Is Ben Mcadoo Coaching the Giants Again

When the Carolina Panthers set out on hiring a new offensive coordinator for the 2022 season, it was framed in a way that raised the expectations of fans and observers alike. After a season and a half of LSU wunderkind Joe Brady that provided far more hype than substance, Carolina intimated that it would seek a more experienced NFL listen capable both of lifting the Panthers' offense from the doldrums and leading a unit that could develop into one of the NFL'southward all-time over time.

On the surface, their search didn't lead them to someone who fit that clarification and the visceral reaction to the news that the Panthers were hiring Ben McAdoo can inappreciably come as a surprise given the style in which this coaching search had been framed. Instead of a hot name and a fast riser, their preferred selection of playcaller has spent the last several years picking up the pieces of a career left in slaughter-house and putting it back together largely under the radar following a very public failure of a tenure as the New York Giants head coach.

However, fifty-fifty if McAdoo doesn't walk into the task 1 a tide of optimism, it's important to understand just who the new Panthers' offensive coordinator is and where he's coming from, which shouldn't not exist dislocated for only where he'due south been. Here is a full background on Ben McAdoo, how he reached the heights equally an offensive motorbus, how he fell so far, and why his hiring may ultimately be a audio ane.

Photograph Credit: Bill Kostroun/AP

After working as a graduate banana at the higher level, McAdoo broke into the NFL as an offensive quality control motorcoach with the New Orleans Saints and San Francisco 49ers before getting his big break as the tight ends coach of the Dark-green Bay Packers in 2006. An original fellow member of Mike McCarthy's Packers coaching staff, McAdoo was a pre-eminent fellow member of a Green Bay offensive coaching staff that would win Super Basin XLV in 2010 before being promoted to quarterbacks coach in 2012, where he spent 2 seasons working directly with MVP quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

Information technology was from Dark-green Bay that McAdoo was hired equally the offensive coordinator of the New York Giants in 2014, joining the staff of Tom Coughlin– mentor to current Panthers head double-decker Matt Rhule. When he arrived at the Giants, McAdoo was tasked with overhauling an offensive system that had run its course nether Kevin Gilbride, also as with making a more efficient passer out of quarterback Eli Manning. The season before McAdoo's inflow, the Giants were just beginning to struggle with personnel deficiencies equally their Super Bowl-winning teams anile out, and an overmatched Manning had compounded things by throwing a staggering 27 interceptions.

Under McAdoo, Manning cut downwards on his interception rate and enjoyed some of his best statistical seasons, a development aided by the emergence of wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. as a superstar and Manning's go-to target. From 2014 to 2015, Manning completed 62.9 pct of his passes for 8,842 yards and 65 touchdowns, and the Giants would stop the 2015 season with the NFL's 6th-ranked criminal offence.

McAdoo'southward performance as offensive coordinator was enough that the Giants promoted him to head coach following the 2015 season, replacing Coughlin after the 2-fourth dimension Super Bowl-winning omnibus took the fall for three-straight losing seasons.

And so far, so expert.

Photo Credit: Al Bello/Getty Images

For all he did well equally the Giants' offensive coordinator, things didn't get quite equally well when McAdoo was promoted to caput charabanc.

Although the Giants went 11-v and made the playoffs in McAdoo's beginning season, the success of Big Blue was largely a product of a defensive turnaround while the criminal offence slogged to a 26th-ranked finish. What success they did have was largely thanks to the individual brilliance of Beckham, rookie wide receiver Sterling Shepard, and the veteran savvy of Manning.

The problem was that McAdoo's law-breaking became overly-reliant on the aforementioned sorts of concepts: The Giants used xi-personnel groupings almost exclusively, trotting out iii wide receiver sets for more than ninety percent of their plays. Slants and flats were a hallmark of the crime's passing scheme, and information technology became all too easy for opposing defenses to predict what the Giants were going to practice.

"The Ben McAdoo offense with the Giants was one of the more than easily-adjusted to systems in the last decade in one case opposing defensive coordinators got film on it because it relied so heavily on 11 personnel (three wide receivers, one tight end, one dorsum) and the slants/flats concept in the passing game," Dan Schneier of CBS Sports and Big Blue Banter told The Riot Report. "If you had a WR who could win a i-on-one, it looked not bad — as we saw at times with Odell Beckham Jr. If you didn't? Well, then it fabricated the Jason Garrett Giants offense (ranked 31st in the NFL each of the past two seasons) look passable."

Personnel deficiencies were also a major role of the consequence: The Giants lacked dynamic running backs or tight ends, and their offensive line – headlined past left tackle Ereck Flowers – was woeful. Still, the team's record and loftier-end talent was plenty to inspire belief that the Giants would be okay, and they could achieve similar or greater success in 2017.

Photo Credit: Mark Tenally/AP

They didn't. And in spectacularly and unfathomably horrible ways, McAdoo would oversee, and be culpable in, an implosion of staggering proportions.

The Giants' personnel deficiencies were exposed virtually immediately to start the season, as the offensive line constantly gave up instant penetration in the run and pass game alike. They couldn't run the ball at all, and Manning was sacked five times in two of the commencement five games of the season. All this contributed to an 0-5 start, which was bad plenty, simply which was compounded when Beckham, who had dealt with an ankle injury to start the twelvemonth, was lost for the season in Week 5.

What made things worse, however, was McAdoo'due south inability to control the state of affairs – specifically his locker room.

Dealing with players was not one of McAdoo'south strengths: Even before things truly went s, he had struggled to rein in Beckham, whose behavior every bit a diva wide receiver was beginning to turn into something the Giants could not handle. But beyond Beckham, McAdoo's team was wholly undisciplined and unprofessional, and McAdoo soon plant he had serious issues with players' conduct and their level of effort in losses.

He tried to handle the situation with fines and suspensions: Cornerbacks Janoris Jenkins and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie were suspended for violating team rules, but bug with actor behavior persisted – particularly in the example of another kickoff-round draft bust in (time to come Panthers cornerback) Eli Apple tree, though it should be noted that his problems on and off the field persisted well after McAdoo was out of the picture.

When the Giants dropped to 1-viii post-obit a loss to the previously-winless San Francisco 49ers in Calendar week 10, things started to come to a head: It was clear that McAdoo had lost the locker room and that a player mutiny was occurring.

"McAdoo has lost this team. He's got us going 80% on Saturdays earlier we get on the plane to play a game, it'south wild. Changed our off day," an anonymous role player told Josina Anderson at the time. "He's dishing out fines like crazy. Suspended two of our stars when nosotros need them most. Throws us under the double-decker all the time.

"He's (run) us into the basis and people wonder why we've been getting got."

Photograph Credit: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo

Prior to the Giants' Week 13 game against the Oakland Raiders, McAdoo and embattled general manager Jerry Reese – with approval from Giants owner John Mara – devised a program to bench Manning at halftime regardless of score equally a ways of both evaluating the other quarterbacks they had on the roster while also allowing Manning to preserve his streak of 210 consecutive starts. Manning, withal, declined to first but to keep his streak alive, meaning he was ultimately benched in favor of backup quarterback and cross-boondocks Jets castoff Geno Smith.

What McAdoo underestimated was the effect that benching Manning in the fashion he did – finer embarrassing and insulting a franchise icon, two-fourth dimension Super Bowl MVP, and incomparable hero – would have. The Giants fanbase went from having turned against McAdoo to engaging in outright revolt against him, with multiple billboards reading "Big Blueish Shame on Y'all" purchased forth the New Bailiwick of jersey Turnpike. Ex-players and teammates of Manning were apoplectic likewise, and a group of them allegedly planned a silent protest where they would wearable Manning'south jersey along the sideline at the adjacent home game.

McAdoo was fired the side by side day.

And then, after spending the past two seasons with the Jaguars (every bit QB coach) and Cowboys (as a consultant), what merit is there to the Panthers hiring him as their new offensive coordinator?

Photo Credit: Brad Penner/U.s.a. TODAY Sports

Going off of appearances, it would seem that Carolina's hiring of McAdoo is indicative of Matt Rhule operating within his comfort zone and going back to the Tom Coughlin well. Although Rhule and McAdoo have never worked together, Coughlin's influence on Rhule is readily credible by Rhule having coached under him and employing 3 coaches – Kevin Gilbride Jr., Sean Ryan, and at present McAdoo – who were also Coughlin staffers. While it remains to exist seen if Coughlin had whatsoever input in Rhule's offensive coordinator search, he did give counsel to Rhule when he was first hired by the Panthers in 2020.

It may not exist the case, though, that McAdoo's merits are wholly based in his work with Coughlin. For as time has gone on, circumstances have suggested McAdoo knew much more than what his reputation suggested.

In the 2017 Draft, McAdoo allegedly became smitten by future NFL MVP quarterback Patrick Mahomes, telling Giants management outright that "I would love to get my f—ing hands" on the Texas Tech product. Though he didn't get his wish, McAdoo did terminate upward pursuing and drafting Evan Engram, a "tweener" tight finish whose speed and athleticism meshed well with where offensive football game has since gone and earned him a Pro Bowl nod in 2020. There's also an argument to be made that McAdoo'due south success equally an offensive coordinator, relative to the Giants being severely offensively-challenged over the terminal decade, vindicates him.

Although the Panthers have an offensive line simply as poor as the ones McAdoo coached in New York, he will have much more to work with in terms of skill position players, specifically at running dorsum and tight end. His assessment of Mahomes – as well as that of Sam Darnold – also suggests that he tin can play a major office in finding out who should and should not homo the quarterback position for Carolina moving forward.

"He's manifestly a talented guy, he tin can make plays with his feet. I'd just have a hard time drafting a guy in the first round where you lot don't necessarily similar the fashion he throws," McAdoo told the New York Mail when speaking of Darnold in 2018. "He can overcome it, guys take, but that'due south something that'southward a challenge for me. I'm gonna exist looking at that, trying to set up information technology, because it's a fundamental flaw, and I believe in the fundamentals.

"The quarterback, his No. i job is to pass the football. If I don't like the mode he throws the ball, I have a hard time picking him, right?''

As uncomfortable as it might be for Panthers fans to call back virtually right now, McAdoo might accept had a point.

Photo Credit: Chanelle Smith-Walker/Carolina Panthers

When his by failings and the phase that they occurred on are taken out of the equation, the Panthers have ultimately plant the following in Ben McAdoo: A coach with an eye for quarterback play who has a history of success every bit an NFL offensive coordinator and experience as a head coach. In the best-example scenario, McAdoo tin raise the standard and overall functioning of the Panthers' crime, and in doing then help take the estrus off Matt Rhule while also serving equally a resources to Rhule as he tries to withstand the arrows and slings once shot McAdoo'southward way.

That said, concern over the Panthers' hiring of McAdoo is justified and perfectly reasonable. Such comes with the current low level of confidence in the Panthers' coaching staff and decision-making, as it as well invites reasonable doubt that Matt Rhule is capable of making the correct sort of hires to maximize his squad's chances of success in 2022.

There is, though, a long time withal earlier the Panthers' offensive players larn the McAdoos and McAdon'ts of their new offensive coordinator. And, in place of certainty, the hiring of the Panthers' new offensive coordinator should at least be met with an open mind and with the thought that not all may be as it seems with Ben McAdoo.

(Top photo via Seth Wenig/AP)

Steven Taranto is a professional writer for CBS Sports who has been with The Riot Written report since 2019. Prior to joining Riot Report, Taranto served every bit the caput author & publisher for the Carolina Panthers on 247Sports in 2018 through the 2019 offseason. A native of Eastchester, New York, Taranto graduated from Elon University in 2015 and is a noted Cheerwine enthusiast. (Twitter: @STaranto92)

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Source: https://theriotreport.com/did-i-mcadoo-that-exploring-ben-mcadoos-failures-with-the-giants-and-why-he-deserves-a-second-chance-in-carolina/

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