The New York Giants have not won a playoff game since their Super Bowl XLVI run in 2011 and have won a total of just eight games over the previous two seasons. They’ve changed their general manager, their head coach and a good portion of their staff as a result.
The belief is that the Giants are heading in the right direction, but some disagree on how far off they actually are and what they need to do in order to get over the hump.
Bill Barnwell of ESPN took a stab at what he feels the Giants need to do this offseason in order to course-correct, but there are some holes. Let’s take a look.
Franchise Landon Collins
The Giants are still recovering from years of subpar drafts under former GM Jerry Reese. The only players left on the roster from a five-year stretch of Reese drafts between 2011 and ’15 are Collins and Odell Beckham Jr. Losing Collins, one of the few young building blocks the Giants have on defense, would be a step backward for a team that already has plenty of problems on offense.
This is spot on. The Giants can’t afford to let Collins, who was once in the running for Defensive Player of the Year, to get away. They already have issues at the safety position, so allowing Collins to walk would not only create another hole at the position, but substantially weaken their already questionable defense.
Replace Eli Manning with a veteran
As the Manning Farewell Tour stretches into its third year, it remains to be seen what it will take for the Giants to quit their longtime starting quarterback. Manning’s numbers superficially rose last season — he posted a career-high completion percentage of 66.0 and the fourth-best passer rating of his career (92.4) — but the two-time Super Bowl MVP’s Total QBR was a middling 51.6, ranking 25th out of 33 qualifying passers.
His raw numbers were less impressive than they might seem. By ESPN’s expected points metric, 30.3 percent of his completions did not push the Giants closer to scoring points, the highest rate in the league among passers with 400 attempts. His average completion traveled just 5.6 yards in the air, the 25th-highest rate in the league. Manning also spent a significant chunk of the season throwing in garbage time. He threw 90 passes on drives that started with the Giants holding no more than a 1 percent chance of winning the game, third most in the NFL behind Kirk Cousins and Matt Ryan.
On top of all this, Manning is making $23 million in the final season on his contract, a salary he would not come close to hitting on the open market. His jersey might as well have “INERTIA” on the back. Manning is a Giants legend and deserves to be applauded for the role he played in two Super Bowl victories. He doesn’t deserve to be unceremoniously benched midseason, as he was during the 2017 campaign, for Geno Smith. But the Giants need to be realistic about their future, which doesn’t involve Manning. They can free up $17 million in much-needed cap space by moving on from him.
I’d figure that New York would follow up by going after a starter, though it depends on who’s available on the market. While he lacks the Giants’ preferred height, Case Keenum excelled under Pat Shurmur’s tutelage during his breakout 2017 season in Minnesota. He’s also likely to come relatively cheap, given that the Broncos have little financial reason for keeping the Houston product after trading for Joe Flacco earlier this week.
Manning’s QBR, which is impacted by the performance of an offensive line that finished in the bottom third of the league, is easy to pinpoint and use as a reason to move on, but the solution on a replacement makes little sense.
Why would the Giants move on from Manning only to replace him with another veteran quarterback who doesn’t know the system, will be replaced in a year or two and provides the Giants little chance of winning now?
If this is a financial suggestion, then an extension or pay cut seems like the more sound approach. If it’s simply about getting rid of Manning for the sake of it, the idea falls apart. Are we really at the point where we’re going to pretend Case Keenum is a better option than 15-year veteran and two-time Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning? He’s not, but pretend is a fun game.
Draft Dwayne Haskins
If the Giants don’t want to take Kyler Murray because he’s under 6 feet, they won’t have the same concerns about the 6-foot-3 Ohio State passer. He produced the third-best Total QBR in college football last season at 86.3, trailing only that of Murray (95.8) and Tua Tagovailoa (93.2). Haskins has the physical traits you would want from a quarterback coming out of school, and he was given a first-round grade by the NFL draft advisory board.
The concern with Haskins is inexperience, given that the 21-year-old spent only one year as a starter and threw 590 passes in school. There are similarities to Mitchell Trubisky, who started one season at North Carolina and threw 572 passes before entering the 2017 draft. Trubisky’s inconsistency as a passer from drive to drive and game to game speaks to the difficulties a quarterback with that sort of inexperience can have adjusting to the professional level.
Any team taking Haskins should be prepared to let him sit for a full season and develop, but as we’ve seen with the vast majority of first-round picks, that’s unlikely to happen. A combination of Keenum and Haskins would give the Giants a competent passer in the short term and a high-upside prospect for the future.
Haskins at No. 6 only makes sense if that’s who the Giants and general manager Dave Gettleman truly want. It’s the same scenario as a year ago — if you make yourself fall in love with a player, you’re going to suffer the consequences long-term.
Could the Giants go with Haskins at No. 6 overall if they are confident in him? Absolutely, but the recent concerns with Haskins’ film are hard to ignore. He’s a raw talent with a high ceiling, but he has to get there.
As alluded, Haskins has only a single year as a starter under his belt, so he’s going to sit. And who could he benefit to learn from more? Eli Manning or Case Keenum? The answer to that is obvious for anyone not biased.
Sign Mike Iupati
The Giants want to be a run-heavy team under GM Dave Gettleman’s stewardship, regardless of who lines up at quarterback. His moves to shore up the offensive line last year were mostly disastrous. Big-ticket free agent Nate Solder allowed eight sacks, per Stats LLC, while the right side of the line started the year in New York and finished it in Jacksonville, as the Giants cut both Patrick Omameh and Ereck Flowers. Center Jon Halapio broke his ankle. At least Solder and rookie guard Will Hernandez improved during the second half of the campaign and began to develop a rapport.
The Giants have a hole at right guard with waiver-wire pickup Jamon Brown a free agent, and while Iupati’s tenure with the Cardinals was a mess, there’s still physicality and talent there in the running game. A one-year flier could give Iupati a shot to prove he’s still a starting-caliber NFL guard.
On the surface, this seems like a sound approach and plan. However, as Barnwell points out, a one-year flier on Patrick Omameh didn’t work and there’s no guarantee the same approach with Iupati would work out.
That’s not to say it isn’t worth exploring, however. If Iupati could return to form and join the team on a friendly contract, it would be a huge step in the right direction for the Giants. But there’s just no denying that it would be another non-guaranteed gamble — one that the Giants couldn’t afford to lose.
When it comes to the offensive line, Gettleman needs to take fewer gambles and, instead, find some guarantees or it will just be more of the same in 2019.
Add depth at cornerback
The Giants thought they were set for years at corner when they signed Janoris Jenkins and used a first-round pick on Eli Apple, but after a disastrous 2017 season, they traded Apple to the Saints in October. Apple quickly stepped into the starting lineup and played well for a playoff team, while the Giants started B.W. Webb and undrafted rookie Grant Haley alongside Jenkins for the second half of the season.
Webb is a free agent, and while Haley didn’t completely drown as the team’s nickel corner, it would be a huge stretch to count on him as a starter in 2019. Investing in a cornerback to play across from Jenkins is the quickest way the Giants can improve a pass defense that ranked 26th in DVOA last season. The Giants could opt for LSU corner Greedy Williams if they pass on a quarterback in the first round, but it wouldn’t be a surprise to see them add a veteran such as Bashaud Breeland in free agency before drafting a corner in the second or fourth round.
The Giants do need help at the cornerback position and no one can deny that. Their depth is lacking in spades, and what Sam Beal, who was a third-round pick in the 2018 Supplemental Draft, will bring to the table is anyone’s guess.
Grant Haley stepped up and played well and clearly has a role, but Barnwell is correct in that the Giants can’t rely on him. But any additional depth will likely come via free agency as it seems to be quarterback, offensive lineman or pass rusher for Big Blue in Round 1.
Speaking of pass rusher, Barnwell’s five-point plan completely omits that significant need. More than getting rid of Eli or gambling big on an offensive lineman, what the Giants absolutely have to do is find a quality pass rusher to play alongside Olivier Vernon, who appears destined to remain in East Rutherford.
