Giants - Eagles review III - coaching

There is one significant reason why the Giants have weakened in the second half of the season over the last several years - poor coaching. Coaches for the Giants as well as for every team, come into the season with a new or modified strategy and structure for their respective units. As the season wears on and opposing coaches compile film on what the strategy and structure of the team is, what plays they call, when they call them, what the personnel capabilities are, they start to fill out a profile of what each team does. For lack of a better term, the other teams figure you out. You may have had the best offensive or defensive schemes coming into the season, but after about half the season, all the other teams in the league adjust and understand how to stop you. They adjust or tweak their offense/defense to combat yours.

Giants coaches, however, are less able to devise a strategy and figure out what the other teams are doing. But most of all, they are not able to readjust to how opposing teams have adjusted to stop the Giants. It's obvious. And it's sad, really. The coaches aren't complete baboons and are in fact fairly competent coaches. They just don't have the spark of creativity and imagination that it takes to counter opponents adjusting to you.

Jimminy Cricket - if I hear one more time from the coaches that the reason the Giants lost to the Eagles is all about the players and the lack of intensity I am going to scream. It is a complete copout and rationalization from the coaches to blame every loss on execution by the players. It's like what Casey Stengel used to say about his early, awful NY Mets teams: I manage good, but boy do they play bad. The coaches, when they blame everything on exe3cution and nothing on the game plan are saying that their game plan was perfect, was brilliant and would have worked if only the stupid players would have carried out. i maintain that players lack of execution is on the coaches (at least partly) for not preparing the players adequately and not putting them in optimal positions to succeed.

I am starting to see some subtle rumblings that while the players like Fewell personally, respect him and feel that he prepares them fairly well for the next opponent, they think his mid-game adjustments are weak.There was an anonymous, somewhat indirect, interntioanlly-kept-under-the-radar quote from a Giants defensive player that the players felt Fewell didn't adjust against the Eagles which would have given the Giants a chance to get at the QB.There was a quote in the Serby column in the Tuesday NY Post that brought this reference without attribution.

It's hard to imagine, but Gilbride has reached the point where he's not the worst coordinator on the team, Fewell is. He just hasn't coached the players effectively at how to play a zone and this has gone on for 2 years. .