Giants’ fans should be ready to embrace John Mara again after he speaks out for them

It’s difficult to make fans forget that you’ve won two Super Bowls during your watch as an NFL owner, but John Mara pulled it off.

By the end of the 2021 season, the co-owner and team president who was in charge during the Giants’ two stunning upset wins over Tom Brady, Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots was nothing more than a vilified billionaire running a franchise in decay.

That’s what happens when you make the playoffs just one time in a decade while mixing in eight losing seasons and three last-place finishes.

In the process, the Giants went through three head coaches in an attempt to replace Tom Coughlin and allowed former general manager Dave Gettleman to send the franchise into salary-cap hell with some awful free-agent decisions.

For Mara, his status with the fans became publicly apparent when the team retired Eli Manning’s No. 10 jersey and inducted the quarterback into the Giants’ Ring of Honor at halftime of a Week 3 game against the Atlanta Falcons in 2021.

A nice moment turned nasty when Mara was bombarded by boos as he introduced Manning with the winless Giants trailing the hapless Falcons 7-6 at halftime.

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To his credit, Mara said exactly what you’d want any owner to say.

“I would boo, too,” he told reporters that day. “We’re 0-2 and down at the half.”

The disdain, of course, traced back further than that season and it was compounded when the team finished 4-13 and attempted to make amends by giving away free medium-sized Pepsi drinks during the team’s penultimate home game.

The fans, wanting a supersized apology and perhaps some rum with their Pepsi, thought it was a joke.

Mara, always aware of what is being said about his franchise, jokingly offered a free large Pepsi to the reporters at Brian Daboll’s introductory news conference a little more than a month later.

He gets it. He understands and owns his mistakes. He wants to correct them and it appears as if the arrival of Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen has the franchise ascending once again.

Mara, meanwhile, showed at the NFL Owners Meetings in Phoenix last week that he cares about the people paying to see his product. He was the first owner to speak up as the NFL attempted to hurry through a change that would allow Sunday afternoon games in Weeks 14 through 17 to be changed to Thursday night in an attempt to boost Amazon Prime Video’s ratings.

“Flexible scheduling … is really inconsiderate to our season-ticket holders who fill our stadiums every week,” Mara said. “People have gotten used to going from Sunday afternoon to Sunday night, but that doesn’t mean they like it. This year, we can be flexed to Monday night, which I think is very inconsiderate to our ticket holders. But to flex a game to Thursday night to me is abusive and I’m adamantly opposed to it.”

The motion did not pass last week, but many believe it will at the next meeting of the owners in late May. It’s clear that commissioner Roger Goodell wants it to happen, so it said a lot that Mara was willing to speak up on the issue.

“Obviously, providing the best matchups for our fans is part of what we do,” Goodell said. “That’s part of what our scheduling has always focused on, and flex has been a part of that. We are very judicious with it and we’re very careful with it and we look at all of the impacts of it.

“I think we average about a flex and a half per year. It can vary in any particular year. So it’s a very important thing for us to balance that with the season-ticket holders and the in-stadium markets, but we have millions of fans who also watch us on television. Reaching them is a balance that you always strike and making sure we do it right.”

Here’s why Mara is so right about this issue: The statistic that the NFL only averages one and a half flexed games per year is based on Sunday night games only. That number is sure to rise if the league also adds Monday night and Thursday night games to the flex equation. Monday Night Football will be eligible for flex games for the first time in 2023.

Most players hate Thursday Night Football without dealing with the flex part of it, so they are sure to despise this even more. But for fans, it’s even worse.

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Season-ticket holders plan their lives around these games and some won’t be able to flex their work schedules from Sunday to Thursday.

Worse still is this scenario: Let’s say the Giants’ schedule comes out and it has them playing against the Raiders in Las Vegas on a Sunday in Week 15. A lot of fans are going to want to travel to that game, but will they be reluctant to book a trip when they do not know if the game will be changed to a Thursday night?

Mara is fighting the good fight here even if he is likely to lose it.

More important is the fact that he has the Giants going in the right direction again. It should never be forgotten that he was in charge when this team won two Super Bowls or that he takes the losses every bit as hard as the fans who take the time to paint their faces blue.

Perhaps it’s time for Giants fans to embrace John Mara again.

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Bob Brookover can be reached at rbrookover@njadvancemedia.com.

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