Poll: Should Giants keep Jason Garrett as offensive coordinator or move on?

Jason Garrett interviews on Friday with the Los Angeles Chargers for their vacant head-coaching job. New York Giants GM Dave Gettleman said earlier this week that Garrett drawing interest as a head-coaching candidate makes him “antsy,” an indication the organization was Garrett back as offensive coordinator despite the team’s struggles.

Should the Giants want Garrett back to run their offense for a second season or not?

The Giants finished 31st in the league in yards and points. They tied for last in the league in touchdown passes. They were better in the run game, but still finished 19th at 110.5 yards per game. The Giants were 30th in the league in explosive pass play (6 percent) rate and 25th overall (8 percent).

The offense wasn’t good enough.

How much of that is Garrett’s fault? How much can be linked to the season-ending Saquon Barkley injury? The pandemic that wrecked the offseason? The learning curve of a second-year quarterback and a young offensive line? The lack of dynamic receiving weapons?

Coach Joe Judge deflected questions about his coaching staff in his season-ending press conference. Gettleman said this about Garrett:

“As far as the potential of Jason leaving, of course it makes you a little antsy. Just imagine, anybody, any of you guys, having your fourth editor in four years. It’s the same thing. It’s no different. We’ll adjust and adapt and do what we have to do and obviously anything we do moving forward, Daniel is a big part of it. We’re certainly conscious of that piece, to answer your question.”

The Giants appear to want to go the route of establishing schematic continuity and upgrading personnel where possible before forcing the third-year quarterback to learn a fourth offensive system in four years.

“I think we certainly need to help our offense a little bit this offseason, be it free agency and the draft. I think we need some more pieces there,” co-owner John Mara said. “Part of the problem that we had is we had a brand new offensive line with new guys playing new positions, they had never played together before, we had no offseason, we had no preseason games for them to get to know each other and get the feel for playing with one another, and they struggled, particularly early in the year, no question about it. I thought they started to play better in the second half of the season. But there’s no question that we need to help our offense going forward and add some more pieces. That will be a priority for us.”

The Giants have Freddie Kitchens on staff. He has a long history with Judge, and called plays with the Cleveland Browns both as offensive coordinator and head coach. He would be an obvious candidate for offensive coordinator should Garrett move on.

Is keeping Garrett in place and establishing continuity the right choice? Vote in the poll and tell us whether you want to see Garrett stay or go?