New York Giants defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo has been promoted to interim head coach for the final four games of the 2017 season after the team fired Ben McAdoo on Monday, per Ralph Vacchiano of SNY.
The Giants also fired general manager Jerry Reese, who had been with the team for 11 seasons.
Spagnuolo was in his second stint leading the Giants defense. The 57-year-old took over in 2007, orchestrating one of the biggest upsets in Super Bowl history when he held the 18-0 New England Patriots to just 14 points.
He would spend just two years with New York before taking over as the St. Louis Rams head coach, a position he held for three seasons with very little success. He lost 38 of the 48 games he coached before being let go in 2011.
After a season with the New Orleans Saints as their defensive coordinator in 2012, Spagnuolo returned to the Giants in 2015 under the same conditions.
Alongside a splurge on the free-agent market that brought in the likes of Janoris Jenkins and Olivier Vernon, Spagnuolo helped turn around the Giants’ defense from one of the worst in football in 2015, to one of the best last season as they allowed the second-least points in the NFL.
But like all aspects of the Giants this season, dysfunction has run rampant as a defense that isn’t able to stay off the field for long due to the offense’s inability to get anything going is ranked among the worst in the league once more.
Among his first orders of business will be addressing who the team’s starting quarterback is. McAdoo and Reese snapped Eli Manning’s 210-consecutive games started streak that dated back to 2004 on Sunday when Geno Smith got the nod in a 24-17 loss to the Oakland Raiders that dropped the team to an abysmal 2-10 in 2017.
If Spagnuolo wants to endear himself to Giants fans, he might want to restore the starting role to the two-time Super Bowl MVP Manning.
His first test as leading man will come against the Dallas Cowboys on Dec. 10 at MetLife Stadium.
