SHOOTING FROM THE LIP
The Giants will continue to be the butt of jokes until they find a way to turn franchise around
This isn’t about whether you’re a Tracy Morgan fan or not, whether the ESPY Awards that Morgan hosted the other night matter to you or not. But the ESPYs do matter enough to an awful lot of the biggest stars in sports, from Bill Russell to the members of the United States women’s soccer team, that they were all at the Microsoft Theater in L.A. on Wednesday. It means they were in the room as the Giants became a punchline for Morgan, who just happens to be a Giants fan.
Here’s what Morgan said to Saquon Barkley at the ESPYs:
“I heard you can deadlift 600 pounds. That’s good because you’re going to have to carry the Giants this year.”
You’d say that the Giants have turned into a punchline pretty fast, except that it’s been happening to them for a while, ever since they won that second Super Bowl from the Patriots in Indy in February of 2012. They have made it to the playoffs once between then and now, getting smacked around by the Packers when they did make the playoffs, at the end of a week when Odell Beckham Jr. and some of his teammates were pretty much lost at sea.
Now it is the Giants who seem lost, even as the current general manager, Dave Gettleman, says he has a plan and don’t worry about it. But as their team gets ready for another training camp, Giants fans aren’t at all sure whether
their team drafted the right quarterback in Daniel Jones. They aren’t sure they’ve got the right GM in Gettleman, or the right coach in Pat Shurmur. Let’s face it, it’s been awhile since there was the notion around here that the Giants were operating on some higher organizational plane than just about any other team in town except the Yankees.
The Giants were a bad team last season and a bad team the season before that. John Mara has gotten rid of Jerry Reese and hired Gettleman, as if thinking he was hiring the kind of accomplished football lifer that Mara had once in Ernie Accorsi. Accorsi, of course, is the guy who made the draft-day trade for Eli Manning and changed the course of Giants history.
It was Gettleman, then, running point when the Giants re-signed Beckham and told the whole wide world that they didn’t throw all that money at Beckham to turn around and trade him. That was right before they turned around and traded him to the Browns. Now Gettleman is the GM who wants everybody to believe that he just had to take Daniel Jones with the sixth pick because he clearly loved Jones the way Ernie loved Eli. In the process Gettleman bet his job — a job in which you can do everything except be wrong about your quarterback — on Daniel Jones, who may not even play this season. Not only did he bet his job, he bet the next five years of Giants football, and maybe more than that.
You remember how it played out at the time: Gettleman told his fan base that he had to take Jones when he did and not with the 17th pick in the first round because he, Gettleman, knew for a fact that two other teams might grab the Duke kid between No. 6 and No. 17. Sure, because all NFL teams are always sharing information like that in the run-up to the draft. Seriously? Two teams were going to take Jones between 6 and 17 if the Giants didn’t take him with their first pick on him? Name them.
Now the Giants have Jones as their quarterback of the future. Out of the same first round, Dwayne Haskins of Ohio State goes to Washington. And the Giants sure have to hope they aren’t wrong to have passed on Haskins, who has a chance to play in their own division for a long time, one year after having passed
on Sam Darnold, who has a chance to play in the same stadium with the New York Giants for a long time.
The Giants’ record is 8-24 over the past two seasons. It is 47-65 since Indy. They will open the coming season with a 38-year-old Eli on the clock. Both Gettleman and Shurmur ought to be, as well. The GM, the coach, the aging quarterback all need to show they have enough game to succeed at MetLife. Jones, if he gets off the bench and the clock starts on him, will have to show the same.
The Giants beat the Patriots the first time in Glendale, Ariz., and in that moment were the biggest game around here all over again. Four years later, damned if Eli and Big Blue didn’t do it to Belichick and Brady and them again. Now Tom Coughlin is in Jacksonville. Eli is heading up the 18th fairway. Tracy Morgan also made a joke about Cleveland the other night, talking about Beckham going to Cleveland as though that were some kind of joke, too.
“The only reason people leave New York for Cleveland is because they are in witness protection,” Morgan said.
Really? The Browns have a star young quarterback in
Baker Mayfield. They have Beckham. They have possibilities again, after being the biggest punchline in the sport for a long time. We’re going to find out what the Giants have this season, and whether they can find a way back to the playoffs. Or whether they’ve just lost their way.