Amid its perpetual flow of angst and anger, Twitter sometimes delivers a good question, such as this one here from Thursday:
@cwigginshulu @DanGrazianoESPN why would NYG hire OC from outside like Gase as HC when McAdoo is just fine? If it ain't broke, don't fix it
— Mustafa Tahoun (@moose24_10) January 8, 2016With the New York Giants set to interview Bears offensive coordinator Adam Gase on Friday for their vacant head coach position, this is a worthwhile question. Gase is a 37-year-old coordinator from the outside. Ben McAdoo, the Giants' current 38-year-old offensive coordinator, interviewed for the position Tuesday. The question up there is basically: Why bother with Gase when you already have and like McAdoo?
The first part of the answer is that the Giants haven't done a head coaching search in 12 years and justifiably want to take their time and talk to as many people as possible. No harm whatsoever in surveying the league for a variety of perspectives and ideas. There is a reason Gase is a hot name in head-coach-candidate circles. Why not find it out first-hand?
But the bigger part of the answer is that this isn't a coordinator position. The Giants are looking for a head coach. Neither Gase nor McAdoo has ever been that, and success as a coordinator doesn't guarantee that either will be a good one. You can, if you're John Mara and Jerry Reese, reasonably conclude that McAdoo is the better coordinator yet come away from this interview process believing Gase would make the better head coach. This process is about finding that out.
When Mara and Reese sit down with these candidates, including the ones who already work for them, they are going to be asking things like, "How would you structure each day of training camp?" and "What would your offseason program look like?" and "How would you arrange where your coordinators and assistant coaches watch the games and communicate with you during them?" and "What would be your response if a player came to you and said _______?" Head-coach stuff. Questions they haven't had to confront during their careers as assistants and coordinators.
I'm not saying Gase would be better than McAdoo, or that either would be better that Teryl Austin, Steve Spagnuolo, Doug Marrone or anyone else the Giants have interviewed or will interview. I don't know the answer. At this point, neither do the Giants. The point of the current process is to find out as much as they can about all of these guys, pick the one they think is the best head coach, and hope they turn out to be right. The search might, in the end, lead them right back to McAdoo. That's a completely possible outcome. But in the meantime, it can't hurt to find out if someone else's coordinator might be the better person for the job.
Good question! Keep 'em coming.