2019 NFL Power Rankings: Who heads into summer at No. 1?
By Ian Cummings
No. 32 – New York Giants
“You can win and rebuild at the same time.”
Actually, Mr. Gettleman, you can’t.
The Giants vision is befuddled. Once a perennial playoff contender, the Giants have clung to a career far past its prime in Eli Manning’s. They’ve invested in assets that are now aging, ineffective, and over-expensive, and they’ve let go of younger players who could have contributed.
Dave Gettleman doesn’t want to call it like it is; he misjudged his team after their 11-5 season with Ben McAdoo in 2016. He thought their window was opening, when in reality, it was on its way shut. They proceeded to prepare as champions in 2017, and bloated a depreciating roster. In 2018, they dipped one toe into the rebuild after a 3-13 showing, but they did not accept their state, and even now, they’re unwilling to commit to a downturn necessary for sustained success.
The Giants still have talent leftover from the exodus in the offseason of 2019, but those pieces alone cannot act against years of ineptitude from the front office. Saquon Barkley is a transcendent talent, and players like Evan Engram and Sterling Shepard have game-changing potential. But as a whole, the Giants’ roster is largely talent-barren, with good players at best in small pockets, and replacement-level, unproven journeymen in bunches.
Between his statement about team building, his acquisition of Golden Tate, which negated a compensatory pick, and his assertion that Daniel Jones, the team’s first-round rookie quarterback, could sit for as many as three years, Gettleman hasn’t yet adjusted to the faster-paced modern NFL, and time will tell if he ever can. The Giants’ roster, once a contender, so quickly crumbled, and Gettleman is still reeling, asking why it failed, and searching all the wrong places to find an answer.