Dave Gettleman’s failures largely to blame for NY Giants’ 0-5 start and sizable gap between championship caliber teams across the NFL
The NY Giants‘ offense showed some promise in Sunday’s 37-34 loss to the Dallas Cowboys, but still were unable to pick up their first win of the season despite facing the NFL’s lowest-ranked scoring defense.
Dominoes began to fall across the NFL with the firings of Houston Texans head coach/general manager Bill O’Brien and the Atlanta Falcons blowing out general manager Thomas Dimitroff and head coach Dan Quinn.
Head coach Joe Judge isn’t in any danger at this point, but NY Giants co-owner John Mara would be doing his franchise a disservice if there are not serious conversations about general manager Dave Gettleman’s future throughout the executive suite of Quest Diagnostics Training Center this week.
The Giants are now Judge’s team, but the team Gettleman handed the first-time head coach this season is fatally flawed on both sides of the football, and looks lightyears away from being able to play meaningful football.
The only meaningful games the Giants will play this season will be the ones that impact whether they’ll own the No. 1 overall pick next April.
Even in the NFC East where the four teams have combined for four wins through 20 games, the Giants at 0-5 are a sinking ship in a river of burning napalm with no rescue boats in sight.
That starts with Gettleman.
Scroll through for a look at five reasons why the Giants are 0-5, thanks in large part to Gettleman’s antiquated philosophies and missteps both in free agency and the draft over the past three seasons:
Dave Gettleman’s poor drafting
Debate over positional value when it comes to choosing running back Saquon Barkley No. 2 overall in the misguided hope he would help drag Eli Manning on one last playoff run aside, Gettleman has not done nearly enough to bolster the talent throughout the depth chart in the draft.
With the exception of Barkley (when healthy, which is exceedingly rare with the running back out for the season with a torn ACL after missing 13 games last season with a high-ankle sprain), nose tackle Dexter Lawrence looks like the only “cornerstone” player Gettleman has drafted in the first round.
First-round pick DeAndre Baker is facing four counts of armed robbery with a firearm, Daniel Jones flashes moments of tantalizing potential but can’t seem to consistently protect the football, Will Hernandez looks like a mediocre at best offensive lineman, and Lorenzo Carter has upside but has yet to take a leap towards showing double-digit sack potential.
Wide receiver Darius Slayton, a fifth-round choice in 2019, at times looks like a top receiver but goes stretches where he’s a non-factor.
Meanwhile, Gettleman traded away an elite gamebreaker and generational talent at wide receiver in Odell Beckham Jr.
The harsh reality the Giants are facing is that they simply do not have enough superstar caliber players on the roster. For every James Bradberry or Lawrence, there’s a Ryan Lewis, Sam Beal, or Ryan Connelly that never quite worked out and were a waste of resources.
Don’t forget, Gettleman traded a third-round pick for Leonard Williams, hoping to give a 2-6 team a shot in the arm and evaluate if he was worth signing as a free agent a few months later.
This roster is not deep enough, talented enough, or experienced enough to win around a quarterback who hasn’t proven capable of elevating the players around him, whom the organization must decide in 18 months or so whether to make him one of the NFL’s highest-paid players at his position.
It shouldn’t be surprising that the Giants are 0-5, the only shocker would be if Gettleman is allowed to oversee another trade deadline later this month …
Misguided confidence in NY Giants’ wide receivers
Few positions underscore Gettleman’s hubris than the current state of the receiving corps.
Days after trading Beckham in 2019, Gettleman signed Golden Tate, who missed four games for violating the NFL’s PED policy last season missed one more due to a concussion. Sterling Shepard has missed 14 games dating back to 2017. Even Slayton missed time due to a hamstring injury as a rookie.
Yet, Gettleman and the Giants did not sign a marquee free agent this past spring, and decided to sit out a loaded receiver class in April’s draft that included second-round picks Chase Claypool (four touchdowns Sunday), Justin Jefferson (19 catches for 371 yards and a touchdown in five games), and others.
That’s how a team winds up playing someone named Damion Ratley meaningful snaps. Ratley’s illegal pick-play nullified a 31-yard Slayton touchdown in Sunday’s loss to the Dallas Cowboys.
As teams like the Baltimore Ravens drafting Hollywood Brown, Philadelphia Eagles, signing Alshon Jeffery, Los Angeles Rams trading for Brandin Cooks, and Arizona Cardinals trading for DeAndre Hopkins showed the value of pairing rookie or second-year quarterbacks with reliable and game-breaking receivers, the Giants stood pat.
As a result, Gettleman and the Giants did a disservice to Jones’ development and this season’s potential.
Inability to identify premium talent at cornerback
Credit Gettleman where it’s due, James Bradberry has emerged as an elite cornerback in zone coverage and might be the Giants’ best all around defender.
However, Gettleman essentially wasted a third-round pick when the Giants took a flier in the 2018 supplemental draft on Sam Beal. Corey Ballentine, a sixth-round pick, has been a liability in coverage and been benched multiple times in his first two seasons.
The Giants were forced to play Ryan Lewis meaningful snaps Sunday, in part because quarterabcks have frequently targeted rookie Darnay Holmes, who has a 36.9 overall grade from Pro Football Focus.
In an era where the field is tilted significantly in favor of elite quarterbacks and passing offenses, Gettleman’s mishandling of the cornerback position in and of itself should be a fireable offense.
However, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that the Giants’ secondary continues to be a revolving door — outside of James Bradberry and possible deadline trade candidate Logan Ryan — because Gettleman steadfastly believes that games are won by effectively running the football and stopping the run.
Meanwhile, championship-caliber organizations have taken to building their defenses from back to front, while the Giants have won 9 of 37 games with Gettleman calling the shots.
Daniel Jones’ continued inability to protect the football … or come through in the clutch
Gettleman triumphantly awaited reporters at the entrance of the visiting locker room of Raymond James Stadium after Daniel Jones orchestrated a fourth-quarter comeback in his first career start against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers last September.
Jones has just one other fourth-quarter comeback, last December against Washington.
In the NFL, a team either has an elite quarterback capable of elevating the players around him, or they don’t.
Jones has made 18 starts after being chosen No. 6 overall in the 2019 NFL Draft and has yet to offer a signature performance that completely reinforces the Giants’ faith in him.
Jones, to be fair, has shown glimpses, such as a 352-yard and five-touchdown performance against Washington last fall, or tossing four touchdowns in a loss to the Detroit Lions.
However, too often, Jones’ moments of brilliance are undone by one or more of his 31 career turnovers, or as was the case Sunday, stalling out on a possible game-winning field goal drive in the game’s final minutes.
Perhaps Jones will be able to build on his 222-yard performance Sunday and continue to find his footing in his third offensive scheme in as many seasons. But, if the Giants are picking first in next April’s NFL Draft, Gettleman likely will not be making the selection, and it will mean Jones did not do enough to dissuade the organization from taking Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence.
Never ending offensive line rebuild
It’s a tale as old as time, the Giants struggling along the offensive line.
Gettleman vowed to rebuild the offensive line upon arrival, and boasted this summer that the Giants were “closer than ever,” to completing the rebuild after drafting left tackle Andrew Thomas No. 4 overall and signing veteran journeyman Cam Fleming at right tackle.
However, the missteps along the offensive line have only created a succession of tripwires the past three seasons.
Missing out on guard Andrew Norwell in free agency in 2018 led Gettleman to make Nate Solder the highest-paid offensive line ever, only for the former New England Patriots tackle to go bust in his two seasons with the Giants.
Patrick Omameh didn’t even finish his first season with the Giants after signing that same spring. Gettleman never drafted a possible replacement to push Ereck Flowers at right tackle, which as led to Band-aids Mike Remmers and Fleming starting there the past two seasons.
Despite throwing draft picks, premium money in free agency, and acquiring right guard Kevin Zeitler as part of the Beckham trade with the Browns, the Giants still field one of the league’s worst offensive lines — including a center who never played a snap at the position at any level of football before this year’s season opener.
For as much as Gettleman boasts about the value of “Hog Mollies,” he has somehow left the Giants’ offensive line worse than it was upon his arrival, which has severely stunted Jones’ development and sabotaged any hope of running the football.
The Giants aren’t going to be in a position to compete for the playoffs, or consistently play competitively in games, until the talent across the offensive line significantly improves.
That might wind up being Gettleman’s ultimate failure.
Matt Lombardo is the site expert for GMenHQ, and writes Between The Hash Marks each Wednesday for FanSided. Follow Matt on Twitter: @MattLombardoNFL.