fact, here's the thing where, and I want to ask your opinion on this, is where it's not necessarily the offensive production and the quarterbacks.
One of my worries, Stefanski, is it's more of like, what are you trying to build on offense? What is your backbone? Because they fired Alex Van Pelt after 23. You know, long time there, move on, right? They bring in Ken Dorsey. Gives up play calling halfway through the season. They fire Ken Dorsey. Bring in Tommy Reese.
doesn't go so great early on, then he gives up play calling again to Tommy Reese. That's where I worry a little bit. Like, is he just kind of doing what is being told from above? You know, like, hey, maybe you should give up the play calling. Like, to do that twice, firing guys, that's where I worry about the offensive turnover staff.
And just the fact that he is an offensive coach and their best year on offense was ranked, you know, 14th.
Well, I mean, I think it doesn't really matter because it's it's either one bad thing, two bad things or the other bad thing. Right. So either he made bad hiring decisions with Ken Dorsey and Tommy Reese or the hiring decision wasn't so bad, but he just can't let go of control.
and and needs to take control of the season the same way we saw with Brian Dable always taking control back either way that bodes poorly for me as a head coach candidate because I don't know whether that like what does that does it mean you're just going to continue hiring bad offensive coordinators does that mean that you just can't relinquish control when things aren't going well you know what what does that mean um either way it doesn't look good
I think the other thing with Stefanski is I forgot what I was going to say. I'll say this.
Looking at the positives for Stefanski is the fact that the Browns are a total mess and he got two winning seasons out of them. We just talked about the whole coach. He did hire Jim Schwartz to be that defense. Maybe he brings Jim Schwartz with him. I feel like that's become kind of an assumption. I'm not so sure it is. I think there's even a chance the Browns make Jim Schwartz their head coach.
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Chapter 5: What are the key critiques of Mike McCarthy's coaching style?
This is how I do things and we're going to live with it. And you've seen it like, yeah, they won a Super Bowl. And then you you look back at it and it's like. OK, you won a Super Bowl with Aaron Rodgers. Congratulations. In a division where for a long time, Minnesota had nothing going on.
Chapter 6: How does Chris Shula's coaching experience influence his candidacy?
Detroit had nothing going on. And Chicago was up and down. Very, very different from John Harbaugh, who had to go against, you know, the Andy Dalton years with Cincinnati were a lot tougher than I think people are going to remember. And Mike Tomlin every single year, the AFC North and the NFC North were not nearly the same level of competition.
Yeah. And if anything, it's disappointing that Rodgers didn't get more than one Super Bowl. Absolutely. All right, let's move on from Mike McCarthy. Let's get our first coordinator on the board, and let's look at Chris Shula, Rams defensive coordinator, 39 years old.
It's the grandson of legendary head coach Don Shula, the nephew of former Giants offensive coordinator Mike Shula and son of 90s head coach Uh, Bengals head coach Davis Shula. So Don really good job with you. Hopefully you did a better job with your grandson than you did your sons. Um, no offense.
Chapter 7: What are the strengths and weaknesses of Vance Joseph as a head coach?
Sorry. That was mean. Shula is like a Sean McVay lifer. If there is any Sean McVay lifers, like he's moved his way up from the Rams ladder. Something that I like about him is he's essentially coached every part of the Rams defense, except for the defensive tackle group specifically.
He was the assistant linebacker coach, then outside linebacker, back to inside linebacker, then DB, back to linebacker, and then defensive coordinator. So again, the only position he did was defensive tackle. He was the pass game coordinator, so handled all the back end at one point.
The pass rush coordinator, which is like setting up your stunts and getting you and yourself in unit, so working with the defensive tackle group. And then, obviously, the D.C. He lived with Sean McVay early on, by the way, because they were freshmen together at the University of Miami of Ohio.
So, again, that's something I really like, is that he has had his hand in basically every position on the defense. We're trying to not get too into, like, schematics.
Chapter 8: What insights do Bobby and Grump share about their rankings of the candidates?
He does this. I just like what he does. Like, he has a clear principle of what he likes to do. But he also, like, adjusts within it, right? Like, you know how a lot of teams are getting in heavy personnel and they're throwing at it, right? And they're like, oh, we want to get teams in base defense.
and get them heavy and then make their linebackers have to cover a lot of past defenders and they're not as good at that, right? And then some guys like Jesse Minner or Mike McDonough are like, hey, we're just not going to get out of nickel though. We're going to stay in nickel. We have a nickel defender who can play the run like a linebacker and that's how we're going to attack it.
They don't have that guy. What I like about what Shula does is he does a little bit of both. He's like, I'm going to get in base defense. But I want to keep two high safeties. So you're not going to get those easy, you know, crossers against me. But I'm also not going to be so light that I'm a total rush defense liability. And he's gotten better, right? 2024, they were middle of the pack defense.
They were very bad as a rushing defense. This year, they've been 10th in points per game, 7th in each paper play, got to middle of the pack as a rushing defense, 5th in turnovers. And they're doing it, Grump, with... Not like high-priority pieces, right? They're the second-cheapest defense in the NFL.
They have two first-round picks on the defense, Jared Verst, and then commanders cast off Emmanuel Forbes. And I just like what he's doing. He runs the most dying personnel, six DBs in the NFL with those three safety looks with the three corners. I think he's a smart defensive mind. Is it his time to be a head coach? Is he the guy that can save the Giants? Those are questions I have.
But I'm very confident that he's a very smart, young defensive coach and he's forward thinking. And I like the idea of him getting an offensive coach when he's been under Sean McVay for all these years.
Yeah, I mean, I get the same inkling that like it seems very early for him. He said a very quick pathway up. It seems like he's belonged every step of the way. But I get the sense that he's super passionate about football and will dive into anything and everything.
And you get that sense when you see how much he bounced around, just like you said, outside linebackers, linebackers, passing game coordinator and DBs, past Russian linebackers and then defensive coordinator. That 2024 year as defensive coordinator, by the way, is the first year that they had to go without Aaron Donald in the middle. That was his first year as defensive coordinator.
So imagine that as a super young guy, you know, whatever, I guess not super young, 30 years old.
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