A GIANT DILEMNA

Stop holding on to the past

The NY football Giants play the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles tonight on TNF. The giants are 1-4 this season and if they don’t win tonight the season is basically over for a second consecutive year by the 6^th game of the season. The Eagles may be suffering from a bit of a Super Bowl hangover and thought they could waltz right in and roll over teams but they have faced stiff competition every week. They will however have Carson Wentz playing in his 3^rd consecutive game so he should start getting into a rhythm again. The Giants also appear to be having a Super Bowl hangover, except theirs is not from last year but from the 2011 season when they won the Super Bowl and declared Eli Manning a legend. It’s been 7 years of adjustments, players, three coaches and a revamped offense and the team keeps thinking Willis Reed is going to limp out of the NY locker room and lead them back to the Super Bowl.

Past Glory

The G-men brought in an outstanding and game breaking running back, added a quality offensive tackle to protect and got all of its receivers back healthy, yet once again there is a circus going on in the locker room.   OBJ, despite a new hefty contract, is on the verge of tears because he cannot get the ball and do the pre planned TD celebration he has been choreographing all off season.   Eli, referred to OBJ as the rapper ‘Lil Wayne” which drew criticism from noted football star…Lil Wayne? What in the name of Bill Parcells and Tom Coughlin is going on here? I have a very simple answer: Hanging on to past glory.

The Giants should have moved off of Eli years ago and perhaps traded him 3 years ago to a team in desperate need for a QB and obtain draft picks. Last year when Eli was benched despite a 1-10 start, the fans and media howled for the coach’s head on a silver platter and got it. I wonder if those same fans and media people are still demanding Eli remain the QB a year later? Here is a dizzying stat: Eli Manning as starting QB for the NY football Giants is now 4-16 in his last 20 games as a starting QB. Let that sink in for a moment and then ask yourself if Ben “the Mullet” McAdoo was the problem? He was considered a genius offensive coordinator and was replaced by another genius OC in Pat Shurmur, yet it appears to be the same result with only one constant; Eli as the starting QB.

Pattern Recognition

We have seen franchises make this mistake before in sports. Kobe Bryant was a shell of himself for the last 4 years of his career, yet the Lakers gave him a monstrous contract that prevented them from either developing young players or attracting free agents. The Lakers even sacrificed Kobe’s final year so he could go on a shot taking tour and see how many shots he could take in a game without getting tennis elbow. The Yankees and Mets have also done this with beloved players who they kept around for many years despite the lack of production. The one team that doesn’t do this is the Patriots. Year after year, the Pats move off a player a year early rather than 2 years too late. Right now the Giants are at least two years too late and have no backup plan. The dilemma is that the Giants have many pieces in place to compete now and many players in their prime. The Giants can go out and draft a QB with one of the first couple picks but a rookie QB takes a few years to develop. There are a few exceptions but by and large year three is when you expect the next step from a rookie QB. By then however many of your core players may be getting waived for cap purposes, or injured or retiring.   The Giants have painted themselves into a bright yellow Laker corner and could be in for three to four years of mediocrity or worse.

-BSB