With the NY Giants having clinched their fourth double-digit loss season in as many years with Dave Gettleman at the helm, it’s safe to say his time as general manager is coming to an end.
It seems as though Dave Gettleman’s tenure as NY Giants general manager is mercifully coming to an end, even if two years too late.
Before Gettleman was hired as the Giants general manager, Jerry Reese held the position from 2007-2017. Those 11 seasons consisted of two Super Bowl wins, but only two other playoff appearances in the other nine seasons, including four losing seasons in the final five years of his tenure.
Despite the two Super Bowl wins coming while Reese was GM, it was his predecessor Ernie Accorsi who built the foundation of those teams while Reese was the director of player personnel.
As GM, Reese did no favors for his successor, drafting Evan Engram, Eli Apple and Ereck Flowers in the 1st round in his final three drafts with the NY Giants.
However, Gettleman did very little to clean up Reese’s mistakes, and instead put the organization in an unideal salary cap predicament with very little to show for it.
To Gettleman’s credit, he definitely added some talent to a team that was bereft of it before he got there, but he made a few too many mistakes when building the team’s foundation to maximize the club’s potential.
Here’s a look at the good, bad, and very ugly of Dave Gettleman’s time as NY Giants GM:
The Good
You’d be hard-pressed to find any general manager of four years that didn’t do at least one good thing for a franchise.
For Gettleman, there are certainly some moves he can hang his hat on, despite a myriad of decisions that overshadow his tenure, and rightfully so.
For starters, the Odell Beckham Jr. trade was a net positive for Gettleman and company.
Beckham’s relationship with the organization was fractured prior to Gettleman’s arrival and at that point it seemed impossible to mend, even after he was signed to the lucrative extension he wanted.
Landing a 1st round pick, a third-round pick and a quality safety in Jabrill Peppers for an unhappy, injury-prone wide receiver on a massive deal is a good job by Gettleman. Although Peppers’ time as a Giant has likely come to an end after having suffered a season-ending injury earlier this year as a pending free agent, his career with the Giants will still end up more favorable than Beckham’s with the Cleveland Browns.
With that 2019 1st round pick from Cleveland, Gettleman selected defensive tackle Dexter Lawerence, who has had a promising start to his career anchoring the interior for the Giants. Alongside him is Leonard Williams, who was acquired in a trade with the Jets, a move that was criticized initially.
Despite Williams not living up to the hype with the Jets, Gettleman shipped off a conditional 4th round pick and a 5th round pick to acquire the former USC product in a mid-season trade. Over the final eight games of the year, Williams had just ½ of a sack and two tackles for loss. For Gettleman, that was enough to sign him to the franchise tag, turning that conditional 4th round pick into a 3rd round pick.
Needless to say, Williams balled out in 2020 to the tune of 11.5 sacks and 14 tackles for loss, leading the Giants to a top 10 defensive finish.
Whether Gettleman’s decision to extend Williams to a lucrative 3-year, $63 million deal was the right decision or not is a discussion for a different day.
Gettleman has found a little more success in the draft, particularly in his last two classes. For starters, he seemed to find his franchise left tackle in Andrew Thomas, a playmaking safety in Xavier McKinney, an electric weapon in Kadarius Toney and a productive edge rusher in Azeez Ojulari.
The Bad
Although he’s had some better picks in recent years, there’s plenty to scrutinize from Gettleman’s tenure regarding the draft.
Especially in his first couple as the NY Giants’ general manager.
For starters, he consistently neglected edge rushers as a premier position and a massive need for the defense.
One of Gettleman’s first moves was trading away defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers along with a 4th round pick, and in return received a third and a fourth-round pick.
The decision to trade JPP wasn’t necessarily a bad one, as he never lived up to the player he was in 2011 and it got the Giants out from under the remaining three years left on an extension that Jerry Reese gave to him.
However, Gettleman drafted defensive tackle B.J. Hill and quarterback Kyle Lauletta with the picks from the deal. Hill fizzled out in his three years with the Giants before resurging with the Bengals in 2021 following a trade for center Billy Price, while Lauletta lasted just one season as a backup to Eli Manning and hasn’t seen an NFL snap since.
Additionally, Gettleman selected Lorenzo Carter in the 3rd round and signed Kareem Martin to a three-year, $15 million deal to make up for the loss of JPP off the edge. Safe to say those guys inadequately filled the hole, as Martin tallied just 1.5 sacks in 21 games across two years with the team, while Carter has struggled to find consistency in his four years with the team .
Oshane Ximines was drafted in 2019 in the 3rd round and has played just 13 games between 2020 and 2021. Markus Golden was signed in 2019, recorded 10 sacks before being traded the following season to the Arizona Cardinals for a 6th round pick, where he has tallied 11 sacks this season. Ximines, much like Carter, hasn’t panned out while Golden has produced nicely with Arizona.
As aforementioned, Azeez Ajulari has turned out a quality rookie season as an edge rusher notching eight sacks so far, but it’s too little, too late for a defense that’s long been starved of production at one of the most important positions in football.
On the offensive side of the ball, Gettleman gave his first large extension to Beckham, whom he was able to deal after just one year, but then he signed a 31-year old Golden Tate to a 4-year, $37.5 million deal the following offseason. Tate amassed just over a thousand yards in 23 games across two seasons. Not to mention the time he was relegated to the scout team for publicly vocalizing his displeasure with his role in the offense.
Gettleman also gave afour4-year, $72 million deal to Kenny Golladay, who dealt with a plethora of injuries in Detroit and he handed out a 4-year, $41 million deal to Sterling Shepard, who has played just one full season since his rookie year.
Golladay and Shepard are good players, but to give them both lucrative deals before drafting Kadarius Toney in the 1st round seems like improper use of funds and/or draft capital.
The Ugly
Where things really fell apart from the start of Gettleman’s tenure is his failure to construct a competent offensive line. After grading out in the bottom half of the league in 2018 and 2019 according to PFF, the line has only gotten worse, ranking 31st in 2020 and 28th through week 15 of 2021.
As of right now, there’s just one offensive lineman who’s worthy of a locked-in spot on the 53-man roster next year and that’s Andrew Thomas, who has really found a groove despite battling injuries (and bad coaching).
Instead of signing Golladay to a $72 million deal with $40 million guaranteed, there were a handful of offensive lineman out there that signed for similar or less money.
G Joe Thuney: 5 years, $80 million ($48 million guaranteed)
C Corey Linsley: 5 years, $62.5 million ($26 million guaranteed)
G Matt Feiler: 3 years, $21 million (14.5 million guaranteed)
C David Andrews: 4 years, $19 million ($6.5 million guaranteed)
C Alex Mack: 3 years, $14.85 million ($5.6 million guaranteed)
All five of those players have not only played more games than Golladay this season, but each one of them have graded out better than each of the Giants’ interior lineman through week 16, according to PFF.
Sure, Nick Gates and Shane Lemieux suffering season-ending injuries early on was something that couldn’t be foreseen, but even so, Gates was an undrafted guard who transitioned to center last year and did a below average job. Meanwhile, Lemieux was selected in the 5th round in 2020 and performed mostly unspectacularly as a rookie, as PFF ranked him last among all offensive lineman to play at least 300 snaps.
Upon becoming GM, Gettleman inherited an offensive line group that had Ereck Flowers, Justin Pugh, Weston Richburg, John Jerry, Brett Jones, Cameron Fleming, Bobby Hart, D.J. Fluker and Chad Wheeler. Ereck Flowers and Chad Wheeler were retained by Gettleman in 2018, although Flowers was cut in October and Wheeler was cut the following preseason.
Everyone else either walked in free agency or was cut, most notably Richburg and Pugh, both of which signed solid deals with the Niners and Cardinals, respectively. Gettleman opted to sign longtime Patriots tackle Nate Solder to a massive 4-year, $62 million contract, making him the highest paid offensive lineman in the NFL despite Solder having never been named an All Pro or even a Pro Bowler in his time in New England.
After overpaying for Solder, Gettleman took Saquon Barkley with the 2nd overall pick in the 2018 draft. It’s been proven time and time again that you can find good running backs all throughout the draft. For example, all six of the Pro Bowl running backs this year were selected after the first round.
Some theorize that Gettleman was urged or even forced into taking Barkley due to the fact that he was the consensus best prospect in the draft, and the ownership wanted to get Eli Manning one last run at a playoff appearance. While I think there could be some truth to that, the pick will ultimately appear on Gettleman’s record, and that’s mostly what matters when evaluating his tenure.
To take a player that high at a position that’s known to suffer injuries with a short shelf-life for the peak of their careers was a massive oversight by Gettleman. Sure, Barkley was electric his first two seasons, but once the injuries piled up, there was no going back as running back is such a physically demanding position.
There were a number of directions Gettleman could’ve gone that would’ve put this team in a better situation long-term, but ultimately, drafting Barkley and inking Solder to a massive deal will go down as what sunk the Gettleman and the Giants.