New York Giants: Offensive lineman reveals startling lack of coaching preparation
As if the New York Giants’ loss to the Jets wasn’t embarrassing enough, what an offensive lineman revealed about the coaching staff’s lack of preparation was even worse.
Eric Smith is not a name that many fans are familiar with, outside of the most diehard of all diehard New York Giants fans. Before yesterday, the backup offensive lineman – and former New York Jet – had never stepped on the field for an offensive play as one of the normal starting five. In fact, he wasn’t even a primary backup for most of the 2019 season after being picked up off waivers in September.
However, with Mike Remmers injured and Nick Gates filling in for him, Smith was the legitimate first option off the bench at either tackle spot. It goes without saying that the NFL is a brutally physical sport, and you’d like to think that a team’s coaching staff would have every player on the squad ready for any possible situation they could potentially be in – let alone one they’re only a play away from.
If you were thinking that about Giants Head Coach Pat Shurmur though, you’d be horribly wrong. Apparently being the team’s main backup offensive tackle doesn’t warrant getting any reps in practice. No, not just first team reps — but any, whatsoever. According to our friends over at ‘The Giant Insider Newspaper and Podcast’, Smith revealed a stunning lack of coaching preparation after being thrust into action due to Nate Solder’s concussion, after the game.
Heard in locker room that Eric Smith said this was the first snap he’s taken at LT all year. Even during the week, he only practiced in Jumbo package. With Remmers out, Smith was only an injury away, how he didn’t get a snap at either LT or RT is amazing. Gates practiced
— The Giant Insider Newspaper & Podcast (@GiantInsider) November 10, 2019
You don’t exactly have to be a football savant, or a quality control coach to understand just how truly mind-boggling that is. A player that was only one snap away at any time from being one of the team’s starting offensive tackles, did not find his way onto the practice field once this past week, or even at any time during the entire season. Maybe Pat Shurmur should stop worrying so much about if music is being played in the background, and more about running the type of practice that a pee wee coach wouldn’t even be proud of.
After hearing Shurmur’s coachspeak ad nauseam all year about how terrific the team has practiced, this hits even harder. I truly don’t believe that Eric Smith was in any way attempting to throw his coaching staff under the bus, but boy am I glad we were able to attain this tidbit, as it gives us just a glimpse of an inside look at the true coaching disadvantage this team has been suffering from for the better part of two seasons now.
Listen, it’s been a hot topic lately to crush Pat Shurmur lately and call for his firing – I’ve been guilty of it, myself. But even his biggest defender (not sure who that would even be at this point) couldn’t attempt to explain this as rational, particularly while evaluating the state of the offensive line, and the New York Giants in general. It goes directly in line with this coaching staff’s inability to prepare young players, and their refusal to even look at potential new pieces in a lost season.
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It’s fair to point out that this is Week 10 of the NFL season, and by this point practice time is dramatically scaled-down, and Big Blue was currently in their longest stretch of the season without a bye week. But in most ways, doesn’t that make this even worse? All the more reason to let the struggling veteran Nate Solder rest, while getting a look at a player that could potentially be a part of the future.
We saw how the results played out yesterday, and it wasn’t pretty. I’m going to go ahead and put about 0% of what went down on Eric Smith, and to his credit he was not pointing any fingers after the game. His teammates fully supported him, which was nice to see.
But when you couple this with the fact that Pat Shurmur has a bottom-five coaching record all-time amongst coaches with 50+ games, it begins to make more sense why the Giants have not reasonably appeared to have a legitimate coaching advantage at any point, during any game, in Shurmur’s tenure.
You can lump in his head to head matchup with the lowly Adam Gase yesterday, as even though he got a lot of out the passing offense, this startling lack of preparation just might be the final nail in the coffin for the embattled coach.
I know I’ve seen enough.