Among the questions that Giants co-owner John Mara faced at a Wednesday press conference were ones about how attractive the team’s General Manager job is given the perception that Mara and other family members have a heavy hand in personnel decisions.
Mara’s brother Chris is the senior vice president of player personnel and has been sitting in on General Manager interviews while Mara’s nephew Tim McDonnell is the co-director of player personnel. Mara said that he has been “heartened by the fact that so many people have expressed an interest” in taking over for former G.M. Dave Gettleman and he said the perception of his family having an outsize role in decisions was created by the media and others outside the organization.
“I do not think it holds any more sway,” Mara said. “That has not been my experience here. I listen to them, but there are many voices in this building. But the only two voices at the end of the day that matter are the head coach and the general manager. They make the final determination. They listen to them because they recognize their evaluation skills, but there are other people in the building who have evaluation skills as well and who have voices as well. But they do not have undue influence on the final decisions that are made here. They absolutely do not.”
Mara added that his brother is in meetings, but the final decision on the next General Manager will come from him and co-owner Steve Tisch and that he hopes that G.M. will be hired ahead of a head coach that would be hired after consultations between the three men. Once those hires are made, Mara insists that the G.M. and coach will have final say on all personnel decisions and they’ll have to be right about those calls for the feeling that the problem with the Giants starts at the top to go away once and for all.
