There is no Mutiny on the Big Blue Bounty, and ownership has zero interest in throwing Ben McAdoo overboard so early in his head coaching career.
What Giants ownership needs to see Sunday against the Seahawks, and through the rest of this ghastly season, is what they saw in Denver — an embattled head coach under fire who found a way to extinguish the flames with an undermanned team against all odds.
Ben but don’t break.
“I’ve been with him for four years now,” Justin Pugh told The Post. “That’s my guy. I’m gonna go out there and keep playing for him. I think everyone is.”
McAdoo was tested by Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie’s meltdown, and he will have passed it if it proves to be little more than a tempest in a teapot.
“I love Coach McAdoo, man,” Orleans Darkwa told The Post. “He’s a gritty coach.”
He’s a 1-5 coach this season. But at least he hasn’t blinked.
“He’s gonna be true to himself, and I think that’s why we appreciate him,” Darkwa said. “He’s not gonna change for anybody. … The players are still playing hard. We’re playing our hearts out, and he’s part of the reason why.”
Pugh added, “I have nothing but faith in Coach. He spends every waking moment thinking of football, and thinking about the sunlight, how it’s gonna affect the play, I mean, the craziest stuff I would never think of. And he’s gonna become a better leader and he already is the leader of this team.
“We go as Coach Mac goes.”
Ownership was thrilled with McAdoo leading the Giants back to the playoffs as a rookie head coach. Ownership won’t treasure stability and continuity any less just because a season with Super expectations imploded every which way but loose.
The Giants stuck with Tom Coughlin through thick and thin, mostly thin and thin, until three straight losing seasons forced ownership to gently ask him to hand in his playbook.
Bet that this season without reason will be viewed by ownership as the greening of a young head coach, replete with forgivable and correctable growing pains.
If McAdoo is able to rise above the rubble and get tough now that the tough has got going, if he doesn’t flinch, if he can rally and inspire the troops on both sides of the ball now that he has relinquished the playcalling reins to offensive coordinator Mike Sullivan, he will survive this — simply because it is not in ownership’s DNA to unceremoniously pull the rug out after two seasons from under a coach it believed was a future star in the making when it hired him.
Then there is the matter of Eli Manning’s championship window closing sooner rather than later.
Ownership wants Manning to retire a Giant. He won’t need to exercise his no-trade clause. He will still give the 2018 Giants their best chance to win, whether Davis Webb or one of the marquee quarterbacks of the Class of 2018 is behind him. The Giants are paying Manning, 37 in January, to be their quarterback through 2018.
Never forget that Manning’s voice carries considerable weight inside the Big Blue walls. It was Manning, remember, who lobbied ownership to pick McAdoo as Coughlin’s successor. They will have worked together for four years when 2017 ends, and Manning will not be inclined to master a new offensive system.
A vote from Manning would seal the deal for a third year as head coach for McAdoo.
“When you’re 0-5, you can easily let things slip. Ain’t nothing slipping,” Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie said.
John Mara and Steve Tisch will proceed as they always do, and reserve judgment until after the season. Mara has seen and experienced enough to know that it is usually detrimental to act on emotion.
In the meantime, the Seahawks, as suspect as they have been, won’t be letting Darkwa run through them the way he ran through the Broncos. McAdoo and Sullivan will almost certainly need to tweak their smashmouth formula. Manning’s only chance against the Legion of Boom is to target Sterling Shepard, if his ankle cooperates, and Evan Engram early and often.
Seattle coach Pete Carroll has offensive line issues of his own, so another spirited performance by Jason Pierre-Paul and friends, buoyed as they should be with DRC back — and back in good graces following his one-game suspension — will be imperative.
Carroll was fired by then-Jets owner Leon Hess following his rookie 6-10 season in 1994 and replaced by Rich Kotite. He should serve as a cautionary tale about giving up on a young head coach too soon.
McAdoo’s challenge:
Ben but don’t break.