Matt Rhule was high on the Giants’ head coach candidate list in 2020, but never got to New Jersey for a scheduled interview because Panthers owner David Tepper opened the vault for a stunning seven-year, $60 million contract to ensure Rhule would not leave Charlotte, N.C. before signing on the dotted line.

If Rhule ever got to sit down with the Giants, he very, very likely would have been their new head coach. That did not happen, and the Giants hired Joe Judge.

Rhule turned around dormant or troubled college programs at Temple and Baylor and Tepper made Rhule one of the highest-paid head coaches in the NFL based on a belief he could turn around the fortunes of the Panthers. Judge was not well-known at all to the Giants but the former Patriots special teams coordinator wowed them in an interview and he got the job.

Rhule and Judge are both 10-21 heading down the stretch of their second seasons.  Rhule, 46, has the financial security of knowing the Panthers owe him $43 million in the next five years, whether he stays or gets fired. Judge signed a five-year deal averaging slightly more than $5 million per year and Giants ownership, after paying Ben McAdoo and Pat Shurmur for years not to coach their team, wants Judge back for a third season.  It would be helpful if the Giants do not exit the 2021 season on a six-game losing streak.

There is no doubt that Judge has coached his final game for the Giants in his 30s. He turns 40 on Friday; he was born on New Year’s Eve, 1981. He continues to insist it takes time to build something meaningful and increasingly is acknowledging that the gains he feels he is making with the Giants are concealed behind the scenes. Winning games is certainly not part of the equation right now.

After this past Sunday’s 32-6 thrashing by the Buccaneers, Rhule made a curious analogy as he, like Judge, preaches that the situation is more optimistic than it appears to anyone on the outside looking in.

“I believe it’s 1,000-percent working,” Rhule said. “I just know no one can see it and I apologize. I tell our team all the time it took Jay-Z like seven years, he had to start his own agency to become famous, to become an overnight sensation. Like, it takes time.”

Judge has yet to liken his sagging team to any rap or hip-hop legends, but he and Rhule do have something in common other than a winning percentage of .323: Neither franchise knows if it has its franchise quarterback. The Giants want to consider Daniel Jones as their guy but the evidence is not exactly piling up in his favor, and now he has a neck injury to complicate his future. The Panthers wanted to believe they could resuscitate the career of Sam Darnold, who not long ago (2018) was the No. 3 pick in the NFL Draft and tasked with turning around the fortunes of the Jets. 

Darnold was booed in Charlotte when he replaced Cam Newton on Sunday. The Giants on the same day also used two quarterbacks, Jake Fromm and Mike Glennon, in the 34-10 loss to the Eagles. The only reason they were not jeered is because the game was in Philadelphia and the Eagles fans could not get enough of seeing quarterback follies from the opponent.

When Jones was healthy and on the field, the Giants were 4-7 and not really headed anywhere up the NFL ladder. Since Jones was sidelined and then put on season-ending injured reserve, the Giants are 0-4, outscored 112-46 in those games. Without Jones, the Giants failed to score a touchdown in Miami and failed to score a touchdown against the Cowboys. Of the 46 points in the last four games, 21 points — three touchdowns — came in late fourth-quarter garbage time, with the outcome long-since decided. Jones actually increased his value to the Giants by not playing.

This all goes to show, again, how what looks good can quickly turn ugly. Judge and Rhule killed it at their introductory press conferences. Darnold and Jones were high first-round picks. It now takes a leap of faith to believe any of these guys are destined for big things.

More that came out of another helping of football slop served up by the Giants:

No one can say the Giants did not try to get the ball in the hands of the players who are supposed to be able to do something with it. Kadarius Toney was targeted a team-high nine times and Kenny Golladay was targeted eight times. The problem was, the quarterbacks on the field with these receivers — Fromm and then Glennon — could not get it to them. Toney finished with four receptions for 28 yards and Golladay had three catches for 22 yards. Not being able to connect on more than half the throws sent their way is indicative of a fractured passing game.

At least Toney was out there. He returned after missing the past four games with an oblique strain and his second appearance on the reserve-COVID-19 list. Toney played 39 of the 76 snaps on offense. When he actually gets to the field, his stamina is impressive.

“Obviously he was on a short week coming back, and with only a couple of days of practice due to the ramp up off of COVID, the package put together for him was considering the situations where we really wanted to get him in there,” Judge said. “There were times that we put him in multiple plays in a row, which was something that we weren’t sure about in terms of his conditioning. He fought through a lot of things and when he had the ball come his way, he was able to get in space, make some plays, get vertical, and convert some things.”

The answer is: Never.

The Giants have never, ever had a winning record at any point in a season for the last five years. Not in 2017. Or 2018 or 2019. Not in 2020 and not in 2021. This means no 1-0 record after a season opener. The Giants are the only team in the NFL to have never been over .500 at any point in a season the last five years.

This was expected to be a rebuilding year for the Eagles, and when first-year head coach Nick Sirianni lost five of his first seven games, there was serious discussion in Philadelphia that perhaps this was not going to be a long and successful stay for him.  He wanted a pass-oriented offense and that was not working out with quarterback Jalen Hurts. Sirianni adjusted his thinking and lo and behold, the Eagles are 6-2 in their last eight games and at 8-7 control their playoff destiny. In the span of five days, the Eagles beat Washington on Tuesday night and then beat the Giants on Sunday.

“I don’t put anything into the short week,” Sirianni said. “This team has handled adversity all year through different things. That’s just what you have to do in the NFL. You have to handle adversity, because it rarely is going to go the way you think it’s going to go, just perfectly smooth the whole time.”

Some ineptitude is easy. What the Giants failed to accomplish is actually somewhat difficult. They were on the field for 76 offensive plays and their longest gain went for 11 yards. This great feat was a combined effort of Glennon (the thrower) and Golladay (the catcher). The longest run was 10 yards, by Devontae Booker. There are large chunks and medium-sized bites and small nibbles. Then there was what the Giants served up in Philly. The ball did not go downfield and any time a Giants player had the ball in his hands, there were no tackles getting broken.  

The first time is always meaningful. Wide receiver David Sills, a favorite of fans who saw him during training camp two summers ago, was activated from the practice squad as a COVID-19 replacement and he caught his first NFL pass, a 5-yard reception in the fourth quarter. He was on the field for 15 snaps.

Graham Gano remains a ray of light amid the darkness. His 54-yard field goal in the second quarter was his seventh kick of 50 or more yards this season, extending his franchise record. His 12 field goals of 50 or more yards for the Giants are a franchise record.

The last time that happened was more than 31 years ago.  What is that, you ask? An offensive lineman catching a touchdown pass against the Giants, as right tackle Lane Johnson did early in the fourth quarter. You have to go back to Oct. 21, 1990, when Luis Sharpe of the Phoenix Cardinals did it, for the last time one of the big boys on the offensive line hauled in a pass in the end zone against the Giants.