The Giants head into the offseason with tons of uncertainty.
John Mara stepped out of the Giants locker room at MetLife Stadium and paused near an equipment truck. His wife of 45 years, Denise, took an antibacterial wipe out of her purse and gently placed it in his hands.
Twenty minutes earlier, the family’s football team had won a game that most of its fans no doubt had hoped it would lose. The Giants defeated the Dallas Cowboys, 34-17, for a second-straight victory at the end of a miserable 4-13 season that did little but lower the team’s position in the NFL draft next spring.
In this busy stadium corridor, however, all that was the last thing on anyone’s mind. Mara shuffled toward a waiting entourage that included many of his 14 grandchildren. His face was puffier than usual, and as the family made its way en masse to the stadium exits, his movements were slow and deliberate.
But he was smiling.
Mara revealed in a late September statement that he was receiving treatment for cancer, and while the team did not provide specifics, it is clear that the 71-year-old co-owner is in a fight for his life. A daily fixture around the team for decades, Mara has taken a much lower profile as he has focused on his health.
“Before he was really sick, you’d see him all the time in the lunchroom, talking to everybody, greeting everybody,” defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence said. “I feel for him. It feels good to get this win for him. It’s been a long time since we’ve beat Dallas.”
We have thrown around the word meaningless a lot when it comes to New Jersey’s NFL teams in recent years. With the Giants and Jets out of contention before Halloween, the late-season games in the Meadowlands have felt like a second preseason at times, only with colder temperatures and more expensive tickets.
This one against Dallas was no different, with the Cowboys benching starting quarterback Dak Prescott at halftime despite being down just six points. The chance to turn a nine-game winning streak against their NFC East rivals into double digits didn’t matter as much as protecting the franchise star from an injury with nothing at stake.
But meaningless? Not to Mara. Never to Mara. You can criticize his decisions over the past decade — I know I have in dozens of columns — but you can never accuse the man signing the checks about not caring deeply about the outcome each week.
He is also a good person. Receiver Darius Slayton, one of the longest-tenured Giants, remembered a moment a couple years ago when he was receiving a small award for his work with a youth group in Far Rockaway, New York.
“It wasn’t a super flashy event, but (Mara) showed up and spent time with my parents to support me,” Slayton said. “I was just like, WOW! He certainly didn’t need to do that. I’ll always appreciate his presence there. I don’t know how many owners in the NFL would have done something like that.”
So, yes, the Giants wanted to win this game — for themselves, for their pride, for their owner.
“It felt really good to give Mr. Mara the game ball for everything he’s been through and for everything he’s done for this franchise,” offensive lineman Jermaine Eluemunor said. “It was really cool just to see him smile.”
And let’s be honest: The slip in draft position isn’t, as one headline on Sunday night screamed, “a tank-busting” that will “make fans sick.” No doubt, the No. 1 pick would have brought with it an opportunity to trade back and get valuable draft capital. But that first pick is almost always a quarterback, and as rookie Jaxson Dart proved this season, the Giants don’t need one.
“We have our guy,” defensive end Brian Burns said, and he’s right.
Mara is usually the one facing the difficult questions after a season like this, and late Sunday evening, it remained unclear who from the team would address the media as the team went through the annual ritual of exit meetings and locker cleanings.
Joe Schoen is the team’s general manager — for now, at least, and probably through next season. Dart promised that “things are going to change because there’s no other option,” but unless Schoen hires the right head coach and (finally) aces an offseason, the Giants risk being in this spot in a year from now. His track record does not inspire confidence, to put it mildly.
But that is a concern for another day. This one belonged to a man that interim coach Mike Kafka called “the poster boy for toughness and resiliency.” Mara left that Giants locker room on Sunday with a game ball and, more importantly, a smile on his face.
“I’m going to be able to jog to my (cancer) treatments tomorrow,” Mara said in the locker room as the players hooted their approval.
Meaningless? Hardly.
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Category: General Sports
