The tone of the constituency had never quite been like this. It was jarring, truth be told. I kept a few of the greatest hits that made their way to my email inbox this time last year. 

“I never thought I’d say this, but I think John Mara is the worst owner in New York.” 

“After a while, shouldn’t someone be allowed to fire the owner?” 

“I wonder if he even cares anymore. I really do.”

And those were the printable ones. 

“I know that most of the people who own sports teams, the franchise is a part of their life,” John Mara told me exactly one year ago Sunday, “But in our case, this really is our lives. I think even when people are frustrated, they must know that about my family.” 

What was stunning was the swiftness with which Mara — and, to a lesser extent, his partner, Steve Tisch — fell out of favor among their most loyal customers. Both Mara and Tisch succeeded their late fathers atop the Giants’ corporate flow chart in 2005. Within their first seven years, the Giants won two Super Bowls. 

That’s called hitting the ground running. 

But then the ground grew unstable, then it vanished altogether. There was one season of prosperity, in 2016, then a nonstop blur of lousy players and overmatched coaches and incompetent front office workers, and losses, dozens and dozens of losses, piled up so fast and so effortlessly that the Giants a year ago were a mess. 

A model franchise had become a marked one. 

And Mara took most of the hits. It’s just the way it is. Mara and Tisch may be equal partners, but it is the Mara family name that goes all the way back to the beginning, back to 1925, back to Mara’s grandfather, Tim, famously placing a $500 bet, choosing to invest in the NFL rather than Gene Tunney’s boxing career. 

“A New York franchise to operate anything ought to cost $500,” the old man reasoned, and thus was one of the great sports family dynasties created, one that was passed down to John’s uncle, Jack; his cousin, Tim; and his father, Wellington. And one now embodied by John, who both looks like his father and has the same keen, personal interest in the family business. 

That was the shocking part of the backlash last year. You could always question the decisions the Mara family made — Wellington certainly made his fair share of mistakes, of course, and oversaw much of the barren stretch from 1964-80 when the Giants managed to avoid the playoffs every year. John has certainly made his. 

But it was always impossible to question their devotion. 

“I think you know me well enough to know how much the losing eats away at me,” John Mara said a year ago. “There are times I wish the wins and losses didn’t dictate my mood as much as they have but they do. I can’t help that.” 

Also? We know a thing or two about lousy owners in New York. No need to retrieve the old pile of names, they know who they are (or were), and so do the fans. 

But John Mara? 

Lousy owner? 

Even in the darkest recesses of the past few years, it was hard to reconcile that various precincts of Giants fandom believed that. 

“I understand the frustration,” he said, “at least as much as they do.” 

That is why Sunday will be such a sweet day for the Giants’ owners in Minneapolis, the Giants returning to the postseason for the first time in six years. Good for Steve Tisch, the quiet owner (who urged Mara and the rest of the Giants’ brain trust to look away from longtime family hiring habits, which allowed them to hire Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll). 

And good for John Mara. It isn’t just talk with him, about how deeply this team means to him. It isn’t easy to watch him during these games, the highs and lows and fickle nature of bounces and whistling twisting him into a pretzel. When he makes his postgame locker room rounds he often looks as exhausted as his players. 

You will live and die with these 60 minutes at U.S. Bank Stadium, sure. 

But you won’t be alone. Make book on that.