Giants play
Big Blue’s approach to rebuild
The Giants and Carolina Panthers are taking polar opposite approaches to their concurrent rebuilds after both hired new head coaches in Jan. 2020. The 5-11 Panthers, one year after hiring Matt Rhule, fired GM Marty Hurney in December and have interviewed 11 candidates for their front office vacancy.
Owner David Tepper’s rationale last month was reasonable.
“I think sometimes you just need a restart, a refresh,” Tepper said. “We did it last year on the coaching side. Maybe you could say it should have been done before on the GM side. Maybe it should have been… I think it’s just time, on both sides, to do that. It just seems like the right time to move forward.”
Giants co-owner John Mara, on the other hand, is staying with Dave Gettleman as GM after hiring Joe Judge, who went 6-10 in his first season.
Tepper said Rhule is being included in the GM search because “alignment” is critical.
“You look at successful organizations, and there’s a certain alignment between the head coach and the GM,” Tepper said. “To think that you can do that without some sort of alignment is nuts. So to not have a head coach with some input into that is stupid. I don’t want to be stupid, OK?”
Mara believes he has that already after watching
Gettleman and Judge “work very well together” in 2020.
“They haven’t agreed 100% of the time, but my father used to have a saying, ‘If you both agree all the time, then I don’t need both of you,” Mara said, quoting his late father, Wellington. “But I haven’t had to intercede on one occasion to break any ties. They managed to talk it through and work it out, showed good communication, and at the end of the day, the decision that gets made is the New York Giants’ decision. It’s not Joe’s decision or Dave’s decision. They collaborate really well.”
Mara’s decision to stand pat, though, puts the Giants in a unique position.
Five teams hired head coaches after the 2019 NFL season. Only two will enter the 2021 season with the same general manager they had in 2018: the Giants and the Dallas Cowboys. The only reason the Cowboys (6-10) make that list is because owner Jerry Jones is also their GM.
Carolina, Washington and Cleveland already have a new GM or are searching for a new one now. That’s normally how it goes when a team is bad enough to pick in the top five and fire its coach, as the Giants did last year.
The Browns went 11-5 and made the playoffs under the first-year pairing of GM Andrew Berry and coach Kevin Stefanski playing in one of the best
divisions in football.
Washington, a franchise in shambles, won the NFC East at 7-9 in Ron Rivera’s first year and is now in the market for a new GM.
The Panthers now have gotten a chance to meet 11 candidates to pair with Rhule for the long haul: former Giants GM Jerry Reese, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah (Browns), Nick Caserio (Patriots), Monti Ossenfort (Titans), Jeff Ireland (Saints), Joe Schoen (Bills), Ed Dodds (Colts), Ryan Poles (Chiefs), Adam Peters (49ers), Champ Kelly (Bears) and Brant Tilis (Chiefs).
The Houston Texans already hired Caserio for their GM vacancy, taking him off Carolina’s board. But Tepper still has canvassed a large sample size of candidates, leaving no stone unturned to find the right fit with his prized young coach.
The Giants, in stark contrast, have doubled down on the GM who dug them into a deeper hole than he had inherited in the 2018 and 2019 offseasons.
It will be interesting to watch these franchises continue with their polar opposite rebuild strategies and see which yields superior results.
TEX MESS
The ink wasn’t even dry on Caserio’s Texans contract before he encountered the mother of all problems: a disgruntled franchise quarterback.
The Texans’ Deshaun Watson, 25, is upset with owner Cal McNair for not including Watson in the search process for a new GM and head coach as McNair had promised. There are rumors that Watson, one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks, could demand a trade.
Watson saw his best offensive weapon DeAndre Hopkins traded to Arizona last offseason without warning and now saw his advice on head coaches to interview fall on deaf ears.
Watson reportedly wanted the Texans to take a look at Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy on the recommendation of Kansas City reigning league MVP Patrick Mahomes. The Texans are the only team of the six with head coaching vacancies that didn’t interviewed Bieniemy this hiring cycle.
The unusual and undefined influence of Texans executive VP of football operations, Jack Easterby — a former Patriots staffer who tried to recruit Caserio to Houston a year ago — also hovers over the mistrust in the Texans organization.
McNair hired the search firm Korn Ferry to aid his GM hiring process. Korn Ferry reportedly provided five names, at least four of whom were interviewed: Matt Bazirgan (Texans), Trent Kirchner (Seahawks), Omar Khan (Steelers), Louis Riddick (ESPN) and Scott Cohen (Ravens).
McNair ignored that list and hired Caserio, Easterby’s guy from New England.
Belichick’s longtime director of player personnel is a respected and diligent talent evaluator. The Patriots haven’t drafted well in recent years, but Caserio’s name carries a lot of weight in NFL circles and it was only a matter of time before he got a GM job.
Caserio is known to be smart, level-headed and pragmatic, so he knows how good Watson is and how important it will be to align the Texans’ head coach hire with Watson’s vision and fit. It would be an absolute shock if Caserio allowed this situation to continue spiraling out where Watson refused to play in Houston.
Already it came out on Friday that the Texans would be “resetting” their coaching search, per the Houston Chronicle, presumably to at least include Bieniemy and allow McNair to undo some of the damage done by crossing his star quarterback once too often.
LOOK OUT, TOM
edge rusher, is one of the NFL’s most charismatic and electric young stars. And he didn’t disappoint in creating build-up for Saturday night’s Wild Card playoff game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Young was videoed after Sunday’s division clinching win in Philadelphia yelling “Tom Brady! Tom Brady, I’m coming! I want Tom! I want Tom!”
When given a chance to dial down his callout of Brady, Young couldn’t understand why his comments were blown up into headlines.
“Tom Brady? You think I’m not gonna be excited to play against the G.O.A.T? Then you trippin,” Young said. “I’m excited to play against big Tom. I’m not gonna apologize for saying I want Tom. No. I want Tom Brady. I want every quarterback I play against.”
Young also told Josina Anderson on the “Undefined” podcast that while he wants every quarterback he plays, because Brady is one of the best ever, “I do want him a little bit more.”
Young is going to win defensive rookie of the year after recording 7.5 sacks, 44 tackles, 10 tackles for loss, 39 QB pressures (per Pro Football Focus), 12 QB hits, four passes defended, four forced fumbles, three fumble recoveries, and a fumble return for a touchdown.
Anderson asked Young to give a name to his on-field alter ego if he has one.
“The Predator,” Young said.
Alabama and Ohio State meet for the College Football Playoff National Championship on Monday night, and there are many ways we could compare the two teams.
Do we break it down position-by-position, or Alabama’s offense vs. Ohio State’s defense and so on? That all seems kind of boring, to be honest.
The Crimson Tide and Buckeyes have played only four times in their history, with only the Sugar Bowl meeting in the College Football Playoff semifinals after the 2014 season having a direct impact on the national championship race. Ohio State won 42-35, then beat Oregon for the national title a little more than a week later.
Alabama won the other three meetings, 38-6 in the 1978 Sugar Bowl, 16-10 in the 1986 Kickoff Classic and 24-17 in the 1995 Citrus Bowl. That first win is a bit controversial, as the Crimson Tide looked poised to claim the national championship for 1977 before Notre Dame - which had beaten top-ranked Texas earlier in the day - jumped ahead and finished No. 1 in the final polls.
Beyond that, the historical significance of Alabama playing Ohio State is that there is little-to-no history between them.
What about a deeper comparison between the two programs? You know, the really important stuff in college football, like “history” and “tradition.”
With apologies to Nick Bakay, whose “Tale of the Tape” was a staple of ESPN SportsCenter and ESPN.com in the early 2000s, here are how Alabama and Ohio State stack up in 10 categories that won’t necessarily affect the outcome of Monday night’s game:
Let’s start out with one that’s pretty objective. Alabama has 928 wins, 32 conference championships (including co-championships), 17 claimed national championships and 43 bowl victories. Ohio State has 931 wins, 39 conference championships (including co-championships), eight claimed national championships and 25 bowl victories. The regular-season record is pretty even, but Alabama has been the far better postseason team. Advantage: Alabama
Alabama has 28 conference championships, more than double the next-highest (13 by Georgia and Tennessee). The Crimson Tide won eight out of nine SEC titles from 1971-79 and has won five out of seven since 2014. Alabama won its most-recent meeting with every SEC school, and hasn’t lost to an SEC East team since 2010. Ohio State does not have the most Big Ten championships, with its 39 behind Michigan’s 42. However, the Buckeyes do have the most outright Big Ten championships with 24 (Michigan has only 16). Ohio State won 10 out of 12 Big Ten titles from 1968-79, and has won the last four in a row. The Buckeyes have two active Big Ten “losing streaks,” dropping their most-recent games vs. both Purdue and Iowa. Advantage: Alabama
Alabama has Paul “Bear” Bryant, who stayed in Tuscaloosa for 25 years, won 13 SEC titles and six national titles, and retired as the winningest coach in major-college football history (since surpassed). Ohio State has Woody Hayes, who stayed in Columbus for 28 years, won 13 Big Ten titles and five national titles. Bryant has the edge in winning percentage (.824 to .760), though it could be argued that the Big Ten was tougher during some of those years than the SEC was. Still, Bryant never had a losing season at Alabama, whereas Hayes had two at Ohio State (1959 and 1966). Bryant also never punched an opposing player during a game. Advantage: Alabama