By the middle of last week, Ben McAdoo had interviewed for vacant head coaching positions with the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Eagles. He knew that if either team was serious about hiring him, it would call him back for a second interview.
Indeed, the Giants last Wednesday asked McAdoo, the team’s offensive coordinator for the last two seasons, to come back for another meeting the next morning. But McAdoo had a scheduling conflict — he was supposed to be in Philadelphia on Thursday morning for his second meeting with the Eagles.
That was alarming news to the Giants. They had sweated out the possibility that Tom Coughlin, who resigned as the team’s head coach last week, would end up on the Eagles’ sideline. Coughlin had that day withdrawn his name from consideration in Philadelphia, but now McAdoo appeared to be moving to the top of the Eagles’ coaching wish list.
“We knew we would regret letting him go elsewhere,” John Mara, a Giants co-owner, said of McAdoo. “I guess you could say he had been the favorite.”
The Giants hastily summoned McAdoo to a meeting on Wednesday and offered him the job shortly thereafter.
On Friday at Giants headquarters, the 38-year-old McAdoo, who just 12 years ago was an obscure assistant coach at the University of Akron, was introduced as the Giants’ 17th coach. Though McAdoo has never been a head coach at any level, he promptly called himself “the right man for the job.”
“I’m hardened, battle-tested and I’ve been groomed for this opportunity,” said McAdoo, who previously worked for the New Orleans Saints and the San Francisco 49ers and for eight seasons was an assistant coach in Green Bay.
But the swiftness of the Giants’ decision may have caught even McAdoo by surprise. On Friday, he wore a suit that looked too big, one that fit better before he recently lost about 60 pounds.
McAdoo, raised in a small town in western Pennsylvania, thanked a litany of leaders for his development as a coach, including Coughlin. As a tribute, McAdoo said he was going to keep all the clocks at the Giants complex five minutes fast — a practice Coughlin brought to the team when he was hired in 2004.
Coughlin’s final two seasons each ended in a 6-10 record, but on Friday McAdoo said that he thought the Giants were nonetheless closer to a successful season than their record indicated. McAdoo said that, moving forward, the theme for his tenure was going to be “evolution not revolution.”
“We’re not looking to rebuild, we’re looking to reload,” McAdoo continued.
Hiring McAdoo maintains a sense of continuity for the Giants, something the franchise has valued. McAdoo also received endorsements from Coughlin and quarterback Eli Manning during the hiring process.
McAdoo in turn indicated that he planned to keep last season’s defensive coordinator, Steve Spagnuolo, on his staff. The Giants defense ranked last in the NFL during the 2015 regular season. But McAdoo emphasized that he thought the defenders would do better next season, in part, because they would be more familiar with the system installed by Spagnuolo last year.
Mara, however, was more blunt about the Giants’ needs and the changes that were coming.
“There will be changes on the staff,” he said. “There’s a lot about being a head coach that you don’t know about until you do it. Every new head coach goes through that and needs to surround himself with experienced people.
“And let’s face it, we’ve got to help Ben with better personnel.”
McAdoo would not otherwise be specific about the makeup of his coaching staff.
Steve Tisch, the Giants’ other co-owner, addressed the most obvious concern about McAdoo — his age. He will be the second-youngest NFL coach after Adam Gase, 37, who was hired last week by the Miami Dolphins.
“His age is a positive factor,” Tisch said in a conference call with reporters. “He’s young. He’s, in the best sense of the word, ambitious. He’s got a vision. He seems appropriately fearless.”
Mara, meanwhile, recounted the moment two years ago when he first considered McAdoo a potential head coach. It was at a training camp practice.
“You never know for sure how an assistant will be as a head coach, but Ben had a presence,” Mara said. “And he has a hard edge. I saw that he was not afraid to bark at the players when things weren’t going the way he wanted them to go. I like that. I like a coach with a bark.”
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