Joshua Reynolds buzzed with energy.
He stood in one of MetLife Stadium’s tunnels Sunday night, preparing to walk onto the field and help hold a giant American flag during the national anthem.
Then, he said, he saw Giants co-owner John Mara walk toward him. This was Reynolds’ opportunity to make his big point to his favorite team’s chief decision maker.
“I nicely asked him to fire Shane Bowen,” Reynolds told NJ Advance Media, referring to the Giants’ defensive coordinator. “He kind of glared at me, so I don’t think he’s listening.”
Over the next few hours, Reynolds — a 16-year-old high school junior from Bergen County — watched the Giants stumble to 0-3 with a loss to the Chiefs. He decided his pregame comment to Mara wasn’t enough.
So Reynolds this week launched a GoFundMe campaign to pay for an airplane protest banner that will fly over MetLife Stadium before Sunday’s home game against the Chargers.
The banner will read: “MR MARA ENOUGH IS ENOUGH CLEAN HOUSE.”
Reynolds confirmed the banner’s booking to NJ Advance Media by forwarding email correspondence with the Woodbine-based company, High Exposure Aerial Advertising, that will fly the plane. Reynolds paid $2,350 for the plane rental and banner.
And here’s the twist: Reynolds’ banner will fly as his favorite player, prized rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart, prepares to make his first start. Reynolds raised awareness for his GoFundMe through his Instagram account — “jaxdartlover” — which has 12,500 followers.
“I think the timing is a little bad,” Reynolds said. “But it’s not the quarterback’s problem. It’s a coaching problem. So it’s just bad on Jaxson if we don’t have good play calling for him.”
Two plane protest banners are scheduled for Chargers-Giants, with a third potentially joining. Last year, the Giants had one protest banner at two consecutive December home games. Weather canceled a trio of banners for the home finale.
Yet with the Giants having lost 17 of 20 games since the start of last season — and 14 of their last 15 — fans aren’t letting up, even if they’re just 16 years old, like Reynolds.
He put in $100 of his own cash for this plane banner — money he earned over the summer from working as a counselor at a Christian boys camp in the Adirondacks. The rest of the money came from the GoFundMe. His dad, Scott, is a big Giants fan, but he told Reynolds he would not contribute, even though he emotionally supported his son’s effort.
“He thought it was awesome,” Joshua Reynolds said. “He thought it was a great thing that I was able to get all this support from all these other Giants fans. He said if I wanted to do this, I had to use my own money.”
And his mom?
“She thinks it’s a bit silly, but she’s also not a big sports fan,” Reynolds said. “So she doesn’t understand it.”
Ultimately, Reynolds — a lifelong Giants fan — is sick of his team losing. He was 3 years old when the Giants won their most recent Super Bowl, in 2011, so they have struggled for almost his entire life. Reynolds points to Mara as a big part of the problem.
“I think in the years after [2011], he’s done pretty much nothing to help the team, and he’s continuously making bad coaching decisions,” he said. “So I think if not firing the coaches, he has to sell the team. But it’s going to be hard to convince him to do that.
“To be honest, at first, I thought [this banner] was kind of a little crazy. But then just seeing game after game how the Giants are playing, I think it’s a great way to send a message. Because from where we are now, Mr. Mara isn’t getting the message.”
Unsurprisingly, Reynolds didn’t like Mara’s somewhat dismissive postseason comments about last year’s banners.
“I think he’s just being stubborn,” he said. “I know eventually, he’s going to have to start listening to the fans.”
As for what Reynolds hopes to accomplish with this latest message, he wants coach Brian Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen both gone.
“I think a lot of the coaching staff isn’t doing their job effectively,” he said. “[Schoen] hasn’t addressed the interior offensive line at all. If you don’t improve the O-line, we’re never going to win anything. The biggest problem on this team is the O-line.”
So how did Reynolds go about booking the plane banner?
It started in February, when he launched an Instagram account encouraging the Giants to draft Dart. That’s what they wound up doing, of course. Reynolds’ account — on which he posts amusing memes — took off. That later gave him a big platform for his GoFundMe.
Once he got the OK — though no money — from his dad, Reynolds booked the plane through Scott’s bank account.
And no, he doesn’t resent his father for making him a Giants fan. Because in Reynolds’ eyes, it could always be worse.
“Living in New Jersey, it was either the Giants or the Jets,” Reynolds said. “So I’m happy I got the Giants.”
Reynolds attends about three games a year, through his dad’s co-worker has season tickets. (That’s how he landed a flag-holding spot on the field before the Chiefs game.) On Sunday, Reynolds will attend his fourth Giants home game of 2025, including both preseason games. He keeps coming back for more, even after that Sunday night dud.
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“Just watching the game, it was terrible how the coaching was,” he said. “It’s been like this for years.”
More of the same for Reynolds. So what’s it like to be 16 — your prime sports-rooting years — and have your team underwhelm for your entire life so far?
“It’s pretty bad,” he said. “Year after year, preseason the hopes are high, and then we go into the regular season — and we just suck.”
Quarterback Russell Wilson’s disastrous end-of-game sequence of plays against the Chiefs was the last straw for Reynolds. He knew he needed to do something big.
“It just set that thought in my head,” he said.
A couple of days later, he settled on the fan-funded banner idea.
“I really didn’t think I would be able to do it when I first had the idea,” he said. “But now that it’s happened, I’m blown away.”
No matter how much the Giants lose, he knows one thing isn’t an option for him — quitting on them. He hopes to attend college near home — maybe or Connecticut or Rutgers — partly for one big reason.
“So I can keep coming to Giants games,” he said.