Giants’ John Mara swears Brian Daboll, Joe Schoen’s jobs are safe. Why should we believe him?

NEW YORK — On Wednesday night, Giants co-owner John Mara, unprompted, gave a huge vote of confidence for coach Brian Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen.

BUY GIANTS TICKETS: STUBHUB, VIVID SEATS, TICKETMASTER

“Obviously, we’re all very disappointed with where we are right now,” Mara said at the Paley Media Center in Manhattan. “But I’m going to say one thing: We are not making any changes this season. And I do not anticipate making any changes in the offseason either. That’s all I’m going to say about that. I just wanted to make that statement. And that’s all I’m going to say about the team.”

Mara’s statement, which comes just days after the Giants fell to 2-5 — and a little under three months after he told reporters he wanted to see “significant improvement” in the third year of the Daboll-Schoen regime — was especially strong when you consider the question posed to him was about the season as a whole, not Daboll and Schoen specifically.

Additionally, Mara swears that, after firing each of his previous three coaches after just two seasons, he wants to be more patient with his leadership — something he says his father, late Giants owner Wellington Mara, taught him growing up.

“He preached that (patience) all the time,” he said. “I’ve probably been guilty of not being patient enough in recent years. And that’s one of the reasons

“I’m committed to Joe and Brian Daboll and giving them a chance to turn this thing around.”

But wait, haven’t we heard this all before — a proclamation of confidence in a coach from Giants ownership, before a swift firing?

We certainly have.

Less than one month before Ben McAdoo was fired, Mara and Steve Tisch released the following statement expressing their support in the second-year coach amid their 1-8 start to 2017:

Ben McAdoo is our head coach and has our support. We are in the midst of an extremely disappointing season. Our performance this year, particularly the past two weeks, is inexcusable and frustrating. While we appreciate that our fans are unhappy with what has occurred, nobody is more upset than we are.

Our plan is to do what we have always done, which is to not offer a running commentary on the season. It is our responsibility to determine the reasons for our poor performance and at the end of the year, we will evaluate the 2017 season in its entirety and make a determination on how we move forward.

OK, fine, the McAdoo firing was a bit of a different beast, given his meteoric rise and plummet. He went 11-5 and made the playoffs in his first season, before collapsing to an 0-5 start in 2017 and, according to ESPN, quickly losing the locker room.

Believe it or not, though, there’s another, more recent example.

On Jan. 11, 2022, Mara fired head coach Joe Judge just 16 days after ESPN’s Adam Schefter leaked that the Giants planned on bringing him back for the following season. Judge, now a senior analyst at Ole Miss, finished with a 10-23 record in two seasons.

Was Mara right to move on from these coaches? No doubt. But to do so shortly after giving both men ringing endorsements calls his credibility into question.

All of that’s to say: Yeah, Daboll and Schoen, who have a 17-23-1 record with the Giants, are safe for now, but will that remain the case if they only snag, say, two or three more wins to wrap up 2024?

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting us with a subscription.

Ryan Novozinsky may be reached at rnovozinsky@njadvancemedia.com. You can follow him on X @ryannovo62.