SELL! SELL! SELL!
Time for Big Blue to start rebuild A
AS GIANTS coach Pat Shurmur clicked on to a conference call with reporters Tuesday afternoon, it was exactly a half-hour past one full week to the NFL’s trading deadline. At 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 23, Shurmur did not sound like a man who has turned his attention to the future.
“We’re not throwing in the towel,” Shurmur said. “That’s not the narrative.”
By 4 p.m. next Tuesday, Oct. 30, that narrative had better change, because the time has arrived to identify the 2018 Giants as what they are ( beyond the usual suspects: “tire fire,” “dumpster fire,” “raging calamity,” “humiliating disgrace”; you know, all the old standbys.) And that is this: They are a perfect candidate for a blowtorch.
They are a bad football team. And as they are presently constituted, they will be a bad football team for quite a long time to come. That is the most galling part about the 4-20 record the Giants have assembled across their last 24 games (including the playoff game in Green Bay that somehow was — are you ready for this — only 19 months ago).
These weren’t the Browns of recent vintage, or the old Buccaneers that took their sweet time compiling 10-loss seasons, or any of the teams that have spent an extended amount of time crawling through the league’s fetid basement; the Giants actually expected to win almost all of those 24 games.
They certainly expected to win last year, coming off 11-5. And Dave Gettleman announced what he believed the team was capable of by refusing to jettison his 37-year-old quarterback, choosing instead to build around him. So in a league known for tanking, the Giants were doing the exact opposite: They’ve been trying to win. AND THEY’VE TANKED ANYWAY!
So, yes, it is time — it is, in fact, well past time — for the Giants to embark on the kind of profound, top-to-bottom rebuild that the Knicks finally subscribed to. They have until 4 p.m. next Tuesday to hold the most eclectic garage sale the NFL has ever seen. This is how the flyers should read as they are stapled to every telephone pole and bulletin board across the league: MAKE BEST OFFER! EVERYTHING MUST GO! (EXCEPT SAQUON)
“Locker rooms have a way of moving past this and getting themselves right,” Shurmur said Tuesday. “That’s the view coaches and players must take.”
It is different for GMs and owners, though. Gettleman, John Mara and Steve Tisch have to see what everyone else sees: The Giants have to be torn down to the studs in order to rise again. The team made a fine first step in that direction Tuesday, swapping erstwhile firstround pick Eli Apple to New Orleans for a couple of low draft picks (one last savaging of ex-GM Jerry Reese’s tattered legacy).
But that can’t be it. There has to be more. The NFL isn’t Major League Baseball, where the days and hours leading up to July 31 every year are a 100-mph bazaar of activity. Franchise quarterbacks aren’t moved like Manny Machado (no matter how desperate — hello, Tom Coughlin — teams might be).
But if there was ever a time to explore the boundaries of what’s possible at the trading deadline, then Gettleman has
to do that, and the clock is ticking. One item — Barkley — stays in the bulletproof casing. Everyone else — yes, up to and including Odell Beckham Jr. and Eli Manning — is in play.
Beckham’s new deal probably makes him untradeable, besides the fact that he is a talented building block to pair with Barkley. Manning? The issue is that trading partners will probably want to lowball the Giants to death because, quite frankly, what 31 other teams see there is something completely different than what the Giants see, a player with a limited number of tomorrows and a whole lot of difficulty avoiding trouble in the pocket.
So maybe Eli gets to play out the string here.
But the Giants have to try. If there is one voice in Gettleman’s ear right now it should be that of Mike Ehrmantraut, the fixer from “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul” who is forever bemoaning half measures and eternally advocating full measures.
The Giants have tried half measures. The result is a 1-6 record and a football team that lies in state somewhere between unwatchable and unbearable. Only full measures will do now. Starting now.