Pat Shurmur gets his chance to win over the Giants’ fan base
Minnesota Vikings offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur watches warmups before a game on Dec. 31, 2017. Credit: AP / John Autey
Pat Shurmur has a chance to notch his first win as a Giant on Friday.
There’s no game. No practice. There probably won’t even be many players on hand for the event. But make no mistake: Shurmur needs to pull out a victory.
The 18th head coach of the New York Giants will be introduced to the public in a news conference at 11 a.m., giving him his first opportunity to show the kind of maturity and vision that won over the small room when he interviewed for the job on Jan. 6. Back then, he was performing only for co-owner John Mara, general manager Dave Gettleman and assistant general manager Kevin Abrams (he later spoke with co-owner Steve Tisch on the phone, the Giants have said). This time, he gets to address all of Giants fandom.
And they’ll be listening and watching closely.
Obviously, there is no need to remind them of the tone that was set in similar circumstances just over two years ago. The lights that seemed too bright, the suit that seemed too big, and the task that seemed too arduous for Ben McAdoo turned out to be omens as he was fired from the job in less than two tumultuous seasons. McAdoo also had the misfortune of following in the steps of a future Hall of Famer whose time with the franchise had expired just over two weeks earlier but whose shadow of two Lombardi Trophies lingered over everything. McAdoo said there would be “evolution, not revolution.” He even kept the clocks at the same time — five minutes early — in honor of Tom Coughlin. Or maybe that was just so the former coach wouldn’t be confused when he showed up to use the cardio equipment each morning.
Shurmur, by contrast, gets a clean break from the past. He has a new general manager with a new way of thinking. He’s assembling an entirely new coaching staff with hardly any holdovers (McAdoo retained many from Coughlin’s staff). Shurmur even gets the benefit of having Coughlin down in Jacksonville turning the Jaguars into contenders.
He does have some challenges, though, especially when it comes to perception. Some media outlets have painted him as the third choice for the Giants, their safety coach who was the only respectable option once the team was turned down by two other candidates. That may or may not be accurate.
Shurmur has a reputation for being dry and dull. It’s common to say he’s not the “sexy” pick for the job, that he’ll lack the undeniable star power the most successful coaches in franchise history and the only two men to win Super Bowls for the organization undoubtedly had. Again, that may or may not be accurate.
On Friday, Shurmur finally gets to make his case on those takes.
It’s been almost two weeks since it became common knowledge that Shurmur would be named to this job and four days since he officially was tagged with the title. That’s a long time to be incommunicado with a fan base that has its concerns about his appointment. He’s been busy, of course, assembling his coaching staff and prowling the Senior Bowl for the next wave of Giants rookies, not to mention his responsibilities as offensive coordinator of the Vikings that needed to be completed.
Now, though, the time has come for the coronation. We get to hear Shurmur in the voice that wowed Gettleman and Mara earlier this month. There will be plenty of questions and probably not as many answers, but the tone of the tenure will be set by what happens on the stage in the Giants’ auditorium on Friday.
If Shurmur can win the news conference, and win over some skeptical fans, he’ll have notched a key victory. Perhaps his biggest one, too.
At least until September.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
