Report: Giants Players Have Given Up On Ben McAdoo

ESPN’s Josina Anderson is reporting some damning, if unsurprising, quotes coming from a couple of unnamed players in the 1-7 New York Giants locker room. They claim that the Giants are leaderless with coach Ben McAdoo at the helm, that he can’t communicate with players and isn’t making the right decisions. From the report:

“McAdoo has lost this team,” one player who asked to remain anonymous told Anderson. “He’s got us going 80 percent on Saturdays before we get on a plane to play a game. It’s wild. Changed our off day. He’s dishing out fines like crazy. Suspended two of our stars when we need them the most. Throws us under the bus all the time. He’s ran us into the ground and people wonder why we’ve been getting got.”

Those two suspended stars the player references are cornerbacks Janoris Jenkins and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie. Jenkins was suspended for failing to show up to a practice, while Rodgers-Cromartie was forced to miss time after a disagreement with McAdoo led to him walking out of a team facility. Also from the report was a criticism of how McAdoo handled player discipline:

The other anonymous player also said Wednesday: “I’m going to keep it 100 and I’m going to tell it like it is, and it’s terrible man. I feel like we really don’t got a leader in Coach McAdoo. Going from Coach [Tom] Coughlin, a leader who just had that presence. Like if you were doing something wrong, like on the phone in the hallway walking by, like [Coughlin] is going to say something to you. Coach McAdoo, on the other hand, would see you on the phone in the hallway, walk by you and then fine you.”

The first player was additionally critical of McAdoo’s actions at halftime in the Giants’ 51-17 blowout loss against the Rams last Sunday, the franchise’s worst home loss since 1998. In the postgame press conference, McAdoo didn’t have a response when asked what he said to the team at halftime, and the player also said that the coach had nothing worthwhile to tell the locker room.

In McAdoo’s defense, some named Giants players—Rodgers-Cromartie and safety Landon Collins—gave some quotes in support of their coach. Rodgers-Cromartie declared that the locker room was not lost and that McAdoo “has our support,” while Collins gave McAdoo a full endorsement and said the team’s struggles fall on everyone.

The Giants made the playoffs last year in McAdoo’s first season as a head coach in the NFL. Previously, he was the team’s offensive coordinator for two seasons.