This is what rock bottom looks like, New York Giants

The New York Giants hit rock bottom, losing their 100th game since 2011 on Sunday afternoon, finishing last place in the NFC East for the third time in a decade

The silence you heard emanating from East Rutherford as the New York Giants and Washington Football Team closed out their season in front of an essentially empty MetLife Stadium shows how far the Giants are from relevance.

Sunday’s 22-7 defeat closed out New York’s third last-place finish in the NFC East, and was the franchise’s 100th defeat since last hoisting the Lombardi Trophy as winners of Super Bowl XLVI following the 2011 season.

From a lack of star-caliber players to excite fans, limited cap space this upcoming offseason, and myriad questions all over the roster, things couldn’t be much worse for the New York Giants.

The New York Giants aren’t just bad, they aren’t just largely hopeless, from a fan interest and national significance standpoint they are irrelevant.

Here’s a look at just how far the New York Giants have fallen, and how far away the franchise is from mattering again:

Fan apathy

Sports franchises can survive their fanbase being angry, showing up in droves to boo, or burning down the phone lines of sports talk radio stations to vent about the head coach or another close loss.

New York Giants fans don’t even have that kind of passion, anymore.

In the hours leading up to Sunday’s game, there were 3,172 tickets available with several seats going for just $6.00.

By some accounts, there wound up being fewer than 15,000 fans in the seats.

Sunday was obviously mitigating circumstances; Jake Fromm at quarterback, a last place team, freezing rain in the forecast, but it was more the norm for East Rutherford Sundays than some sort of exception.

Throughout the course of this season — and many times over the past three years — the contingent of visiting fans has been sizable, be it Philadelphia Eagles fans making the short trip up I-95, or Las Vegas Raiders fans or Denver Broncos fans making a nearly cross country cavalcade, their presence has been felt.

Even at Eli Manning’s final game in a New York Giants uniform in 2019, the stadium was half empty by the time head coach Pat Shurmur pulled him in the fourth quarter for a curtain call against the Dolphins.

In an era where NFL attendance is booming, the New York Giants have struggled to keep invested fans in the seats.

No star players

This is an atrocious roster.

And an expensive one.

And one that lacks stars.

Each preseason, the NFLPA reveals the top 50 jersey sales entering the season. This year, the only new York Giants player on the list was Saquon Barkley. Barkley was No. 32.

For the second time in three years, the New York Giants did not have a Pro Bowl player. Graham Gano, the kicker, was the New York Giants’ most deserving player of the accolade.

It’s no wonder, when with no star players to pull for, New York Giants fans’ interest in the franchise is tepid.

It is asking a lot, even for the largest media market in the country, to care about a team that does not have star-caliber players to pull for. And largely, fans have checked out.

Poor drafts, poor signings, poor roster management have buried Giants

Dave Gettleman ends his tenure as New York Giants general manager with a 19-46 record, and there might not be an individual not named John Mara more responsible for the organization’s backslide into irrelevancy.

Gettleman’s antiquated NFL Draft philosophies, inability to manage the salary cap, and free agency failures have set his successor up to be tasked with mining four new starting offensive linemen while needing to figure out whether Daniel Jones is the answer at quarterback, among other pressing questions.

Over the past two seasons, the New York Giants are 10-23, and the organization is tied with the New York Jets for the most losses in the NFL since 2017.

This isn’t a case of Philadelphia 76ers fans’ fervent passion for the organization losing to acquire top draft picks that ultimately became Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons, while cheering on Sam Hinkie as he tore down the roster to create cap space in hopes of luring LeBron James or other superstars to Philadelphia.

No, this is not a “The Process,” I was an on-air sports radio host for 97.5 FM The Fanatic in Philadelphia during Hinkie’s teardown, this is a botched philosophy of aiming to win with one toe in the rebuilding pool.

The New York Giants tried to rebuild while winning, but instead turned off a fan base who knew the philosophy was fatally flawed, and destined to fail. Which it has. Spectacularly.

How do New York Giants turn it around?

Terry Bradshaw summed up the state of the New York Giants perfectly.

Asked on the Week 18 edition of FOX NFL Sunday why Giants fans should be optimistic about the future, Bradshaw offered a scathing view of how far a once-proud franchise has backslid over the past decade into irrelevancy.

“I can’t,” Bradshaw said. “It’s a bad, bad, bad job. It’s a bad coaching job by Joe Judge, and a bad GM job by Dave Gettleman.”

If New York Giants fans are looking for hope, a pair of top-10 picks in the 2022 NFL Draft are meaningful assets that could make a tangible impact on the trajectory of the franchise.

Likewise, there will be a new general manager calling the shots in New York.

However, fans looking for quick changes or marquee free agent signings, are going to be disappointed.

It would seem that the New York Giants are finally going to be forced into a teardown and long overdue rebuild, after the failures of Gettleman’s free-agent spending sprees the past two offseasons and miscalculations in the NFL Draft, leading back to 2018.

The New York Giants’ front office so badly mismanaged the salary cap that the Giants couldn’t even field 46 active players Sunday afternoon.

Gettleman’s successor inherits just $2.7 million in cap space, with $49 million tied to signing bonus money in 2022 and another $9.4 million in roster bonuses. This will not be a quick, or easy turnaround.

But, two premium draft picks and potentially a new direction from an outside voice could be a solid first step in the right direction for a franchise that has made countless missteps over the past decade.