Retired New York Giants running back Brandon Jacobs has been a consistent presence around the team since he stepped away from the game following the 2013 season, so he has some unique insight into the inner workings of the franchise here in 2019.
However, Jacobs may have recently over-sold the team to an extreme degree, telling Bob Glauber of Newsday that the current roster is “more talented” than both the Super Bowl XLII team and the Super Bowl XLVI team.
“If you ask me, talent-wise in this locker room, they’re better than we were,” Jacobs said. “Player for player, they have more talent. You have to understand, when we won Super Bowls, we didn’t have these amazing seasons.”
What Jacobs feels these Giants lack however, is “heart” and “leaders” that are capable of rallying the troops and winning close games late in the fourth quarter.
Jacobs feels that will come with time and experience, and that is shouldn’t be a reflection of head coach Pat Shurmur.
“Everybody wants to point the thing at the coach, but I don’t think you can do that,” Jacobs said. “You can’t tell me the guys aren’t coming to work trying every day. Everybody says the team’s young. This isn’t college, bro. This is the NFL. Are we supposed to be terrible until everybody gets to six, seven years (in the NFL)? We always told the rookies, ‘Week 2, Week 3, it’s over. Ain’t no more rookies.'”
Jacobs, who currently lives in Atlanta, still flies up to watch the Giants and interact with the current group, but admits he’d move back to East Rutherford at the drop of the dime if the team needed him or he felt as if he could help in some way.
“I would move back up here in a heartbeat if I knew I had an opportunity to help this team,” Jacobs said. “In a heartbeat.”
Agree or disagree with his assessments of the current team compared to the Super Bowl-winning teams, it’s hard not to love Jacobs, who bleeds as deeply blue as the late Wellington Mara did.
