12/16/13
{Current Mood: Obtuse}
Damn,
I’m as optimistic as the next guy, but yesterday
most certainly confirmed the hypothesis I had spent the last few weeks
formulating: The Tom Coughlin Era of New York Giants football is over.
No, I don’t think Coughlin is a bad coach. Far from
it. No, I don’t think he should be fired. The guy has earned the right to coach
the team until he physically can’t anymore.
But if yesterday’s lopsided affair didn’t convince
Coughlin that this team has gone as far as it’s going to go with him as their
leader, than nothing will.
As much as I love him as a coach and appreciate all
he’s put into the organization to turn it around, it’s time for him to step
back, look at this thing objectively, do the right thing, and realize that his
time with the team has run its course and that he needs to move on for the
betterment of the team and the organization as a whole.
All season, everyone has been asking “what’s wrong
with the Giants?” Sometimes the explanation is simple as looking at the turnarounds from teams like the Eagles, Chiefs, and Colts and stating what nobody
seems to want to admit: the organization needs a new identity.
Firstly, I respect and admire the fact that
Coughlin is an old school coach who has made a career out of playing old school
football. But the NFL is a completely different league now than it was when
Coughlin won the first of the two Super Bowls that people are using as an
excuse for why the team doesn’t need to implement wholesale, fundamental
changes. You have to play a different style of football than the Giants do, on
both offense and defense, if you hope to have any long-term success.
They don’t have to run the read-option, they don’t
have to run a “See-Coast” offense, and they certainly don’t need to continue to try and make the run and
shoot work with the personnel that they have. In fact, I don’t know what kind
of offense they need to run and I’m glad I’m not paid to make that decision.
But they absolutely have to find a scheme that fits the core players on the
roster. The organization needs to stop trying to fit round pegs into square
holes with this “chuck and duck” nonsense.
I won’t knock Coughlin for being loyal to “his guys”
as it relates to the coaching staff. But the days of skating by with Kevin
Gilbride as your offensive coordinator because he has two Super Bowl rings with
the Giants need to die a quick, painless death. The play-calling, while it
works at times, is every bit as unimaginative and uninspiring as it has been for
the last five-plus years. If the organization doesn’t realize that Gilbride
needs to be the first to go at season’s end, then there may be no hope.
All I know is I’m throwing a huge party when
Gilbride becomes an ex-Giant. I’ve been saying for years that they need someone
else calling the plays and making sure Eli Manning doesn’t legit get killed on
the field and I’ll continue to do so until the organization finally admits it
to themselves.
That the Giants won the Super Bowl two seasons ago
is a testament to Eli Manning being able to win in spite of a terrible
protection scheme that had him running for his life at all times and chucking
bombs to a breaking-out Victor Cruz and a Hakeem Nicks that hadn’t yet lost his
explosiveness to injuries.
Speaking of Nicks: If there is any one stat that
makes me want to cry in the shower, it’s this: Per ESPN, 234 NFL players have a
receiving TD so far in 2013. Among them are such luminaries as Jake Ballard,
Travaris Cadet, Jaron Brown, Levine Toilolo, Derek Moye, Alex Smith (the tight
end), Fozzy Whittaker, and 340-pound offensive tackle Donald Penn. Hakeem
Nicks, the 25-year old 29th overall pick in the 2009 NFL Draft, is stuck at
zero.
Nicks has been one of my favorite players in the
NFL since the Giants drafted him, but watching him try to play football this
season has been difficult and, frankly, it’s been sad. I don’t think his
struggles with injury have all been on him though. More on that later.
Speaking of injuries to my favorite NFL players:
Quick, without looking it up, someone tell me how many games Corey Webster has
played in this year.
Give up yet?
The answer is four.
Four games.
Fun Corey Webster fact: His last interception came
on November 25, 2012 at home against Green Bay.
My worst fear as a Giants fan: Hakeem Nicks and
Corey Webster, both in walk years, sign with teams with a medical staff that
are going to work miracles on them and get them back to the form they had
before all the injuries started piling up. Will they get paid more than they
should? Highly likely. But if either or both of them thrive with a new team
that can put them back together, Jerry Reese needs to fire his entire medical
staff.
This is assuming that anyone that’s a part of the current
medical staff even gets let go. The Giants organization has been stubborn to a
fault as it relates to keeping people around who have overstayed their welcome
so I wouldn’t be surprised if no changes are made there.
But if you want to win consistently in the NFL, you
need to constantly be evaluating everyone associated with the organization and
making changes where it’s glaringly obvious that change needs to be made. If
the medical staff couldn’t help Corey Webster get onto the field for more than
four games so far this season, why hasn’t he gone on IR? How many players and
seasons have been lost due to injury during the Coughlin Era? Ahmad Bradshaw
left the Giants and had no foot or ankle injuries this season, maladies that
constantly plagued him during his Giants career, so who knows how good of a
year he could’ve had with the Colts had he not suffered a season-ending neck
injury.
On the defense: The defense has played well in
spurts under Perry Fewell but without linebackers that can run with running backs
or tight ends, they won’t have a playoff-caliber defense that can be relied on
to win games when the offense sputters. The first defensive priority this
offseason, besides making a change at coordinator, needs to be obtaining a
game-changing linebacker. The defensive line is fine and the defensive backs
are talented, if prone to giving up big plays. The right scheme could mask
those woes. Perry has yet to find the scheme that can do so and, as a result,
needs to be replaced with someone who will. But no matter what kind of scheme
you run, you need linebackers that won’t get left in the dust by the Jimmy
Grahams and Julius Thomases of the world. Not to mention the Shady McCoys and
the Demarco Murrays.
Finally, the organization needs to somehow realize
that the product they’re currently trotting out onto the field doesn’t excite
Giants fans anymore. Yesterday, for the first time I can ever remember, my
family and I willingly didn’t use our season tickets for a game. We’ve gone to
games in the past when the Giants were out of playoff contention. But there’s
something about this team that makes you not want to go out of your way to
support them from the stands of Metlife Stadium.
Even when they do something good, all I and others like
me have been able to muster up is a smattering of applause. Because the team
may not be ready to admit this to themselves, but the way they’ve played football
and carried themselves over the majority of this season has spoken volumes. It
has insinuated that they all know deep within their hearts that the
organization needs major internal changes at almost every level. Rarely, if
ever, have I seen a Couglin-coached team play with as little a sense of urgency
as they showed against Seattle yesterday.
They don’t necessarily need to find the next great
college coach that jumps ship to the NFL, although Pete Carrol, Jim Harbaugh,
and Chip Kelly have more than held their own at the NFL level. They don’t necessarily
need to find the next hot assistant that gets a shot at a head coaching gig,
although Mike McCoy has done wonders for Philip Rivers and the Chargers offense
in San Diego a year after coordinating a Peyton Manning-led offense. They need
to find someone who fits what the organization is looking for and what the
organization is looking for needs to change, because whatever it is they think they
need to do right now is clearly not working.
Once again, I’m glad I don’t have to make these
decisions.
I will say this: the search for the next head coach
of the New York Bad At Football Giants, whenever that may be, will be
among the biggest, and most important, coaching hires of the last decade. I can’t
wait to see all the names that pop up as candidates to replace Tom Coughlin.
And I certainly can’t wait for the rumors of Nick
Saban leaving Alabama to coach the Giants to begin because you know they’re
coming as soon as that Giants job opens up.
Not that it would ever happen, nor would I want it
to, but try to imagine for one minute the image of Nick Saban shaking hands
with Jerry Reese, John Mara, and Steve Tisch as the next New York Giants head
coach. It would turn the entire football world upside down.
Actually, that wouldn’t be the worst idea ever. I’m
by no means a Nick Saban fan, but that would be a game-changing move.
A game-changing move is what the Giants desperately
need to make in order to return to prominence.
No comments:
Post a Comment