FLOWERS ARRANGEMENT
Giants need Flowers to step up
Giants might not replace Ereck Flowers on offensive line via draft, but they will make competition tough
WHEN Giants VP of player evaluation Marc Ross said Saturday that Ereck Flowers is so young that “he really should be coming out in this draft,” it really made you wonder why Ross and Jerry Reese and the Giants, then, drafted Flowers ninth overall out of Miami two years ago to play right away.
But enough of reliving the past. It happened. Flowers, who turned 23 last Tuesday, by all accounts is working his tail off to redeem himself from two unsatisfactory years to open his NFL career.
And while I’m just as uncomfortable as any Giants fan that Flowers remains Big Blue’s starting left tackle entering the 2017 season, I wouldn’t dismiss the Giants’ offseason or call their draft a failure because of it.
In the face of a crazy free agent market for tackles and a disappointing prospect class at that position, Reese has done the next best thing: he has added more competition and attitude to the offensive line, which should push Flowers even if there isn’t direct competition for his job out of the gate.
D.J. Fluker, 26, for example, is a 6-5, 339 pounder and former 11th overall pick of San Diego in 2013 who sounds hell bent on proving his doubters wrong. And while he figures more likely to compete with John Jerry at right guard or Bobby Hart at right tackle, Fluker and sixth-round pick Adam Bisnowaty (Pitt) give Ben McAdoo far more options than he had last year (none) to reconfigure his line in-game if and when Flowers struggles (even by shifting Justin Pugh to left tackle, perhaps?).
Also, not to give Reese a total pass, but Andrew Whitworth’s three-year, $33.75 million contract with the L.A. Rams is a perfect example of why the Giants weren’t able to get a top left tackle on the market.
What is Reese supposed to do if Whitworth, a career Cincinnati Bengal, would rather take the money from a bad-to-mediocre team than sign a lucrative one-year deal with a Super Bowl contender?
For now, without seeing Reese’s draft picks play in the NFL yet, overall I liked the Giants’ balanced and realistic approach to this draft. They needed to help the team both now (tight end, running back, defensive tackle, defensive end, offensive line) and in the long-term (quarterback), and they tried to do both.
To their starting offense they’ve added Brandon Marshall at receiver, Evan Engram (1st round, Ole Miss) at tight end/ receiver and Rhett Ellison at blocking tight end, and two potential starters in Wayne Gallman (fourth round, Clemson) at running back and Fluker at guard or tackle.
To their starting defense they’ve added Dalvin Tomlinson at defensive tackle and hopefully a healthy Darian Thompson (2016 third-round pick, Boise State) at free safety. If offensive tackles Garett Bolles (20th overall to Denver), Ryan Ramczyk (32nd to New Orleans) or Cam Robinson (34th to Jacksonville) pan out quickly as capable NFL starters, Reese will deserve the heat, though. And so, too, will McAdoo.
Don’t forget, the head coach is the one who said at the NFL Combine that Eli Manning needed to share a significant amount of the blame that the offensive line took last season.
“I think Eli needs to do a better job of playing with fast feet, and I think he needs to sit on that back foot in the pocket,” McAdoo said in an extensive critique of his quarterback.
You can bet McAdoo also was behind wanting Manning’s successor in the building as soon as possible, even if he didn’t know Davis Webb would be available in the third round to be that guy.
Manning didn’t have a good year in 2016. He turned the ball over too often and showed poor awareness on occasion. Still, it’s hard to erase the image of Manning grounding the ball into the turf in Minnesota in Week 4 with the Vikings’ rush on top of him immediately, the QB determined not to turn the ball over three times as he had the prior week.
McAdoo is kidding himself if he is brushing aside such lessons about his offensive line. Perhaps he knows, though, that he needs to build a more creative offense to help Manning also. There is only so much Reese can do in acquiring players.
McAdoo had a successful rookie season by most measures. Still, it was the coach who stapled veteran Rashad Jennings, a former Reese free agent signing, to the bench in Jennings’ first career playoff game and final game as a Giant in Green Bay.
It was the coach who for that playoff game benched free safety Andrew Adams — who started almost the whole season for one of the NFL’s best defenses — for Leon Hall. Aaron Rodgers promptly completed a crushing Hail Mary just before halftime and then shredded the secondary in the second half. Adams, who had helped force both of Rodgers’ interceptions in Week 5 against Big Blue, sat and watched.
Such isolated decisions shouldn’t have as great an impact on the 2017 Giants if their offense improves as much as Reese and McAdoo hope it will. But a lot of that hinges on Flowers.
“We still have high hopes for Ereck,” Ross said.
The Giants need their left tackle to take a major step forward. Otherwise, there will be another player sitting and watching: Manning, on his behind.