The Giants are surely feeling the pinch of the economic downturn. They may have miscalculated and overestimated the demand for high priced tickets and expensive PSL charges and did not anticipate the affects of a recession. Of course, you can not blame them for that oversight. The best and the brightest in the financial community did not see this coming and were unprepared for this meltdown which pulled the rug out from under the economy and subtracted so much wealth that had been in people's hands. In fact, not only did the financial geniuses not see it coming - they actually caused it! The Giants job is to draft and pay players and coaches, not analyze the over-leveraging and flawed risk mitigation models of the financial community or understand the fallacy in credit default swaps. So I am not blaming them; nevertheless, there are some affects. Let me elaborate.
I received a letter from the Giants this past Monday which made a somewhat surprising announcement about ticket prices for the new stadium. Instead of summarizing, I will quote directly from the letter:
"... we have decided to reduce the ticket price of the outer two sections in all four Mezzanine Club B corner areas from $400 to $250 per game. The PSL price for these seats will remain $7,500 and ticket holders in those seats will have access to the club areas. A total of 1,570 seats which is roughly 40 percent of the remaining available seats in the new building (but only 1.9% of the total seating capacity) are impacted by this decision and will form the new Mezzanine Club C."
Interesting stuff - the bad news from the Giants perspective is that they have not sold all of the seats. It is rather unexpected and surely in a healthy economy they might be gone by now. I recall when I wanted to buy tickets to the home playoff game in 2005 against Carolina. The Giants put several thousand tickets on sale, open to the general public to buy through Ticketron on a first come first served basis. I was at Ticketron 1 hour before the opening sale time to make sure I was at the front of the line. I bought my tickets 6 minutes after the sale started and the person standing behind me was locked out because the tickets were already sold out. (I wish I had come later and been sold out - Giants lost 23-0.) So it took exactly 6 minutes to sell several thousand playoff tickets whose face value was doubled, because this was a playoff game. You could certainly guess that the chance to buy seasons tickets where you have a permanent seat, would be more urgent among the fans and people would jump at the chance. But, aside from the economy and the PSL, I think the major obstacle to selling these seats was the face value, up at $400, more than was the PSL. A relatively comfortable, upper middle class, white collar worker, can probably rationalize forking over $15K for the PSL on two tickets. Especially if he considers that this $15K is spread out over 20 or 30 years of the expected life of the stadium. But at $400 face value, 2 seats for 10 games, is $8K per year. That is a big investment and a big percentage of your budgeted sports entertainment dollar. $250 is still somewhat expensive, because it comes in at $5K for 2 seats for the season. But it is less than half the total of your PSL charge, which is a psychological barrier than people don't want to cross.
Also important with this reduction to $250 is the creation of a secondary market for tickets. People who pay for seasons tickets don't plan to go to all 10 games that they pay for; not even all 8 regular season games. They pay for the tickets up front, but want to be secure in the knowledge that if they have to get rid of the tickets because they have a business trip or personal obligation, they can easily unload them. With really expensive seats, it is not a slam dunk that they will be able to be sold. Getting rid of tickets on the secondary market requires a relatively large pool of people ready to step up and buy. And that large pool comes when buying tickets to a single game is an easy, snap decision to make - you could almost call it an impulse buy. When tickets are 100 or so and you want to sell them for 150, there are lots of people who will drop 300 on a pair of tickets. That's not much more than what you would spend on dinner at a nice restaurant with your significant other and doesn't require a major budget evaluation. When tickets are $400, a small markup means that the pair of tickets will go for at least $1K, probably closer to $1,250-$1,500 which is a number that people will have to stop and at least think about before they peel 12 or 15 crisp $100 bills out of their wallet. This is something that is going to sit with the Giants as long as the stadium is standing, but at least the Giants have a relatively small number of tickets in this pricey range.
Next post - back to football. I promise.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Giants: The strategy of building a roster
This is the slowest part of the year for the NFL. The off-season conditioning program and the OTAs (organized team activities) are ended. Players and coaches are away on vacation. The draft is over. The free agent signing period is past, at least for the first wave of highly desirable FA's (our old friend Amani Toomer is still on the market, eg). Trades, which are so common in baseball and fan the flames of the winter hot stove league, are relatively rare in football and the air-conditioned league of July is cold rather than hot with trade discussions. Training camp hasn't started yet and so all we have to read and think about is the off-the-field stuff, usually filled with stories and incidents we don't want to read about.
I thought I would write a post about something I have thought about for a while now and discussed often with some of my football buddies, especially my friend Ray. The strategy of building an NFL roster is not just about filling out the lineup card. It's also about matching the parts and styles of play of the different parts of the roster so that they form a cohesive unit. In baseball, if you find a 3rd baseman who hits more HRs and has a higher OBP than the 3rd baseman currently on your team, then if you replace your current player with the better player, you will have a better offensive team and score more runs. Perhaps I am simplifying a little bit, because there is something about chemistry, hitting with RISP and some other stats that may be important. My point is that styles of play are relatively unimportant in baseball. Just ask Michael Lewis and refer to Money Ball - OBP and slugging percentage drive offenses in baseball.
In football, I think it is a bit different. For example, you don't just need a good OL; you may do better by having an OL that matches the style of your RB. I'll talk about that in more detail a little later in this post, but first consider the following example. If you have a qb that has a strong arm but is not particularly nimble, you would not want him to run a west coast style offense, which requires quickness, accuracy and quick decision making. Vinny Testaverde and Joe Montana are not going to prosper in the same types of offensive schemes. Jason Campbell, for another example, is not a good match for the west coast offense that Jim Zorn decided to run in Washington and I think their offense will decline somewhat this year. I also think coaches (like Zorn) that decide to run a particular style of offense or defense without actually evaluating the roster and seeing what style of play matches the personnel on the team are... well.. stupid. It was a breath of fresh air when Spagnuolo came in two years ago and evaluated the roster before he decided what type of defense to run. Everyone just assumed that he would run the exact same defense that DC Joe Johnson ran in Philadelphia. A month or two into his job, he was asked by reporters whether he had completed installing the new defense yet. DC Spags replied that he's not quite finished, because he's still evaluating the skills of the players and looking at what parts of the defense worked last year. The reporters laughed derisively and, not knowing Spagnuolo, took it as a sign of weakness, of a DC who was being indecisive, who was in over his head in a job that was too big for him. By implication, he would fail miserably. I, on the other hand, was applauding vigorously - imagine: a coach that actually tries to coach his team and his players, fitting a system to the skills of the players and the talent on the roster rather than forcing a system onto the team. We all saw the results.
I think it goes further than coaching the players you have and it extends to building a roster so that all the parts match. There can be subtleties in things like the style of play of the OL matching with the skills and running style of the RB and, of course, the types of running plays that the offense uses. Since this is a Giants blog, I thought I would use the Giants as an example. In the few years leading up to and ending with 2006, Tiki Barber was the Giants RB, Jim Finn was the FB, Pettigout was the LT and David Diehl was playing G. Barber was a finesse type runner, not a power back. Therefore, having Pettigout at LT and Finn as FB was not a catastrophe and was a match to his style. Pettigout was an average pass blocker and as run blocker, he was not the road-grader type. Finn was the same way at FB; he was not a huge powerful guy but was fairly nimble and had a high football IQ. The running play the Giants liked to run was to have Pettigout, Finn and a pulling G slide out to the left side of the OL and not really try to knock any defenders back, but just float out and engage the defenders. It was like a swarm of bodies bumping, touching and engaging each other on a dance floor at a disco or a club. Tiki would get out behind this swarm and would wait for an opening. When one of the defenders tried to break through the swarm of Giants in front of Tiki, the blocker would simply take the defender where he wanted to go, it would open up a crease for Tiki and he would scoot through the opening. He was quick and was great at setting up his blockers this way. It was a good match between OL, RB and types of running plays used in the offense. As a result, Tiki put up great rushing numbers under Coughlin from 2004-2006.
The scene changed in 2007 when Tiki retired and Brandon Jacobs was installed as the number 1 tailback. Instead of a finesse runner, Jacobs is all brute force. He has good speed, he can get to the edges and he can cut back and make guys miss, but he is not going to set up blockers and cut off them the way that Tiki did. Jacobs making people miss is more predicated on his size and the need for a tackler to dig in real hard when Jacobs is approaching, gather himself, plant himself and prepare for the hit. When the potential tackler is tensed up like that waiting for the collision, Jacobs only needs a little juke to get by him. Jacobs needs a big front that can get a good push on the defense and when they are moving backwards a little bit, he can finish the job and run over them. As a result, Reese got rid of Pettigout and put Diehl out at LT. Diehl is not the best LT in the NFL, but he is a very good run blocker. He is big and athletic and he really runs downhill when he gets out in front of Jacobs. Similarly Snee and Seubert, the two Gs are very athletic and run downhill when they pull to lead a running play. One of the other very first things Reese did when he took over as GM was try to replace Jim Finn, the smallish, nimble player at FB. He signed restricted free agent Vonta Leach of the Houston Texans to an offer sheet in March 2007. It turned out that the Texans matched the offer of the bruising FB, but Reese showed his intentions and his desire to upgrade and get a power FB to match his power RB. Finn got injured, was put on IR and did not play for the Giants in 2007. Instead, the Giants went into the 2007 season with some anonymous players at the FB position, but you all know how it turned out: after the first game of the season, Madison Hedgecock was inexplicably cut by the Rams and the Giants snatched him up 2 days later. When the Giants saw how good he was, they signed him to a 5 year extension after only a few games and his bruising blocking style was a big part of the Giants character, success and the Superbowl in 2007, as well as their two 1,000 yard rushers in 2008.
I don't want to flog a dead horse, but I think we saw something similar in the 1986 and 1990 championships for the Giants. The1986 OL, the "Suburbanites" were smallish, smart and relatively quick. They had Brad Benson, Bill Ard, Bart Oates, Chris Godfrey and Karl Nelson. This quick, mobile group was blocking for the darting, diminutive runner, Joe Morris. Perfect match. In 1990, the Giants had the elephant OL: Jumbo Elliott, William Roberts, Doug Riesenberg, Eric Moore, with Bart Oates back manning the C position. They switched from a finesse OL to a power OL. To beef it up further, they added Howard Cross as TE along with Bavaro, two bruising blockers. The RB they were blocking for was the once-speedy OJ Anderson who had become a power RB by that point in his career. I considered it a remarkable change over and a real credit to the Giants GM George Young and coach Parcells to switch 4 OL-men in the space of 4 years and win a championship with both units. The change of style of play and the match between RB and OL seems clear in these examples from Giants history.
You don't build a roster for an actual NFL team like you do when you're GM in a fantasy football league. It takes some mixing, matching and planning.
I thought I would write a post about something I have thought about for a while now and discussed often with some of my football buddies, especially my friend Ray. The strategy of building an NFL roster is not just about filling out the lineup card. It's also about matching the parts and styles of play of the different parts of the roster so that they form a cohesive unit. In baseball, if you find a 3rd baseman who hits more HRs and has a higher OBP than the 3rd baseman currently on your team, then if you replace your current player with the better player, you will have a better offensive team and score more runs. Perhaps I am simplifying a little bit, because there is something about chemistry, hitting with RISP and some other stats that may be important. My point is that styles of play are relatively unimportant in baseball. Just ask Michael Lewis and refer to Money Ball - OBP and slugging percentage drive offenses in baseball.
In football, I think it is a bit different. For example, you don't just need a good OL; you may do better by having an OL that matches the style of your RB. I'll talk about that in more detail a little later in this post, but first consider the following example. If you have a qb that has a strong arm but is not particularly nimble, you would not want him to run a west coast style offense, which requires quickness, accuracy and quick decision making. Vinny Testaverde and Joe Montana are not going to prosper in the same types of offensive schemes. Jason Campbell, for another example, is not a good match for the west coast offense that Jim Zorn decided to run in Washington and I think their offense will decline somewhat this year. I also think coaches (like Zorn) that decide to run a particular style of offense or defense without actually evaluating the roster and seeing what style of play matches the personnel on the team are... well.. stupid. It was a breath of fresh air when Spagnuolo came in two years ago and evaluated the roster before he decided what type of defense to run. Everyone just assumed that he would run the exact same defense that DC Joe Johnson ran in Philadelphia. A month or two into his job, he was asked by reporters whether he had completed installing the new defense yet. DC Spags replied that he's not quite finished, because he's still evaluating the skills of the players and looking at what parts of the defense worked last year. The reporters laughed derisively and, not knowing Spagnuolo, took it as a sign of weakness, of a DC who was being indecisive, who was in over his head in a job that was too big for him. By implication, he would fail miserably. I, on the other hand, was applauding vigorously - imagine: a coach that actually tries to coach his team and his players, fitting a system to the skills of the players and the talent on the roster rather than forcing a system onto the team. We all saw the results.
I think it goes further than coaching the players you have and it extends to building a roster so that all the parts match. There can be subtleties in things like the style of play of the OL matching with the skills and running style of the RB and, of course, the types of running plays that the offense uses. Since this is a Giants blog, I thought I would use the Giants as an example. In the few years leading up to and ending with 2006, Tiki Barber was the Giants RB, Jim Finn was the FB, Pettigout was the LT and David Diehl was playing G. Barber was a finesse type runner, not a power back. Therefore, having Pettigout at LT and Finn as FB was not a catastrophe and was a match to his style. Pettigout was an average pass blocker and as run blocker, he was not the road-grader type. Finn was the same way at FB; he was not a huge powerful guy but was fairly nimble and had a high football IQ. The running play the Giants liked to run was to have Pettigout, Finn and a pulling G slide out to the left side of the OL and not really try to knock any defenders back, but just float out and engage the defenders. It was like a swarm of bodies bumping, touching and engaging each other on a dance floor at a disco or a club. Tiki would get out behind this swarm and would wait for an opening. When one of the defenders tried to break through the swarm of Giants in front of Tiki, the blocker would simply take the defender where he wanted to go, it would open up a crease for Tiki and he would scoot through the opening. He was quick and was great at setting up his blockers this way. It was a good match between OL, RB and types of running plays used in the offense. As a result, Tiki put up great rushing numbers under Coughlin from 2004-2006.
The scene changed in 2007 when Tiki retired and Brandon Jacobs was installed as the number 1 tailback. Instead of a finesse runner, Jacobs is all brute force. He has good speed, he can get to the edges and he can cut back and make guys miss, but he is not going to set up blockers and cut off them the way that Tiki did. Jacobs making people miss is more predicated on his size and the need for a tackler to dig in real hard when Jacobs is approaching, gather himself, plant himself and prepare for the hit. When the potential tackler is tensed up like that waiting for the collision, Jacobs only needs a little juke to get by him. Jacobs needs a big front that can get a good push on the defense and when they are moving backwards a little bit, he can finish the job and run over them. As a result, Reese got rid of Pettigout and put Diehl out at LT. Diehl is not the best LT in the NFL, but he is a very good run blocker. He is big and athletic and he really runs downhill when he gets out in front of Jacobs. Similarly Snee and Seubert, the two Gs are very athletic and run downhill when they pull to lead a running play. One of the other very first things Reese did when he took over as GM was try to replace Jim Finn, the smallish, nimble player at FB. He signed restricted free agent Vonta Leach of the Houston Texans to an offer sheet in March 2007. It turned out that the Texans matched the offer of the bruising FB, but Reese showed his intentions and his desire to upgrade and get a power FB to match his power RB. Finn got injured, was put on IR and did not play for the Giants in 2007. Instead, the Giants went into the 2007 season with some anonymous players at the FB position, but you all know how it turned out: after the first game of the season, Madison Hedgecock was inexplicably cut by the Rams and the Giants snatched him up 2 days later. When the Giants saw how good he was, they signed him to a 5 year extension after only a few games and his bruising blocking style was a big part of the Giants character, success and the Superbowl in 2007, as well as their two 1,000 yard rushers in 2008.
I don't want to flog a dead horse, but I think we saw something similar in the 1986 and 1990 championships for the Giants. The1986 OL, the "Suburbanites" were smallish, smart and relatively quick. They had Brad Benson, Bill Ard, Bart Oates, Chris Godfrey and Karl Nelson. This quick, mobile group was blocking for the darting, diminutive runner, Joe Morris. Perfect match. In 1990, the Giants had the elephant OL: Jumbo Elliott, William Roberts, Doug Riesenberg, Eric Moore, with Bart Oates back manning the C position. They switched from a finesse OL to a power OL. To beef it up further, they added Howard Cross as TE along with Bavaro, two bruising blockers. The RB they were blocking for was the once-speedy OJ Anderson who had become a power RB by that point in his career. I considered it a remarkable change over and a real credit to the Giants GM George Young and coach Parcells to switch 4 OL-men in the space of 4 years and win a championship with both units. The change of style of play and the match between RB and OL seems clear in these examples from Giants history.
You don't build a roster for an actual NFL team like you do when you're GM in a fantasy football league. It takes some mixing, matching and planning.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Giants: the roster - young and talented
It is a little premature to start talking about the makeup and character of the Giants team, since we simply don't know who is actually going to make the final roster at this point. Every NFL team has 80 or so players that they sign at this time of year. The first cut down date is September 1 where the teams have to get down to 75 players and they must reduce it further to 53 by September 5 going into the regular season. However, we can certainly speculate on one important fact. Last year the Giants, while having the best record in the NFC and the second best record in the entire NFL also had the 5th youngest team in football. In fact, this average player age was artificially raised by having the two oldest players in the league on the team in the specialty units in P Jeff Feagles and PK John Carney. Of course Carney is off the team this year and while it is too early to figure out how old the Giants will be this year, it is certainly likely that they will have gotten much younger because of the departure of other veterans including Sam Madison, Amani Toomer, RW McQuarters, Grey Ruegamer and Plaxico Burress. Right now, excluding Feagles, the Giants have only 9 players on their roster that have more than 6 years in the league. That means that probably a bit more than 80% of the roster will have 5 years or less in the league. I will assert that because of the quality of the roster, the Giants are ready for a championship run this year; but furthermore, because of their youth, they are primed to be in a contending position for the next 5 years or so. The oldest unit on the team is the OL with several players with longer experience: O'Hara (10th yr), MacKenzie (9), Seubert (9) and Diehl (7) in addition to veteran Tutan Reyes (10) signed this off-season as possible veteran backup. There is no guarantee that Reyes will make the team. It depends greatly on how good Beatty, Whimper and Koets look in camp. Nevertheless, the players in the OL are still in their prime, with the only signs of possible decline showing in MacKenzie's back problems. Furthermore, the Giants have on their team two young possible replacements that could provide an upgrade in the next year or two in Guy Whimper and William Beatty. Jerry Reese has done a masterful job at revitalizing, building up and rejuvenating the roster in the last several years making it much more talented AND much younger.
This has not been an accident by Reese, it was a conscious effort to get younger, more athletic and, of course more talented. Even though Reese was running the draft for Accorsi when Ernie was still GM, Ernie was still setting the strategy and the course for the team. Ernie was nearing the end of his career, and he knew it, in the 2003-2005 period. While he drafted Eli in 2004, which surely was a risk, he wanted to go out a champion and he rolled the dice on bringing in some veterans as FAs, who were proven players elsewhere, in an attempt to go out in a blaze of glory. You may recall that he brought in players like Lavar Arrington and Carlos Emmons at LB. He brought in Will Demp at S and he brought in Bob Whittfield as a veteran back up to the OL. He also re-signed Luke Pettigout and gave him a fairly stout contract to keep the veteran players that he had on the roster at the time. This strategy really backfired on the Giants. Emmons was coming off a broken leg, had injury problems with the Giants and never regained his form with the Giants. Lavar Arrington did not fit in smoothly and also had a serious injury when he tore his achilles tendon. Will Demp also did not regain his speed and spent time on the injured list. Pettigout was never very good, had back injury problems and apparently had a brain malfunction that affected his hearing, his timing and his memory. He could never remember the snap count, could not hear the qb's calls and could not time when to stand up and start the play, because he led the league in false start penalties all the time. The worst part of the aged roster arose with Whittfield, however. He was the substitute OL-man and when Pettigout went down with an injury and he had to come in to replace him, he was absolutely awful. He did not know the playbook, was not in good physical shape and certainly not in game shape. He had assumed that because he was a substitute he was never going to play and so he simply did not prepare himself for that possibility. It's lucky Eli did not get killed when Whittfield started playing.
Reese saw all these things, especially the Whittfield debacle and decided that he was going to make a commitment to a younger, faster, more athletic roster, even as some substitutes, who would work hard to be prepared to play when they got their opportunity and, most importantly, were less likely to be injuried. Reese cut all of those veterans, then he drafted very well, signed FA's selectively rather than as a policy to improve the team and has done an outstanding job. When you draft very well and sign only some FA's selectively, you set yourself up to be contenders for a long time. As you may recall from previous posts on this blog, I particualry liked the 2005 draft when the Giants had only 4 picks because of the Eli trade the year before and managed to get Justin Tuck, Brandon Jacobs and Corey Webster, three players that are an important part of the backbone of the team and have a good chance of being pro bowl players this year. In addition, the Giants additions of young veterans cut by other teams has been brilliant. Domenik Hixon, Derrick Ward, Danny Ware and Madison Hedgecock are examples of players that the Giants have signed cheap because they were cut by other teams and have made a real impact on the Giants. Danny Ware and Derrick Ward were both signed off the practice squad of other NFL teams (in both cases, the Jets). We will see how the FA additions this year of Canty, Bernard and Boley work out, but I have high hopes.
When you look back at the periods of time when the Giants were good and contending, you need only need to look at the drafts leading up to those periods as a forecast of the quality of the team. In the 1984-1990 period when the Giants won their first two Superbowls, the Giants drafts leading up to that sustained period of success included: LT, Simms, Banks, Bavaro, Morris and all the real good OL-men in Jumbo Elliot, William Roberts, etc. Conversely in the awful period starting with the late 1990's, the Giants drafted players like Dave Brown and Derrick Brown. The 2000 Superbowl run was a fluke and I don't consider one year as a counterexample to contradict my assertion about drafting being the main component to set up the team for a good run over several years. The drafts of the past 3 or 4 years have been so good that this portends a period of solid performance and sustained success for the Giants.
This has not been an accident by Reese, it was a conscious effort to get younger, more athletic and, of course more talented. Even though Reese was running the draft for Accorsi when Ernie was still GM, Ernie was still setting the strategy and the course for the team. Ernie was nearing the end of his career, and he knew it, in the 2003-2005 period. While he drafted Eli in 2004, which surely was a risk, he wanted to go out a champion and he rolled the dice on bringing in some veterans as FAs, who were proven players elsewhere, in an attempt to go out in a blaze of glory. You may recall that he brought in players like Lavar Arrington and Carlos Emmons at LB. He brought in Will Demp at S and he brought in Bob Whittfield as a veteran back up to the OL. He also re-signed Luke Pettigout and gave him a fairly stout contract to keep the veteran players that he had on the roster at the time. This strategy really backfired on the Giants. Emmons was coming off a broken leg, had injury problems with the Giants and never regained his form with the Giants. Lavar Arrington did not fit in smoothly and also had a serious injury when he tore his achilles tendon. Will Demp also did not regain his speed and spent time on the injured list. Pettigout was never very good, had back injury problems and apparently had a brain malfunction that affected his hearing, his timing and his memory. He could never remember the snap count, could not hear the qb's calls and could not time when to stand up and start the play, because he led the league in false start penalties all the time. The worst part of the aged roster arose with Whittfield, however. He was the substitute OL-man and when Pettigout went down with an injury and he had to come in to replace him, he was absolutely awful. He did not know the playbook, was not in good physical shape and certainly not in game shape. He had assumed that because he was a substitute he was never going to play and so he simply did not prepare himself for that possibility. It's lucky Eli did not get killed when Whittfield started playing.
Reese saw all these things, especially the Whittfield debacle and decided that he was going to make a commitment to a younger, faster, more athletic roster, even as some substitutes, who would work hard to be prepared to play when they got their opportunity and, most importantly, were less likely to be injuried. Reese cut all of those veterans, then he drafted very well, signed FA's selectively rather than as a policy to improve the team and has done an outstanding job. When you draft very well and sign only some FA's selectively, you set yourself up to be contenders for a long time. As you may recall from previous posts on this blog, I particualry liked the 2005 draft when the Giants had only 4 picks because of the Eli trade the year before and managed to get Justin Tuck, Brandon Jacobs and Corey Webster, three players that are an important part of the backbone of the team and have a good chance of being pro bowl players this year. In addition, the Giants additions of young veterans cut by other teams has been brilliant. Domenik Hixon, Derrick Ward, Danny Ware and Madison Hedgecock are examples of players that the Giants have signed cheap because they were cut by other teams and have made a real impact on the Giants. Danny Ware and Derrick Ward were both signed off the practice squad of other NFL teams (in both cases, the Jets). We will see how the FA additions this year of Canty, Bernard and Boley work out, but I have high hopes.
When you look back at the periods of time when the Giants were good and contending, you need only need to look at the drafts leading up to those periods as a forecast of the quality of the team. In the 1984-1990 period when the Giants won their first two Superbowls, the Giants drafts leading up to that sustained period of success included: LT, Simms, Banks, Bavaro, Morris and all the real good OL-men in Jumbo Elliot, William Roberts, etc. Conversely in the awful period starting with the late 1990's, the Giants drafted players like Dave Brown and Derrick Brown. The 2000 Superbowl run was a fluke and I don't consider one year as a counterexample to contradict my assertion about drafting being the main component to set up the team for a good run over several years. The drafts of the past 3 or 4 years have been so good that this portends a period of solid performance and sustained success for the Giants.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Giants: A look at the 2009 schedule
Ray, a dear friend of mine, also a crazy Giants fan and a former boss of mine when we worked together many years ago, always has some keen insights into football in general and the Giants in particular. We worked at the same company about 25 years ago, each went our separate ways professionally, but have kept in touch and remained friends ever since. We occasionally have long email exchanges about the Giants and push each other into analyzing and understanding the game better than either of us did before. He sent me an email a while ago, right after the NFL published the schedule for 2009, in which he had some really good insights into the Giants 2009 schedule. I have copy and pasted the email below (with only trivial changes and an editorial comment) because he makes some really good points. Here it is:
Can't resist a few comments on the schedule...
First, Giants surely lead the league in away games played on (or near) the banks of the Mississippi with three (Minnesota, Kansas City, New Orleans). Though to be completely honest, to count KC as on the Mississippi is a bit of a stretch. But that does lead to a point - there is only one game which requires travel west of that point - the Thanksgiving day game in Denver. So, for the second year in a row (or, if memory serves me, maybe even the third, though Giants did go to London that year), there is no west coast trip. And that will probably not be true for our NFC East rivals, because the Giants were fortunate enough to get both San Diego and Oakland at home. So it could be a small advantage. (Editor's note: all the east coast NFC teams have at least one west coast trip. Tampa Bay goes to Seattle, Atlanta goes to San Francisco and Carolina goes to Arizona. Within the NFC East it works out even better, because both the Redskins and the Eagles have two west coast trips: to Oakland and San Diego. Cowboys get Oakland and San Diego at home, but Dallas is of course situated centrally in the country and a west coast trip is not a burden for them. This aspect of the schedule is probably optimal for the Giants.)
Also, the bye week comes well into the season for the Giants - I always thought that was more helpful than having it early.
I also really like the Giants November/early December schedule. Giants have the bye in week 10 before playing two games in 5 days (Atlanta at home and at Denver on Thanksgiving). Then after playing Thanksgiving night at Denver, they have another nice break before playing two straight home division games (Cowboys and Eagles).
But I am also really tired of late season games against Minnesota. In fact, I'm tired of playing them at all. Seems like Giants do so every year.
---Thanks for the insights Ray.
Can't resist a few comments on the schedule...
First, Giants surely lead the league in away games played on (or near) the banks of the Mississippi with three (Minnesota, Kansas City, New Orleans). Though to be completely honest, to count KC as on the Mississippi is a bit of a stretch. But that does lead to a point - there is only one game which requires travel west of that point - the Thanksgiving day game in Denver. So, for the second year in a row (or, if memory serves me, maybe even the third, though Giants did go to London that year), there is no west coast trip. And that will probably not be true for our NFC East rivals, because the Giants were fortunate enough to get both San Diego and Oakland at home. So it could be a small advantage. (Editor's note: all the east coast NFC teams have at least one west coast trip. Tampa Bay goes to Seattle, Atlanta goes to San Francisco and Carolina goes to Arizona. Within the NFC East it works out even better, because both the Redskins and the Eagles have two west coast trips: to Oakland and San Diego. Cowboys get Oakland and San Diego at home, but Dallas is of course situated centrally in the country and a west coast trip is not a burden for them. This aspect of the schedule is probably optimal for the Giants.)
Also, the bye week comes well into the season for the Giants - I always thought that was more helpful than having it early.
I also really like the Giants November/early December schedule. Giants have the bye in week 10 before playing two games in 5 days (Atlanta at home and at Denver on Thanksgiving). Then after playing Thanksgiving night at Denver, they have another nice break before playing two straight home division games (Cowboys and Eagles).
But I am also really tired of late season games against Minnesota. In fact, I'm tired of playing them at all. Seems like Giants do so every year.
---Thanks for the insights Ray.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Giants: First Fan Forum and PSL
The Giants sent out an email last week, on Friday June 19th to all people who hold a PSL for the new stadium scheduled to open in 2010. It invited all PSL holders to the first ever Giants Fan Forum. It was a conference call for all these 2010 seasons ticket holders where Eli Manning and Jerry Reese would participate. The email said that the Giants would dial out and call all the PSL holders who would then be on the call. If you did not receive the call, the email gave a toll free conference number to call and PIN to enter in order to participate in the call. As a PSL holder for the new stadium in 2010 I received this email and was very pleased and looking forward to the call. I thought it was a very nice touch and thought that the Giants were showing a fan-friendly side to their organization. I dialed in and participated in the call and I have to admit that it was really pretty good. Eli Manning spoke for about 30 minutes followed by Jerry Reese for another 30 minutes. Bob Papa was the moderator interviewing them. The Giants even allowed fans to ask questions to the interviewees, after pressing a key on the telephone keypad and being properly screened, of course. The sessions were pretty good and I will later in this post give you some detail on the interesting things that were said and the little bits of information that I gleaned from these sessions.
The interesting thing, however, is that while these sessions were somewhat worthwhile, their purpose became fairly obvious a few hours after the call ended. Specifically, on Monday afternoon, in the mail, I received the bill for the second installation of the PSL fee, due on the 1st of August. While it was fun to hear Eli and Reese, the "Fan Forum" was a fairly transparent attempt by the Giants organization to mollify the fans and assuage their anger over the PSL charges. PSL holders are now not just fans and season ticket holders. Rather, they are members of an exclusive club, part of the Giants family and are privy now to information that only they can get by being members of this exclusive group. No doubt, the Giants wanted to moderate the bad feelings that may still exist among the people who have to ante up the cash.
Enough cynicism and sarcasm; on to the meat of the sessions themselves. Because I was on the call I can let you know the interesting things that I heard. Of course one common thread that was pronounced by both Manning and Reese was about how the Giants season ended very disappointingly last year. They played very well, had a rewarding regular season and were poised to go far in the playoffs. They were gratified that the regular season was so successful and that they managed to avoid a post Superbowl let down in 2008. But, they are hungrier now than ever because of the bitter way the 2008 season ended.
The interesting things that you won't see in the papers were, among other things, Eli talking about the Giants passing game:
The WRs are much different this year than the last few years. Last year with Burress and Toomer they relied on their size and ran a lot of hook routes and out patterns mixed in with the occasional deep ball. This year's WRs are much quicker, more explosive and more dynamic than last year's. As a result, we will probably see many more slant patterns and crossing routes this year, where Eli hits the WRs on the move and they get a chance to run after the catch. Eli expects a big improvement in YAC (yards after catch) this year. Manningham and Moss are much faster than Toomer and Burress and we can expect more straight go routes to spread the field. He spoke about Sinorice Moss and how fast he is; that he was always fast, but that now he is learning the medium routes and is much better at his sight adjustments and reads. (Editor's note: of course, that will have to show itself in the regular season against real defenses, but at least Eli was positive about Moss.) More interesting, however was the enormous praise Eli had for Mario Manningham. We've all been reading in the papers about what a great spring Moss has had, but we have only read a little bit about Manningham. Eli said he has a great mixture of size, speed, hands and football IQ. Most important, though was how well he comes out of his cuts. Eli said he is running at full speed the moment he plants and cuts and he has great hands, never dropping a thing. He comes out of his breaks so quickly that Eli has to get used to getting rid of the ball earlier than he did when he was throwing to Burress and Toomer on these routes. Eli did not say it, but I am sure Manningham is one of the reasons that the Giants are going to be running the slants and crossing routes this year. If you catch the ball on the move and have better separation, YAC will follow. He also said that he needs to let the ball go earlier on go routes, or throw it about 5 yards deeper because of the added speed that both WR's have, particularly Moss.
Eli also said that Hixon and Steve Smith are improving and doing very well. Smith should have more opportunities this year and Eli is very comfortable throwing to him.
Jerry Reese also toed the company line about the bitter end to last season. He spoke about how excited he is about the young, talented, fast WRs. He said that this was one of the reasons he did not trade for Boldin or Braylon Edwards (he did not mention them by name, since that would be tampering by NFL rules). He simply said that it is always better to develop talent through the draft and he is very happy with the WR crew he has. When asked specifically about Nicks and Barden he was particularly effusive about the upside that Barden has. He said that with his size, everyone assumes that he has only average speed, but he was constantly getting behind the DBs in the spring practices. Reese continues to scout other NFL rosters and therefore is always ready to improve the middle or back end of the roster with players like Hixon and Hedgecock who were cut by other teams. When asked about his best draft nugget - the player he picked that was a surprise choice and did better than anyone expected, he didn't hesitate for a moment: Osi Ueminyora. He came from a small college, Troy State, that did not play the most challenging of schedules. He came in a little undersized in the eyes of many and he has become one of the top 5 DEs in the NFL. He also said that Osi looks to be completely recovered from his knee surgery and looks like he is in top physical shape. He has never seen a DE as fast as Osi.
Good stuff.
Boley hip surgery
It was announced yesterday that Michael Boley, signed for 5 years and $25M by the Giants from Atlanta this off season, will undergo surgery for a torn labrum. He will be out 8-10 weeks, which, if I calculate right, means that he will miss the entire training camp. That's not good. I was counting on Boley to shore up the Giants defensive weakness in pass coverage by the LBs. We can hope that he will be back and healthy by game 5 or so in the regular season. The Giants have talent at that position in Wilkinson, Kehl and Blackburn, but none of them has shown that they can become upper echelon players. I have high regard for Wilkinson, but he keeps getting injured. Maybe this is the year he stays on the field.
The interesting thing, however, is that while these sessions were somewhat worthwhile, their purpose became fairly obvious a few hours after the call ended. Specifically, on Monday afternoon, in the mail, I received the bill for the second installation of the PSL fee, due on the 1st of August. While it was fun to hear Eli and Reese, the "Fan Forum" was a fairly transparent attempt by the Giants organization to mollify the fans and assuage their anger over the PSL charges. PSL holders are now not just fans and season ticket holders. Rather, they are members of an exclusive club, part of the Giants family and are privy now to information that only they can get by being members of this exclusive group. No doubt, the Giants wanted to moderate the bad feelings that may still exist among the people who have to ante up the cash.
Enough cynicism and sarcasm; on to the meat of the sessions themselves. Because I was on the call I can let you know the interesting things that I heard. Of course one common thread that was pronounced by both Manning and Reese was about how the Giants season ended very disappointingly last year. They played very well, had a rewarding regular season and were poised to go far in the playoffs. They were gratified that the regular season was so successful and that they managed to avoid a post Superbowl let down in 2008. But, they are hungrier now than ever because of the bitter way the 2008 season ended.
The interesting things that you won't see in the papers were, among other things, Eli talking about the Giants passing game:
The WRs are much different this year than the last few years. Last year with Burress and Toomer they relied on their size and ran a lot of hook routes and out patterns mixed in with the occasional deep ball. This year's WRs are much quicker, more explosive and more dynamic than last year's. As a result, we will probably see many more slant patterns and crossing routes this year, where Eli hits the WRs on the move and they get a chance to run after the catch. Eli expects a big improvement in YAC (yards after catch) this year. Manningham and Moss are much faster than Toomer and Burress and we can expect more straight go routes to spread the field. He spoke about Sinorice Moss and how fast he is; that he was always fast, but that now he is learning the medium routes and is much better at his sight adjustments and reads. (Editor's note: of course, that will have to show itself in the regular season against real defenses, but at least Eli was positive about Moss.) More interesting, however was the enormous praise Eli had for Mario Manningham. We've all been reading in the papers about what a great spring Moss has had, but we have only read a little bit about Manningham. Eli said he has a great mixture of size, speed, hands and football IQ. Most important, though was how well he comes out of his cuts. Eli said he is running at full speed the moment he plants and cuts and he has great hands, never dropping a thing. He comes out of his breaks so quickly that Eli has to get used to getting rid of the ball earlier than he did when he was throwing to Burress and Toomer on these routes. Eli did not say it, but I am sure Manningham is one of the reasons that the Giants are going to be running the slants and crossing routes this year. If you catch the ball on the move and have better separation, YAC will follow. He also said that he needs to let the ball go earlier on go routes, or throw it about 5 yards deeper because of the added speed that both WR's have, particularly Moss.
Eli also said that Hixon and Steve Smith are improving and doing very well. Smith should have more opportunities this year and Eli is very comfortable throwing to him.
Jerry Reese also toed the company line about the bitter end to last season. He spoke about how excited he is about the young, talented, fast WRs. He said that this was one of the reasons he did not trade for Boldin or Braylon Edwards (he did not mention them by name, since that would be tampering by NFL rules). He simply said that it is always better to develop talent through the draft and he is very happy with the WR crew he has. When asked specifically about Nicks and Barden he was particularly effusive about the upside that Barden has. He said that with his size, everyone assumes that he has only average speed, but he was constantly getting behind the DBs in the spring practices. Reese continues to scout other NFL rosters and therefore is always ready to improve the middle or back end of the roster with players like Hixon and Hedgecock who were cut by other teams. When asked about his best draft nugget - the player he picked that was a surprise choice and did better than anyone expected, he didn't hesitate for a moment: Osi Ueminyora. He came from a small college, Troy State, that did not play the most challenging of schedules. He came in a little undersized in the eyes of many and he has become one of the top 5 DEs in the NFL. He also said that Osi looks to be completely recovered from his knee surgery and looks like he is in top physical shape. He has never seen a DE as fast as Osi.
Good stuff.
Boley hip surgery
It was announced yesterday that Michael Boley, signed for 5 years and $25M by the Giants from Atlanta this off season, will undergo surgery for a torn labrum. He will be out 8-10 weeks, which, if I calculate right, means that he will miss the entire training camp. That's not good. I was counting on Boley to shore up the Giants defensive weakness in pass coverage by the LBs. We can hope that he will be back and healthy by game 5 or so in the regular season. The Giants have talent at that position in Wilkinson, Kehl and Blackburn, but none of them has shown that they can become upper echelon players. I have high regard for Wilkinson, but he keeps getting injured. Maybe this is the year he stays on the field.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Giants: Coaches performance in 2008
The Giants coaches got a lot of credit for keeping the team together in 2007, for bringing along the young players that joined the team in that amazing draft class and for forming the team concept that pulled the team together. This propelled the team to go on that amazing playoff run and they didn't stop until they brought the Lombardi Trophy back to New Jersey. If the coaches got the credit when they won the championship in 2007, they should also take some blame for the disappointing end in 2008. They took a team that was well oiled, was the best team in the league by consensus, was the highest scoring team in the league after 12 games, was 11-1 and they won only one more game the rest of the year, going 1-3 in the regular season and losing their playoff game against the Eagles.
How did that happen? How did they go down so hard and fast? The easy answer is to blame it all on Plaxico. Burress shot himself in the leg, was out for the season and the other defenses in the league did not have to worry about Plaxico going deep anymore so they could crowd the line of scrimmage and stop the suddenly predictable Giants offense. Except it's not that easy. I certainly agree that Plaxico was a loss, but it was a loss that could have and should have been compensated for by coaching, personnel management and game planning. For one thing, Burress was not a dominant player last year even in the games he played. He averaged only 41 yds per game in the 11 games that he did play. He averaged 13 yards per reception and caught only 35 passes last year. His production was good last year, but those numbers will reveal that it was nothing special and the offense should not have declined so much without him. I certainly understand that the threat of Plaxico going deep is almost as good as Plaxico actually going deep. The defenses having to respect that threat opens up space for the running game and even for the passing game in other areas of the field. If Plaxico is doubled then the defense can not keep that extra safety at the line of scrimmage to stop the running game. However, the Giants had other talented, speedy WRs on the team, they just didn't get them out on the field.
Let's consider Sinorice Moss and Mario Manningham. I have heard the same drivel that you have about Sinorice Moss. He wasn't impressive in practice, he didn't master the playbook, he made some mistakes with his routes and reads during the game. Those sound like after-the-fact rationalizations to cover the coaching staff as to why they didn't get him into the game rather than legitimate reasons for not playing him. If he didn't know the playbook, maybe it's because the coaches weren't coaching him well enough and couldn't teach him that playbook. Even if this is true, certainly he could have been taught a subsection of the playbook and he could have mastered that which would have allowed him to get into the games and spread the field. Look at it this way - Amani Toomer was not re-signed by the Giants and no other team has picked him up as FA either. That makes it sound like the entire league, including the Giants think that Amani has no tread left on those tires; he's done. He didn't lose it in the off-season, he showed that he was slowing down during the last half of last season. He had nothing left, but the coaches still couldn't get Moss onto the field to replace Toomer. Now, during the off-season, when Palxico goes and Toomer is off the team, the coaches don't really know what they have in Moss, because they didn't get him onto the field enough last year. And it's not like every game was a nail biter - Giants won some games by blowouts and they could have easily given Moss some playing time to test him and give him some experience. I think it was a serious failure of the coaches not to get Moss and even Manningham prepared to play and get them on the field enough. That way when Plaxico went down, they would have had a game-tested player ready to go. It may have aready been too late and with the season winding down, they may not have wished to take a chance on a new player. But he should not have been inexperienced. Giants should have gotten him on the field earlier in the year.
As a post script, Moss has been the star of the OTAs, first mini-camp and spring voluntary conditioning proram. That improvement in Moss' game didn't happen between game 17 of last year and game 1 of this year, because there were no games. He has innate talent and Gilbride, Coughlin and WR coach Sullivan kept it buried on the bench improperly.
The same could be said of Manningham. He has a ton of talent and I am hopeful it will come out this year. We should also point out that, in our opinion, one of the reasons that Reese did not make a trade for an established star WR like Edwards or Boldin is because he believes that the talent is there among the young unproven WRs on the team. He wants the coaches to use and develop that talent, He does not want a repeat of 2008, when the passing game was predictable and the offense bogged down. He wants the coaches to use the talent that he has compiled and he was afraid that if he traded for a big time WR, the same situation would occur where the young players are buried on the bench, the team retards their development and they are not ready to step in when and if they might be needed.
This is a big year for Gilbride and the offense. He has the offensive talent on this team, but he has to show that he knows how to optimize its use.
How did that happen? How did they go down so hard and fast? The easy answer is to blame it all on Plaxico. Burress shot himself in the leg, was out for the season and the other defenses in the league did not have to worry about Plaxico going deep anymore so they could crowd the line of scrimmage and stop the suddenly predictable Giants offense. Except it's not that easy. I certainly agree that Plaxico was a loss, but it was a loss that could have and should have been compensated for by coaching, personnel management and game planning. For one thing, Burress was not a dominant player last year even in the games he played. He averaged only 41 yds per game in the 11 games that he did play. He averaged 13 yards per reception and caught only 35 passes last year. His production was good last year, but those numbers will reveal that it was nothing special and the offense should not have declined so much without him. I certainly understand that the threat of Plaxico going deep is almost as good as Plaxico actually going deep. The defenses having to respect that threat opens up space for the running game and even for the passing game in other areas of the field. If Plaxico is doubled then the defense can not keep that extra safety at the line of scrimmage to stop the running game. However, the Giants had other talented, speedy WRs on the team, they just didn't get them out on the field.
Let's consider Sinorice Moss and Mario Manningham. I have heard the same drivel that you have about Sinorice Moss. He wasn't impressive in practice, he didn't master the playbook, he made some mistakes with his routes and reads during the game. Those sound like after-the-fact rationalizations to cover the coaching staff as to why they didn't get him into the game rather than legitimate reasons for not playing him. If he didn't know the playbook, maybe it's because the coaches weren't coaching him well enough and couldn't teach him that playbook. Even if this is true, certainly he could have been taught a subsection of the playbook and he could have mastered that which would have allowed him to get into the games and spread the field. Look at it this way - Amani Toomer was not re-signed by the Giants and no other team has picked him up as FA either. That makes it sound like the entire league, including the Giants think that Amani has no tread left on those tires; he's done. He didn't lose it in the off-season, he showed that he was slowing down during the last half of last season. He had nothing left, but the coaches still couldn't get Moss onto the field to replace Toomer. Now, during the off-season, when Palxico goes and Toomer is off the team, the coaches don't really know what they have in Moss, because they didn't get him onto the field enough last year. And it's not like every game was a nail biter - Giants won some games by blowouts and they could have easily given Moss some playing time to test him and give him some experience. I think it was a serious failure of the coaches not to get Moss and even Manningham prepared to play and get them on the field enough. That way when Plaxico went down, they would have had a game-tested player ready to go. It may have aready been too late and with the season winding down, they may not have wished to take a chance on a new player. But he should not have been inexperienced. Giants should have gotten him on the field earlier in the year.
As a post script, Moss has been the star of the OTAs, first mini-camp and spring voluntary conditioning proram. That improvement in Moss' game didn't happen between game 17 of last year and game 1 of this year, because there were no games. He has innate talent and Gilbride, Coughlin and WR coach Sullivan kept it buried on the bench improperly.
The same could be said of Manningham. He has a ton of talent and I am hopeful it will come out this year. We should also point out that, in our opinion, one of the reasons that Reese did not make a trade for an established star WR like Edwards or Boldin is because he believes that the talent is there among the young unproven WRs on the team. He wants the coaches to use and develop that talent, He does not want a repeat of 2008, when the passing game was predictable and the offense bogged down. He wants the coaches to use the talent that he has compiled and he was afraid that if he traded for a big time WR, the same situation would occur where the young players are buried on the bench, the team retards their development and they are not ready to step in when and if they might be needed.
This is a big year for Gilbride and the offense. He has the offensive talent on this team, but he has to show that he knows how to optimize its use.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Giants: looking ahead
Sorry for disappearing since the draft. I had good intentions of doing some post draft analysis but never got around to it. Then the outdoor tennis season came around and I had a real good excuse to procrastinate further on making blog entries, so I just avoided. My bad. In fact, I feel so guilty about this that I may do my penance by joining the Procrastinators Club of America. I'll probably get around to joining in a week or two. Anyway, now that we are getting closer to training camp and we have the full veteran mini camp going on right now, I thought it was time to get motivated again and start doing some insightful analysis, as only we can do here on this blog, of our beloved NY Giants.
First some thoughts on the draft:
You can look at the draft in a couple of ways. On the one hand, the Giants made some outstanding picks in LT Beatty, LB Sintim and WR Nicks. Later in the third round, they picked up WR Barden who is a wild card, not that well known or scouted and a player that has some huge upside. On the positive side, the Giants filled their main needs in the draft, without reaching for players that were not good values for the round in which they were picked. Whenever you pick for need, you are inherently compromising on the principle of taking the best athlete available. The Giants did not do that this year - their picks seemed like a perfect match of need and value. Particularly, in my opinion, the Giants may have gotten two players in Beatty and Sintim that may become 10 year starters in the NFL. That starting assignment probably will not happen in 2009, but maybe by 2010 or 2011, Danny Clark moves on and Sintim starts at LB. And maybe Kareem MacKenzie starts to decline, David Diehl moves over to RT and Beatty moves in as LT. But on the negative side, the Giants may not have reached enough and let a real good player slip past them.
I particularly like the Beatty pick. He was rated very high as LT on U-Conn, the college team that led the nation in rushing. To be honest, we all know that U-Conn did not play the same caliber schedule that other top colleges play, so that stat of leading the nation in rushing might be a bit misleading. Nevertheless, Beatty was a very effective LT, and you grab them when you can get them. He has the frame and the size; he has the quick feet, the long arms and the athleticism; and he is an intelligent, well grounded young man. Starting LT's don't grow on trees and they can have a bigger affect on an offense than any other position except qb. If you want to read about LTs, read Michael Lewis' book Blind Side. It's a great summer time read and it focuses on the development of the importance of the LT position in the NFL through reporting on the life of Michael Oher, who was drafted in the 1st round this year. Beatty may be a little bit of a project, but the Giants have one of the best OL coaches in football in Pat Flaherty and I am confident Beatty will develop. Looking ahead to training camp, there will be fierce competition among the backups in the OL, but I'll give a training camp preview in another post. Suffice it to say now that the Giants backups in the OL are all very young and inexperienced. For a team poised to reach for the brass ring this year, they might want some more experience in their backup OL-men. The Giants did bring in a 10-year pro in Tutan Reyes, but it's hard to tell how much he has left in the tank. The young Giants backups will have to show an awful lot to prevent the Giants from picking up a veteran who is released by another team at the end of training camp. This is something Coughlin always emphasizes in training camp: players aren't only competing against the 80 players that are in camp; they are also competing against every guy that gets cut by another NFL team in one of the other 31 camps around the league.
Sintim was a very highly rated LB and the Giants did very well to get him when they did. He has great speed and is a physical player. The Giants LBs were not as good last year as they were in 2007 with the loss of Kawika Mitchell, who was a solid, above average player, though surely not a star. The Giants have a lot of young, slightly raw talent at LB and I am betting someone will emerge as a real good player. Boley will turn out to be a better FA addition than the more highly regarded signing of Chris Canty. Maybe the Giants will finally have a LB who can guard a TE in space. The medium-depth middle area of the field, traditionally guarded by LBs in zone coverage has been a weakness for the Giants defense for a while now.
Hakeem Nicks is a very good WR and will be a very good addition to the young WR stable the Giants have compiled. But here's where you could definitely poke a hole in Jerry Reese's draft execution. I had forecast that the Giants would not use all their 10 draft picks, that they would trade at least one or two of them to move up somewhere, perhaps the first round and get a more highly ranked player than they would otherwise get if they stayed in their 29th slot. The Giants did that in the 3rd round and moved up to get Ramses Barden. My complaint is that even if Barden turns out to be the second coming of Jerry Rice, he was a little noticed WR on a Division II school in Cal Poly. Consequently, it is doubtful that any other team was poised to nab him and the Giants could have waited for him to fall to them. The Giants had a deal to move up and grab Jerry Maclin who they liked in the first round. But the Eagles offered a bit more, moved up higher and grabbed Maclin instead. The Giants afterwards said that they liked Nicks almost as much as Maclin and it was not worth it to throw in extra picks to move ahead of the Eagles to grab the player they really wanted. But this may be after-the-fact rationalization to make them look better. They should have pulled the trigger (sorry for the metaphor, Plax) on the trade and grabbed Maclin who is the more dynamic WR than Nicks. They were a little timid in not spending another pick to get Maclin.
That having been said, I still think the Giants have enough at WR to be really good this year. Moss will emerge as will Manningham, in my opinion. Hixon and Smith will continue to grow. If that's the case, Nicks could be a perfect fit and with his great hands, could become an excellent cold weather, Giants Stadium WR. But still.... Maclin would look good in blue, and he would not be in green in Philly. We'll see.
First some thoughts on the draft:
You can look at the draft in a couple of ways. On the one hand, the Giants made some outstanding picks in LT Beatty, LB Sintim and WR Nicks. Later in the third round, they picked up WR Barden who is a wild card, not that well known or scouted and a player that has some huge upside. On the positive side, the Giants filled their main needs in the draft, without reaching for players that were not good values for the round in which they were picked. Whenever you pick for need, you are inherently compromising on the principle of taking the best athlete available. The Giants did not do that this year - their picks seemed like a perfect match of need and value. Particularly, in my opinion, the Giants may have gotten two players in Beatty and Sintim that may become 10 year starters in the NFL. That starting assignment probably will not happen in 2009, but maybe by 2010 or 2011, Danny Clark moves on and Sintim starts at LB. And maybe Kareem MacKenzie starts to decline, David Diehl moves over to RT and Beatty moves in as LT. But on the negative side, the Giants may not have reached enough and let a real good player slip past them.
I particularly like the Beatty pick. He was rated very high as LT on U-Conn, the college team that led the nation in rushing. To be honest, we all know that U-Conn did not play the same caliber schedule that other top colleges play, so that stat of leading the nation in rushing might be a bit misleading. Nevertheless, Beatty was a very effective LT, and you grab them when you can get them. He has the frame and the size; he has the quick feet, the long arms and the athleticism; and he is an intelligent, well grounded young man. Starting LT's don't grow on trees and they can have a bigger affect on an offense than any other position except qb. If you want to read about LTs, read Michael Lewis' book Blind Side. It's a great summer time read and it focuses on the development of the importance of the LT position in the NFL through reporting on the life of Michael Oher, who was drafted in the 1st round this year. Beatty may be a little bit of a project, but the Giants have one of the best OL coaches in football in Pat Flaherty and I am confident Beatty will develop. Looking ahead to training camp, there will be fierce competition among the backups in the OL, but I'll give a training camp preview in another post. Suffice it to say now that the Giants backups in the OL are all very young and inexperienced. For a team poised to reach for the brass ring this year, they might want some more experience in their backup OL-men. The Giants did bring in a 10-year pro in Tutan Reyes, but it's hard to tell how much he has left in the tank. The young Giants backups will have to show an awful lot to prevent the Giants from picking up a veteran who is released by another team at the end of training camp. This is something Coughlin always emphasizes in training camp: players aren't only competing against the 80 players that are in camp; they are also competing against every guy that gets cut by another NFL team in one of the other 31 camps around the league.
Sintim was a very highly rated LB and the Giants did very well to get him when they did. He has great speed and is a physical player. The Giants LBs were not as good last year as they were in 2007 with the loss of Kawika Mitchell, who was a solid, above average player, though surely not a star. The Giants have a lot of young, slightly raw talent at LB and I am betting someone will emerge as a real good player. Boley will turn out to be a better FA addition than the more highly regarded signing of Chris Canty. Maybe the Giants will finally have a LB who can guard a TE in space. The medium-depth middle area of the field, traditionally guarded by LBs in zone coverage has been a weakness for the Giants defense for a while now.
Hakeem Nicks is a very good WR and will be a very good addition to the young WR stable the Giants have compiled. But here's where you could definitely poke a hole in Jerry Reese's draft execution. I had forecast that the Giants would not use all their 10 draft picks, that they would trade at least one or two of them to move up somewhere, perhaps the first round and get a more highly ranked player than they would otherwise get if they stayed in their 29th slot. The Giants did that in the 3rd round and moved up to get Ramses Barden. My complaint is that even if Barden turns out to be the second coming of Jerry Rice, he was a little noticed WR on a Division II school in Cal Poly. Consequently, it is doubtful that any other team was poised to nab him and the Giants could have waited for him to fall to them. The Giants had a deal to move up and grab Jerry Maclin who they liked in the first round. But the Eagles offered a bit more, moved up higher and grabbed Maclin instead. The Giants afterwards said that they liked Nicks almost as much as Maclin and it was not worth it to throw in extra picks to move ahead of the Eagles to grab the player they really wanted. But this may be after-the-fact rationalization to make them look better. They should have pulled the trigger (sorry for the metaphor, Plax) on the trade and grabbed Maclin who is the more dynamic WR than Nicks. They were a little timid in not spending another pick to get Maclin.
That having been said, I still think the Giants have enough at WR to be really good this year. Moss will emerge as will Manningham, in my opinion. Hixon and Smith will continue to grow. If that's the case, Nicks could be a perfect fit and with his great hands, could become an excellent cold weather, Giants Stadium WR. But still.... Maclin would look good in blue, and he would not be in green in Philly. We'll see.
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