State of the Giants

Luckily for us yesterday was business as usual and nothing crazy and unprecedented happen. Smh.

Here’s the only thing I will say: what we watched was a culmination of everything Trump has mangled his cult into which are loyalists to him and not to the country they lie that they love.

Moving on.

The Giants held the world’s greatest timed press conference (which you can watch here) to announce that Dave Gettleman would be back.

Here is the coverage by Paul Schwartz of the Post, Pat Leonard of the Daily News (subscription required) and Big Blue View

Dan Duggan from the Athletic (subscription required) starts off with the perfect summation:

“Giants general manager Dave Gettleman undeniably had a strong offseason in 2020. That the Giants still only won six games illustrates just how low things were after Gettleman’s first two seasons.“

A few of the nuggets which I’ll address-

Giants need to get Daniel Jones more weapons- Ok that’s fine, and while there are a number of really good free agent WR’s- with Allen Robinson being at the top of my list- the tougher thing to justify is Gettlemen saying that he wants Jason Garrett back. There’s something to the idea of continuity. Eli Manning had 2 offensive coordinators ( John Hufnagel from 2004-2006; Kevin Gilbride from 2007-2014) for the first 10 years of his career in which he won two super bowls. But being the 31st ranked offense and having zero creativity in the offensive packages caused the team to rely too much on a defense that played above its talent thanks to creative scheming.

I know Jason Garrett has friends in some very top places. But this team didn’t show the kind of improvement that you would want to see and in fact took a step back from Pat Shurmur’s offense. This isn’t hyperbole. You can look at virtually every offensive metric you want. This was about scheme and talent. Both areas had to be ugpraded and John Mara chose continuity. You know what insanity is….right?

Adding better weapons may help in both the draft and free agency but this team has a problem with situational play calling and overall scheme that won’t be solved completely by a Jaylen Waddle or his ilk.

Mara believes that decisions made in 2018 have hampered this team- How is this a reason NOT to fire Dave Gettleman and rather a crutch for Gettleman to use to justify him surviving another year? It boggles the mind. Mara distanced himself from the notion that he pushed Gettleman on any of the decisions but it was tough to understand the rationale for giving Gettleman a longer leash to dig himself out of the mess that he created simply because they were in it till the last game in a pathetic division. It doesn’t make much sense. Speaking of decisions made in 2018….

John Mara on Saquon Barkley “I certainly expect he will be a Giant for a long time”- Oh.

I love Saquon. I think he’s a top 3 RB in this league. But tying up significant cap space a year before we have to make a dump him, deal him or sign him decision on Daniel Jones is the kind of stupidity that will lock this team up moving forward. The Giants have a talent issue but suggesting that signing Saquon to a big money contract when he has played 31 of a possible 48 games is extremely risky and that’s before we even get into the discussion about whether its smart to invest that kind of money into the RB position on one player. Its not.

There’s plenty of things to be optimistic about the Giants. The offensive line seems to be figuring itself out. Andrew Thomas is NOT a bust. Joe Judge is the right coach for this team and has the fan base pumped about what he can do. Gettleman DID have a great 2020 year from the draft (where he did ok) to free agency (where he absolutely hit a HR). There’s evidence he’s a solid talent identifier. But what he isn’t is a modern GM.

He doesn’t know how to leverage assets. He has not shown he can build a complete roster in either stop. And while his Giants roots are what got him the job, the last four years should’ve cost him the job.

Mara did warn that a 6 win season would not be enough next year. That he needed to see significant progress and while Mara will never be “playoffs or bust” the implication was there. Either get Judge the players he needs to make steps forward or else.

What was made clear is that the love this organization has for Joe Judge is clear. This is his team and Gettleman knows his future is tied to how much talent this team can acquire for next year. Maybe even hiring Judge helped Gettleman. Judge is now the face of this franchise and represents the culture the way that Tom Coughlin used to. Its a move from the old playbook by the Maras and Tisches who love the idea of having continuity much like the Steelers have had since the 70’s with 3 head coaches over almost 50 years (which is stunning to think about much less type).

But the Giants are a team wandering around having not made enough progress because its stuck in a time machine and they went back to the past again. Stuck there. All of the hope is on Joe Judge pulling them out. Its on Gettleman again to do it much to the chagrin of most of the fan base. For Mara, he had better be right.