This is why I never watch preseason games. All the hype over three pointless exhibition contests against guys not currently on a NFL roster has shown its worth.

My mother sometimes quoted the principal of the small parochial school where she taught, a school that deeply prioritized religion and moral teaching and spiritual formation. And nonetheless, the principal was apparently fond of saying "Saints make lousy parents." It worked in multiple ways, either seeing people who were great at their religious practices, but whose lives were a disorganized mess, what Kipling would call Sons of Mary, or sweet, kindly innocent people whose kids ran rings around them or walked all over them, or people who treated their kids more like the Master/Mistress of Novices to formative vocations.

I am starting to think this is the problem with the Mara family. They are great people, who are generous, kind and loyal, and not good at running a football team. In the wilderness years of the 60s & 70s, way too many important jobs were held by unqualified former players, or over-promoted longtime employees, or once competent executives/coaches who were past their prime, but Wellington Mara, whose half-ownership of the team had him running the football operations, while his brother Jack, and then nephew Tim, ran the business part, didn't make personnel decisions based on what was best for the team and organizational functions, so much as what was best for his people. They didn't get competitive again until Mara surrendered a lot of his day-to-day control to George Young, who built their first two Super Bowl winning teams.

I've heard rumors that Dave Gettleman, despite starting his tenure as GM saying all the right things about building a strong line on both sides of the ball, and expressing his wish to get the right quarterback early, was pressured into drafting Saquon Barkley, to try to get some quick success in Eli Manning's dwindling career, rather than bit the bullet and start the inevitable rebuild. Who can put pressure on a GM? Only the owner.

Then, when Joe Schoen came in, with a new head coach to boot, that's usually the sort of situation where a new regime likes to start over with a new quarterback (e.g. Young & new HC Ray Perkins drafting Phil Simms their first year, Ray Handley's stupid selection of Jeff Hostetler to start over Simms, Simms being hustled out the door after getting the Giants one last playoff win in Dan Reeves' first season, Jim Fassel seizing on the first excuse to permanently replace Dave Brown with Danny Kannel, and Tom Coughlin & Manning starting their Giants careers together). But around that time, John Mara made his famous comment that the team had "done everything possible to screw up" Daniel Jones, their fourth year QB. Did Mara make it impossible for Schoen & Daboll to move on from Jones, so that the excessive contract he received the following year was not exactly their preference?

In any event, when a coach and GM show a pattern of winning three fewer games each of their first three seasons in the league, with the team deteriorating rapidly under the watch, most organizations would agree it's time to go. FFS, Jim Fassel led the Giants to the top record in the NFC and a Super Bowl appearance, and after three more seasons, one poor, one with a playoff appearance (and an epic collapse) and one abysmal, he was gone before the third season ended. Brian Daboll is the first Giants head coach in my lifetime to keep his job for more than two seasons, despite more losing seasons than winning. His sole winning season was due to a lot of very close games decided by good breaks in his favor, such as a missed field goal as time ran out, passes being thrown short of where the other team needed them, and uncharacteristic turnovers at the end of the game, by star quarterbacks. Take those four plays away, and the Giants finish 5-11-1 in Daboll's first year, and he'd already be gone. But he eked out a single winning season, and a playoff win against a similarly overrate team, so now he's one of the family. Despite two straight seasons marred by a glaring failure of Daboll to prepare his team for highly predictable misfortunes, and an exponentially deteriorating record, he has been given yet another season he does not deserve. The same goes for Joe Schoen, despite three years of substandard draft classes (even though the justly-reviled Dave Gettleman, whose own acquisitional failures were used to excuse the Giants' shortcomings in Schoen's first couple years, left Schoen with two picks in the top ten of his first draft), and failed free agent signings. The team utterly giving up on Jones with seven games left to go in the season basically compelled them into rebuilding mode. This is where you clear the decks, fire the coach & GM who guided the team into this corner, and start all over again with a new leadership troika of HC, GM & QB1. Instead, Mara talked tough about demanding a winning season this year, only for Schoen to trade up to snare a new quarterback, Jaxon Dart, in this year's draft. You do not acquire a rookie QB and projected successor to the role of franchise QB, in a season where you have a 'win or else' mandate. First of all, committing to a new franchise QB is a long-term project. No one expects instant success, rather growing pains are, at best, an expected outcome for his first year with the team. Secondly, it creates the same sort of situation that Schoen & Daboll came into - their potential replacement tandem is not going to be able to build around their own choice for an on-field leader, but will have to make do with that of the prior regime.

What it looks like is that Schoen, and possibly Daboll (one of the data revealed in the infamous "Hard Knocks" debacle is that their wives have been best friends since before they were hired by the Giants), is either defying Mara's mandate for improvement-or-else by setting up a situation to give himself an excuse to get another year, regardless of the outcome of this season, or else he simply does not believe Mara will fire him, whatever he might have said, once Schoen has started a new rebuilding era.

Meanwhile, Brian Daboll has been called "the QB Whisperer" unironically, because in his last job, the quarterback he coached turned out to be really good. Never mind that he was good enough in college that the team traded up to get him. Never mind that he has not lost a beat since parting from his mentor. Never mind that Daniel Jones showed no real improvement in three seasons under Daboll. Never mind that Tommy Devito, after several weeks as the only alternate QB for the Giants in 2023, was completely unprepared for an actual NFL game and Daboll apparently failed to have him ready, in three weeks of practice, to be trusted with throwing a single pass. Never mind that with an admittedly small sample size, Jones seems to be improving markedly away from Daboll. What we saw on Sunday was a QB performance much like the lowlights of Jones' career.

Now we know it was not Jones. They cannot, and should not, be able to blame other shortcomings on Gettleman, since he is still responsible for their two best players. The problem with this team is that they have failed to make a serious or concerted effort, much less a priority, to build up their offenseve line and defense. They have to go.