They spent big for their fans, and now must win NFC East
NEW YORK — The Giants have to win the NFCEast this fall.
They have no choice and no excuse. That’s the position John Mara, Steve Tisch, Dave Gettleman and Joe Judge put themselves in by spending this way in free agency.
Is this Giants roster actually goodenough to win the NFC East for the first time in a decade? That doesn’t matter now.
It has to be.
Start with the coach andthe quarterback. If Judge and Daniel Jones are everything Marabelieves themto be, whodotheyhave an excuse to lose this division to?
RonRiveraand… RyanFitzpatrick? Sorry. Not buying it.
Nick Sirianni and Jalen Hurts? Please. Mike “fake punt from my own 24” McCarthy and a who-knows-how-healthy Dak Prescott? I mean, not really.
No. No excuse. The Giants have to win this division, which was one of the worst in league history in both the 2019 and 2020 seasons, don’t forget.
They have to get into the playoffs for the first time since 2016 and just the second time in the last 10 years.
The organization collectively pulled the plug on a patient, long-term rebuild and pushed all its chips into 2021 by spending $98million in guarantees in free agency and deferring a lot of it into future years just to fit some big pieces onto this year’s roster.
They haven’t learned their lesson from recent history, it appears. They flushed the 2018 and2019seasons by unwisely trying to winonemoretimewithEliManning. It only dug them deeper into a hole.
Mara seemed to finally understand the err of his ways when he hired Judge.
The Giants still tried to win games last season, but the primary focus of everything they did was on rebuilding for the long-term, on acquiring and developing more young players. This was true even as they signed a couple pricey and important veteran free agents in James Bradberry and Blake Martinez last spring.
Paying this kind of money for the likes of Kenny Golladay, Adoree Jackson and Kyle
Rudolph— players with recent injury histories no less — reflects a desperation to load up now.
Especially when the Giants had to restructure the contracts of Martinez and Bradberry to do so.
Especially when the Giants now have $119 million in cap space committed to just seven players for the 2022 season: Leonard Williams ($26.5 million), Golladay ($21.15 million), Bradberry ($20.5 million), Jackson ($15.5 million), Martinez ($14.025 million), Logan Ryan ($10.75 million) and Sterling Shepard ($10.5 million).
Clearly, one motivation is that Mara is “tired of the losing,” as he said Wednesday. But it is tragically ironic that Marawouldtry to fixhis problem by reverting to the flawed strategy that got him here in the first place.
It is also maddening, frankly, that Mara continues to refer to his “better locker room” and even had a Freudian slip in lamenting no playoff teams “the last five years.”
The Giants made the playoffs in the last five years in 2016 under rookie head coach Ben McAdoo. But the Giants find every chance they get to implicitly put downhow they got there and whogot them there, as if those executives, coaches and players were the problem and not the organization itself.
This spring’s sharp about-face is about more than just Mara’s impatience, though, in my opinion.
I think it’s also about putting fans back in the stands.
When asked about the Giants’ interest in playing internationally soon, Mara said that might happen down the road, but that wasn’t his priority.
“Our focus right now is on our local market, ongetting people into the building, getting our inventory sold and improving the team,” he said.