The Draw Play

In all my years of watching the New York Giants, I’m not sure any season has felt worse than 2024.

We didn’t exactly have a ton of hope entering the year. After an upstart 2022, 2023 was a disaster. Everyone regressed. Jones was ass and got hurt. Saquon looked washed up and slow. The defense crumbled, and Wink Martindale got into a feud with Brian Daboll behind the scenes and divorced. The team only managed the 6th overall pick, well short of the top 3 QB options. The Line was in dire need of repairs. Cap space was low. I would have been happy with 6-7 wins. I expected 5-7 wins. What I got instead was the football universe trolling me, and every other Giants fan, specifically.

It started with Saquon immediately bailing for Philadelphia. Giants fans knew he was gone, and letting him walk was still the right move. But he chose the enemy and had an attitude about it. I don’t judge Saquon for making the best choice for himself, his family, and his career. I do wish he handled it better. He knew what he was doing, he knew Giants fans would hate him for it, but he acted surprised by it. But while it hurt, it didn’t feel too bad, because if 2023 was anything to go by, he’d lost a step. He wasn’t Saquon anymore. He got caught from behind on breakaway runs, he didn’t cut the same way, he wasn’t the guy we drafted. We all understood he’d likely do better on the Eagles behind a much better line, but I don’t think any of us expected him to explode like this. He goes out and makes a legitimate MVP case for himself, almost breaking the damn single-season yardage record. He would have, if they didn’t take mercy on us in week 18. I’m honestly shocked we were spared that humiliation. For the rest of time Giants fans now have to listen to Eagles fans say “thanks for Saquon” and all we can do is get sad and angry about it.

All of this is made worse by Hard Knocks. Though it came out after the events, the new “Offseason” version of Hard Knocks focusing on Joe Schoen and the offseason process embarrasses the team horribly. Schoen is clearly done with Saquon and makes a few quips that would go on to haunt us. John Mara openly cries about how poorly he’ll sleep if Saquon leaves and goes to Philly. Joe Schoen’s own kid tells him to draft Jayden Daniels. These clips would be replayed endlessly on social media all year as easy dunks.

Xavier McKinney also leaves. One of Gettleman’s few good picks, the team lets X walk for some reason. He goes to Green Bay and takes all the interceptions with him. Like, all of them. He catches picks in almost every game and transforms Green Bay’s defense. The Giants defense, now stuck with the former Titans D-Coordinator operating a “bend and then break” style, gets 5 total interceptions, barely ahead of the Browns 4. The Giants pass rush isn’t actually too bad, but new expensive addition Brian Burns is merely good, not game-changing. Dexter Lawrence is having a great season in spite of everything…until he fucks up his elbow and goes on IR. Deonte Banks, a ray of hope in 2023, spends the year being cooked by every WR he faces, and it takes too long for the team to bench him.

The team enters the special 100th-year celebration season wearing the widely mocked Century Red uniforms. As a gimmick, they are silly, and I’m okay with silly gimmicks for one special occasion, but they function terribly in motion as the announcers can’t read the numbers to see who is who. It doesn’t help that they enter the game with reasonable expectations against a Vikings team stuck with Sam Darnold. While Darnold would eventually go on to prove this game isn’t a fluke, the defense gets bodied in the opener by a guy we’d all written off as a joke.

In week 2, the Commanders would not reach the endzone once. They would win anyway, because they kicked 7 field goals. The Giants are unable to outscore 21 points off of field goals, and miss several chances of their own after Gano is hurt and the team neglected to secure a backup kicker. The Commanders would only get better, completing what is by all accounts a miraculous turnaround. Jayden Daniels is the best rookie QB we’ve ever watched. Their draft class is perfect. The coaching is excellent. The Commies were supposed to be in year one of a long rebuild, and they reach the NFCCG and look to be a long-term contender. Whelp. At least the Cowboys are shit? The Giants are still unable to manage a win against the Cowboys, even without Dak.

In week 3 the Giants pass rush did their solemn duty and turned Deshaun Watson into paste for their first win of the season. This win would eventually push them out of the top 2 slots in the draft, but at least I got to see my team make Watson eat shit.

In week 5, coming off a Lions hangover week, the Giants beat Seattle for their most perplexing win of the year. This game in particular pissed me off because I almost went to it. I never go to football games because my team is rarely within reasonable monetary reach. I eventually decided I didn’t want to pay a couple hundred dollars to drive 3 hours to Seattle and watch my team eat shit. Of course that’s the game they win. Assholes. But hey! The team is now 2-3. They aren’t good, but they are on track to what we more of less expect.

The Giants would then lose 10 games in a row, a franchise record for consecutive failure. Highlights include:
-Scoring 7 total points in primetime against a Bengals defense so bad it wastes an MVP-level year from Joe Burrow
-Letting Barkley run all over them in his Met-life return
-Choking against a very beatable Steelers team thanks to Daniel Jones making one of the worst throws of his career and then the offense deciding to not double team TJ Watt on 4th down.
-The nadir of the year comes in Germany in front of an international crowd, as the team crumbles against the then-considered worst team in football, the Carolina Panthers. Daniel Jones is benched, cut, and signs with the Vikings practice squad. The locker room is furious, seeing the benching for what it is, a financial business move to avoid risking paying Jones for injury.
-The Giants go with Tommy Cutlets, last year’s feel-good story, instead of the #2 QB Drew Lock. Many are confused. DeVito gets hurt in a Buccaneers slaughter anyway.
-Drew Lock proves to everyone why they didn’t start him as they lose to the Dak-less Cowboys.
-The Giants get their game-tying field goal attempt blocked in New Orleans
-DeVito starts again for the Ravens game. He gets concussed. Drew Lock is hurt, so the Giants are forced to give snaps to Tim Boyle.
-Airplanes start flying “fire everyone” type banners over Met-life during every home game

After that mess, the team is 2-13 and in firm control of the #1 pick. The problem is that a plethora of teams have also decided to be absolute ass at the same time. The Titans, Browns, Raiders, Panthers, Patriots, Jaguars, and Jets are all 4-wins or less. A single win can send a team flying down the order. The Raiders just won a game and are now deep in the ranks. The Giants have to lose 2 more games, against a mediocre Colts team fighting for the playoffs, and probably the Eagles backups. They decide this is the week to show up. They obliterate the Colts, in a win that makes essentially nobody happy except the Patriots, Browns, and Titans, who are now ahead of the Giants in draft order.

They go out and lose the final game of the season to the Eagles backups. Thanks to the Patriots winning, the Giants now own the #3 pick. They now face a dilemma of hoping the Browns or Titans do not draft one of the top 2 QBs, or trading up assets they cannot afford to lose to ensure they can grab Cam Ward or Shadeur Sanders. Both QBs of course are pathetic prospects compared to the 2024 draft’s 6 QBs, all of whom had promising success during the season (outside JJ McCarthy, who missed the year).

Surely this is the time to reset. Joe Schoen has had a single good draft in his 3 seasons. His other drafts have been full of busts or mediocre guys, he’s terrible at securing depth, his cap management has been poor, the Daniel Jones deal is awful. Daboll has done a terrible job coaching them up. He’s gotten into feuds with Wink. He stripped Mike Kafka of playcalling, only to also call bad plays, and now I have no idea what Kafka even does. The Giants just had the worst season in their 100 year history. They can’t pull a Bears and bring on the future of the franchise in this lame-duck situation, right? Whelp. Mara basically tells everyone that he’s mad and disappointed and not sure the team is headed in the right direction…but fires nobody. Mara doesn’t want to do any work finding new people. Cool shit.

Then, within the past week, the Hall of Fame changes their voting rules to make admission even harder, and as a result Eli’s borderline case gets denied first ballot, and his future induction is now in much worse condition. Then the Eagles and Saquon go and win a Super Bowl.

My only positives this season were that Malik Nabers is cool, Tyrone Tracy and Tyler Nubin are neat, and the rest of the draft class might pan out okay. Nabers set the rookie WR record for completions and would own the rookie record overall if Brock Bowers didn’t exist. Considering he missed a few games, that’s pretty rad. At least Daniel Jones is gone, and we’ve finally moved on to new mistakes. I hesitate to say it can’t get any worse, because it can, but not by much. Any faith I had left in this franchise’s decision-makers is simply gone. From the top down I trust nobody. I have no expectations, I have no faith, I will hate everything that happens until they prove they are worth cheering for.