I wasn’t writing anything revolutionary or groundbreaking when I jotted down the idea of this column about the New York Giants. Really, I’m just saying what everyone else is saying.
The Giants are losers.
They’re not just a bad football team like the 2-12-1 Detroit Lions who have a horrendous roster of players giving their all for their gung-ho leader in head coach Dan Campbell.
They’re not like their cross-stadium rivals in the Jets who show signs of being competitive while trying to teach the baby deer that is Zach Wilson to walk at the NFL level — and there has been plenty of progress in doing that in recent weeks.
No. The Giants are broken, delusional, and have no direction.
They’re losers.
Joe Judge’s men are now 4-11 on the season after another embarrassing performance in a 34-10 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles just hours after co-owner John Mara inexplicably leaked that the head coach will return for the 2022 season.
Now in his second season, Judge is 10-21 while making zero progress with a franchise that has now endured five-straight seasons of double-digit losses and eight losing seasons in the last nine years.
Expectations were low, but somehow the Giants have failed to meet them.
A mediocre defense that has regressed from a promising showing last season has been left out to dry by the worst offense in the entire NFL.
They rank 30th in points scored and 31st in total yards gained — numbers that have been exacerbated by the loss of Daniel Jones, whose season is done after a lingering neck injury limited his 2021 campaign to just 11 games.
Regardless of who has been under center — Jones, Mike Glennon, or Jake Fromm — it doesn’t make much of a difference.
A garbage-time touchdown while trailing 34-3 in Philadelphia on Sunday was the Giants’ first touchdown in eight quarters. Since Week 11, they’ve averaged just 11.5 points per game. Take out a 21-point showing in a blowout loss to the Los Angeles Chargers in Week 14 and that number plummets to 9.6.
Each of their last five losses has been by double-digits, their point differential of -117 is third-worst in the entire NFC, and their average margin of victory (-7.8) is second-worst in the conference.
It has somehow gotten worse for a team that brought in general Dave Gettleman to right the ship after a 3-13 campaign in 2017. That, of course, is going to go down as one of the worst mistakes this franchise has ever made.
Gettleman failed to fulfill his initial promise of building up the Giants’ offensive line — a unit that offers mediocre pass protection and virtually zero support for the oft-injured Saquon Barkley to the point that trading the former No. 2 pick seems like the best thing to do.
He drafted Jones sixth overall in 2019 and has never wavered from him despite an inability from the 24-year-old to truly prove that he is worthy of being considered a franchise quarterback of the future.
He brought in Judge, who once promised us in his introductory press conference that his Giants would be a team that “will punch you in the nose for 60 minutes, we will play every play like it has a history and a life of its own.”
Instead, the Giants are lifeless and have shown zero indication that they have bought into Judge’s presence.
Yet there is Mara, practically spitting on everything his family built the Giants up to be, taking the word of Gettleman as gospel and already proclaiming that this dumpster fire of a team will retain the head coach who has done nothing and the choice of the franchise quarterback from the inept general manager who went so far out of his way to bring him here.
Never mind the fact that he is practically allowing Gettleman to leave on his own terms; the 70-year-old is either retiring or stepping down after the 2021 season.
Now, Mara will try to find a general manager who will be the equivalent of a “yes man” that will keep intact the fundamentally flawed foundation of a rotten organization that is its most important part in a head coach. That could very well be Giants vice president Kevin Abrams, who has had a heavy hand in building such a bad football team.
There is zero indication that things are going to get better with this line of thinking.
Why? Because Mara isn’t all that concerned about actually winning.
That’s what we call a loser.
