Who could’ve seen this coming? Uh, everyone.
LET’S say you walked on to your deck one day and you noticed a number of troubling things: a couple of loose nails, let’s say, or a few rotting slabs on the floor. If you were a carpenter, these things would probably horrify you because you know how to spot trouble, and you know the ramifications of ignoring it.
Thing is, even if you aren’ t a carpenter, you’d be spooked by it, right?
You’d probably make a phone call the next day, have someone look at it, have someone fix it, because the last thing you want next Memorial Day when you have that first barbecue of the spring is to have your deck fall down. Nothing ruins a good holiday party like a deck falling down.
That’s what’s really happened to the Giants these first two weeks of the season: the deck has collapsed. Splintered, really. The grill and the cooler are trapped under the rubble somewhere, and so are all the lounge chairs. I’m pretty sure you can see Eli Manning under there somewhere, too, with his helmet turned sideways.
(And if you can’t see Ben McAdoo anywhere, just listen for the voice blaming Eli for “sloppy deck evacuation.”)
And that’s the thing: you aren’t the general manager of an NFL team that many believe ought to be good enough to be a player in the NFC. You watch football for fun. You watch football as a hobby. You watch it as a way to kill time between altering your fantasy league rosters and picking your Knockout Pool team.
And even you knew the Giants had big problems with their offensive line, that for as powerful as their defense might be, as intriguing as their offensive skill positions might be, it would all mean very little if the offensive linemen kept Manning running for his life on those plays when they weren’t allowing an army of tacklers to smother and suffocate the running backs.
So it isn’t possible Jerry Reese — who is a general manager of an NFL football team that many believe ought to be good enough to be a player in the NFC, who ought to know how to spot trouble, and the ramifications of ignoring it — didn’t see that. This isn’t a pastime for Reese, it’s his job. It is a job he was once very good at, one he managed to keep a death grip on even as his first coach, Tom Coughlin, was led to exile.
And yet, through two weeks, it is a line that somehow has underperformed expecta - tions — when the expectations were basement-level to begin with.
How does this possibly happen?
Look, it’s not like Reese didn’t try to invest in the line. In 2013 he took Justin Pugh with the 19th overall pick out of Syracuse. In 2014 he took Weston Richburg with the 43rd pick out of Colorado State. In 2015 he took Ereck Flowers with the ninth pick out of Miami. Three years, three first- and second-round picks.
So Reese recognized the importance of building a line.
Except the line hasn’t developed as the Giants hoped it would, it hasn’t blossomed as hoped when the Giants staff got a chance to coach them all up. The Giants won 11 games last year despite all of this, and maybe that was the great undoing. Maybe that made Reese blind to loose nails and the rotting floor.
Look at it this way: the Mets somehow snuck into the playoffs last year despite their prized pitching staff falling into disrepair. It defied explanation. But instead of learning from that mess and altering its approach, the team decided to close its eyes, swallow hard and pray those arms would be a lot healthier this year. Because they wanted to believe they would. And, well …
That’s the same ill-fated decision Reese made. Essentially, knowing he was going to have, in essence, the same people in the trenches (save for journeyman D.J. Fluker and blocking tight end Rhett Ellison), he closed his eyes and wished upon a star.
And now his season is scattered all over the backyard.
Which everyone saw coming.
Reese most of all.