Airplane with banner flies over MetLife Stadium before Giants game for second straight week
A plan pulls a banner, directed at Giants owner John Mara, over MetLife Stadium before an NFL game between the Giants and the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday. Credit: AP/Seth Wenig
This is turning into a banner month for the Giants. And not in a good way.
For the second week in a row, an airplane towing a message to team ownership circled over MetLife Stadium about an hour and a half before kickoff. This time the sentiment unfurled behind it was much more direct than last week’s plea to “fix this dumpster fire.”
“MR MARA ENOUGH — WE WON'T STOP UNTIL YOU FIRE EVERYONE,” Sunday’s message said.
The Giants’ 35-14 loss to the Ravens was hardly a rebuttal to that request, and the fates of coach Brian Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen remain uncertain with the team at 2-12 after nine straight losses.
Team president John Mara has held firm on his October vow to not fire this regime during the season, but the fact that the Giants haven’t won since that decree certainly makes the proposition of keeping everyone a bit more daunting.
Mara slipped out of MetLife Stadium after the game without any public comment.
The rest of the Giants were left to answer questions regarding the message from the unnamed charterer of the planes.
“We saw it on Twitter before the game,” wide receiver Wan’Dale Robinson said. “Obviously, I didn’t pay for it and I didn’t do anything with it. If that’s what somebody would like to do with their money, put a banner up like that, that’s their choice.”
Said linebacker Brian Burns: “It ain’t got [expletive] to do with me. I got bigger things to focus on going against Lamar [Jackson].”
Daboll, one of the targets of the banner, said little about it.
“Just control what we can control,” he said.
The Giants have one more home game on Dec. 28 or 29 against the Colts. They are in danger of becoming the first team in NFL history to lose nine home games in a season.
Wide receiver and longest-tenured active Giant Darius Slayton said he did not see the banner but disagreed with its sentiment when he was told about it. He was asked if this season compares to 2021, when the Giants finished 4-13, Joe Judge was fired and Dave Gettleman retired.
“Twenty-one was its own beast,” he said, noting the losing is the “only common denominator” between the two seasons.
“The coach was fired that year,” Slayton said. “I don’t see that happening to this staff. It seems like everybody will be here . . . It doesn’t feel like there are going to be any changes made. Which is fine. I don’t think there needs to be any.”
Robinson agreed. “I still have plenty of love for Dabes and Joe,” he said.
Where Mara stands on the matter will be its own banner — in a headline — come January.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
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