Giants embarrassing attendance and banners hit John Mara where it hurts the most

The 2024 season has gone about as bad as a season can possibly go for the New York Giants. The product on the field is miserable enough: Behind arguably the worst offense in the entire league, Big Blue enters Week 15 at 2-11, already guaranteed to miss the playoffs for the second straight year — and the 11th time in 13 seasons since winning the Super Bowl way back in 2011.

But even worse than the on-field results is just how they've unfolded. From alienating the team's best player in Saquon Barkley to alienating the team's new best player in rookie receiver Malik Nabers, from one baffling Brian Daboll decision after another to GM Joe Schoen's complete lack of long-term vision, it's clear that there are huge cracks in this team's foundation that another offseason isn't going to fix.

New York is in need of a total overhaul, not just a new quarterback but a new organizational philosophy. And during their home game on Sunday against the Baltimore Ravens, Giants fans made it abundantly clear that they were done supporting this team until they get it.

Giants fans hit owner John Mara where it hurts the most

Giants fans have long been among the largest and most loyal in the league, with a season-ticket waiting list that numbered in the tens of thousands. But New York's incompetence over the last decade-plus appears to have broken Big Blue nation, at least if Sunday's crowd at MetLife Stadium is any indication. It's one thing for attendance to dwindle late in a lost season; this, however, is the sort of embarrassment you hardly ever see in the NFL.

Yes, the team is 2-11, and yes, it was cold and gray in the tristate area on Sunday. But only convincing a few thousand people to sit through an NFL football game is a shocking failure, one that should serve as quite the wake-up call for owner John Mara. And if that's not enough, a plane flying over the stadium ahead of kickoff certainly is: According to Charlotte Carroll of The Athletic, some anonymous fans paid for a banner reading "MR. MARA ENOUGH - WE WON'T STOP UNTIL YOU FIRE EVERYONE".

It's hard to disagree with that conclusion. Daboll has shown that he can do decent work on the offensive side, particularly developing quarterbacks, but he falls short in just about every other aspect of being an NFL head coach. Schoen, meanwhile, seems to have zero clue, consistently wavering between rebuilding and contending without any clear path forward to put the organization on stable footing. Even worse, this is the third different regime to have flamed out in New York, after Jerry Reese and Dave Gettleman got put on the chopping block before them. At this point, you have to wonder if the one constant through all of this bad football — Mara — is the one to point the finger at.