Giants can’t sell selves short again
Should add players not trade them
If the Giants lose a fourth straight game to the Detroit Lions on Sunday, they will look like a team primed to go into sell mode approaching Tuesday’s 4 p.m. NFL trade deadline.
There is enormous incentive for GM Dave Gettleman and head coach Pat Shurmur to be buyers instead of sellers, though.
The incentive? Self-preservation. Their jobs.
Think about it from Gettleman’s and Shurmur’s perspectives:
If they sell contributing veterans off an already subpar roster in exchange for mid-tolate-round draft picks, it would not only concede this season but potentially send it off a cliff toward another 3-13 or 5-11type record.
Granted, this season might be moving in that direction already at 2-5, but this regime is already a year behind where it’s supposed to be in turning the Giants back into a contender. It can’t continue to regress.
The NFC East is wide open, begging for a team to come and grab the division title. The Giants should be contending for it, and they might have if they had undergone a rebuild in 2018 with an eye on competing this fall.
The Cowboys (4-3), while in first, lost three straight between Weeks 4 and 6. The Eagles (3-4) are reeling and beatable. Washington (1-6) has no offense. Yet the Giants aren’t even beginning to contend.
If, two years after the 3-13 catastrophe of 2017, coowners John Mara and Steve Tisch review the 2019 season and see just as non-competitive and unpromising a roster, all bets are off.
This is why Shurmur, while reluctant to use the term “buyers,” said Thursday that the Giants are “always looking to upgrade” when asked to characterize their trade deadline approach.
He needs to win, and in order to win, his Giants need more talent; not less. See this week’s signing of Deone Bucannon to upgrade at linebacker as Exhibit A.
“I think we’re always looking. I don’t know (about) the buying or selling thing,” the coach said. “I think you’re always looking to upgrade. I think that’s where we’re at roster-wise.
“It’s a matter of record,” he continued. “We’ve made major changes to the roster in the last two years. I mean, it’s just the way it is. We’ve made major changes. We’re very young, got a lot of young players playing. It’s just the reality of it. So I wouldn’t say buyer or seller. We’re just always looking to upgrade.”
The Giants aren’t just young, obviously. Veterans have played prominent roles over the last two seasons, too.
Ownership has had a hand in this regime’s lack of progress, obviously, beginning with the hiring of Gettleman. The decision to try to win now in 2018 by building around Eli Manning for one last ride was a catastrophic mistake.
Gettleman has tried to revise history by claiming this was a long-term rebuild all along, but the reality is he believed he was going to turn the Giants into a winner with Manning immediately while also building for the future.
Half-committing to two directions left the Giants fully committed to neither. That’s what happens when you see a fork in the road and commit to neither route: you go nowhere.
Saquon Barkley is a great player, but his talent hasn’t made a difference in this team’s results.
Waiting an extra year to draft a quarterback left the Giants’ offense floundering under Manning last year and now sputtering as Jones learns this season.
Getting rid of talented players in Odell Beckham Jr., Landon Collins and Olivier Vernon has left the Giants — wait for it — less talented.
Gettleman and Shurmur need talent to win more games. They don’t need draft picks to hand off to the next GM and head coach.