The Giants were 5-3 after their Week 8 bye in 2016, on their way to an 11-5 record and a playoff berth in Ben McAdoo's first season as coach.
Fast-forward to 2017, and the Giants are an appropriately awful 1-7 at the same point of the season. They're not close to the same team, and unfortunately, the low point of Sunday's embarrassing 51-17 home loss to the Rams showed the true colors of McAdoo.
He's not built to last long for Big Blue.
MORE: NFL Mock Draft 2018
Sure, the Giants have been ravaged by injuries on both sides of the ball. Wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. and center Weston Richburg, their two best offensive players heading into 2017, were lost for the season. The defense has missed a lot as end Olivier Vernon and middle linebacker B.J. Goodson have been sidelined.
But beyond their lone victory, at now equally free-falling Denver, the Giants have looked totally lost while losing. Eli Manning is doing his best to hang in there with rookie go-to tight end Evan Engram and whoever's left standing offensively, but his stoic face can't even hide the listlessness of the team.
The winless 49ers and Browns, the only teams worse than the Giants in the standings, are young teams with limited talent and are in full rebuilding modes. The veteran Giants have no good excuse to fall off so fast.
It comes with horrible timing. While the Cowboys are trying to get to their NFC-best level of 2016, the Eagles have shot up to that position in the division. While the Giants were getting ripped, it had to hurt more that just down the road in Philadelphia, the East leaders were busy dismantling Denver by a similar score, 51-23.
That's the ultra-competitive NFC East for you. A team can be a close second one year, then fade hard and feel the heat the next. Just ask Jason Garrett, who has toed the line many a time for Dallas.
Now, in relation to how Garrett's and Doug Pederson's teams are responding, there's major distance from McAdoo. Even Jay Gruden — with an injury report that leads like War and Peace, too, by the way — has a lot working in Washington.
The Giants don't seem to sync up anything with offense and defense. They haven't made many adjustments that have worked, beyond McAdoo giving the offensive play-calling to Mike Sullivan.
So, in theory, with Sullivan doing the best he can with what he has left as offensive coordinator, McAdoo should have better control of the entire team. He should have done more to adjust the team's mindset of disappointment after a bye. Instead, he continues his Ray Handley-like, handsy approach, including the suspensions of defensive backs Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie then and Janoris Jenkins now.
Given the way the Rams ripped the secondary with Jared Goff and his wide receivers, the Giants could have really used Jenkins against his former team. You can bet not having him on the back end trickled down and caused more frustrations up front, further handcuffing defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo.
It was Spagnuolo's unit that carried the team last season. McAdoo, despite being promoted as the offensive right-hand man of Tom Coughlin, got by with getting less from Manning on that side of the ball. The same problems popped up immediately early in the season against Dallas and Detroit. The injuries just caused them to snowball.
The Giants aren't playing like they're having any fun. And as McAdoo tightens his grip, more players continue to slip through his fingers.
The grace period for McAdoo after getting the Giants back to the playoffs is gone. There's not much reason to think things will get better, and the team will get buried further behind the Eagles and Cowboys beyond 2017.
MORE: How the Giants blew their opportunity
After the game, McAdoo expressed no concern about his job security. But this is New York, and this is the NFC East. You don't get any breaks when you're being badly out-coached in your division game after game.
On the other side, Rams coach Sean McVay showed again why he has the goods to stay in his job for a long time. He had a brilliant game plan after his team's bye, and his players flew out of the gate and were on a matchup-exploiting mission from wire to wire.
A year ago, it seemed unthinkable the Giants would have a quick breakup with McAdoo. But his attempt to implement his spin on the Coughlin way isn't working.
They say you find out a lot more about a team and coach while they undergo adversity. From what the Giants have seen this season, they have plenty of reason to think McAdoo needs to be two and done.
