Giants Country

Report | Giants Have Interest Jason Garrett if He Becomes Available and If They Fire Pat Shurmur

Amidst the frustration with the Giants 2019 season now comes speculation that the team might be looking to reunite with one-time backup quarterback turned head coach Jason Garrett if they move on from Pat Shurmur after this year and if Garrett is let go by the Cowboys.
Patricia Traina|
Raj Mehta-USA TODAY Sport

The Giants still have six weeks of football left to play, but if those six weeks don’t start yielding significant improvement, big changes could be on the horizon.

One of those changes could be at head coach, where incumbent, Pat Shurmur, has found the heat under his seat cranked up to broiling status in light of his in-game management decisions, his use of personnel, and of course, the team’s won-loss record, which at 2-8 current is mired in a six-game losing streak ahead of its Week 12 game at Chicago.

According to an NFL Network report by insider Ian Rapoport, the Giants could be interested in pursuing Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett if they fire Shurmur and if Garrett is available, and that the Giants are Garrett’s “preferred destination.”  

Earlier this year, Giants team president John Mara told reporters that he wanted to see progress made from last year to this year. While Mara didn’t specify what his criteria for progress is, certainly the team’s record entering Week 12, which includes ugly losses to Arizona and, more recently, the Jets is not what Mara had in mind.

This apparently isn’t the first time the Giants are reported to have an interest in Garrett, a backup quarterback for the Giants during the 2000-03 seasons. 

According to Rapoport, in 2014, the Giants were contemplating firing then-head coach Tom Coughlin and were thought to be planning to make a run at Garrett--that is, until Garrett signed a contract extension with the Cowboys.

But it’s also worth noting that season, the Giants had suffered a bad loss to the Jaguars that Mara later admitted had him thinking about “firing everybody.”

Neither Mara nor general manager Dave Gettleman has spoken with the media since the start of training camp, not an unusual practice for the team. 

However, with the team’s season once again in shambles, the lack of public backing by the Giants’ top decision-makers has only added to the speculation about Shurmur’s shaky future as the team’s head coach.

Mara declined to comment after the Giants lost to the Jets, storming past media members on his way out of the team’s locker room after the game.

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Patricia Traina
PATRICIA TRAINA

Patricia Traina has covered the New York Giants for 30+ seasons, and her work has appeared in multiple media outlets, including The Athletic, Forbes, Bleacher Report, and the Sports Illustrated media group. As a credentialed New York Giants press corps member, Patricia has also covered five Super Bowls (three featuring the Giants), the annual NFL draft, and the NFL Scouting Combine. She is the author of The Big 50: The Men and Moments that Made the New York Giants. In addition to her work with New York Giants On SI, Patricia hosts the Locked On Giants podcast. Patricia is also a member of the Pro Football Writers of America and the Football Writers Association of America.

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