New York Giants GM Dave Gettleman has made a plethora of head-scratching personnel moves during his tenure, here are the top ten worst.
If you’re familiar with this site, you’re likely already very in tune with how I feel about Dave Gettleman as a general manager. During my time here, I’ve made no secrets about the fact that I think the New York Giants set the franchise back for an untold amount of years by bringing the stubborn, anti-analytical former Big Blue staffer back to lead the team’s charge back to relevancy.
Through it all I’ve been called a hater, irrational and much worse – nothing I can’t handle (by the way, we already released a top ten best Gettleman moves list last month). I’ve tried to maintain consistency, and not get too emotional in terms of having my judging of his moves be too much about whether I like a particular player or not. My main problem with Gettleman has always been that he has no semblance of a concise, measured plan when it comes to this team’s path back to competitiveness.
As you’ll see over the course of this list, these moves are all over the map when it comes to sticking to a plan, as we’ve seen Gettleman’s infamous “winning while building” strategy has not been one that was ever possible. If Gettleman had took over the mess he inherited and made the (correct) move to blow it all up and start this thing over, I’d have almost no problem with him.
Instead, the archaic ex-scout attempted to put several band-aids on multiple bullet holes, and this franchise is now in a much-worse place than it what when he took over, when it was realistically only a few key players at a few key positions away from being competitive (which is no small task, but is nothing compared to what we’ve got now).
Since he took over, the Giants have the worst record in the NFL, and have no extra draft capital outside of their own inside the first sixth rounds of the 2020 draft (and only a middling amount of 2020 cap space).
When you realize that there are numerous teams that have been attempting to rebuild (like the Miami Dolphins, who punted away their 2019 season) that have managed to win more games than the win at all costs Giants, this mess becomes even more inexplainable.
When you couple this with how crass, pompous and patronizing he’s been throughout it all, it’s impossible to have any level of sympathy for the situation he took over, or cut him any slack for the many things that haven’t worked out
After reading through this list, you’ll likely be amazed to realize that all of these moves came within a span of just eighteen months, as most respected GMs don’t make anywhere near this amount of truly awful moves throughout their entire careers. While it wasn’t so hard to narrow this list down to ten it was excruciating to rank them 1-10, as they all are so indefensible.
While it’s true that Gettleman has been a solid talent evaluater when it comes to the draft (particularly late-round picks), he’s been as bad as it gets when it comes to free agency and trades (and that 2018 draft ain’t looking so hot anymore, either). That really speaks to my point that Gettleman is a scout, and not an executive, as executives are people that make decisions based not off emotion or gut, but logic and information.
In an effort to make this list as fair as possible, I attempted to weigh the moves out while factoring in the philosophy/reasoning behind them, the expectations of the player, how they fit in with the plan, and then the outcome.
Without any further ado, here are your top ten worst moves of the Dave Gettleman era.
Enjoy?