Underachievement

Well, it took about a half a day to settle down and remove (most of the, I hope) emotion from the discussion of yesterday’s game.  I really do not want to dwell on individual players performances.  They ran the gamut.  This is a NY Giants fan’s blog.  It is not for reporting as much as discussing what is really going on.  Here, we get to cut to the chase and get after what is going on behind the headline and talk about trends, causes and effects.  What bothers Giants fans with half a clue is serial underachievement.

Tom Coughlin has been with the Giants for 12 seasons, counting 2015.  Because he has been with the team for 2 Super Bowls, he is anointed.  But as I have reminded blog followers in the past, if winning Super Bowls was a license to keep coaching, Chuck Noll would still be Head Coach of the Steelers.  And Noll is dead.  There is a time where you move forward.  Now I know that Tom Coughlin actually has the ability to win another title.  But he needs a much better hand to play in order to make that happen, all else equal.  He misplays hands that can win games. He makes mistakes that cost the team.  At the end of ugly losses, he stands there on the podium and takes responsibility for the product.  Yet this happens over and over and over again.  When is it time to move on?  When do results matter more than loyalty?

This blog has pioneered the effort through literally a dozen+ posts to discuss injuries with the NY Giants in a new light.  By examining data, speaking to experts, and investigating the practices of other NFL teams, we have built (what I believe is) a pretty clear case that the team has underachieved on the injury front for 7 consecutive seasons.  Why do I bring this up now?  Because part of the reason the NY Giants give up 52 points in a single game and allow the Saints to put on a clinic is because of injuries.  They matter.  Prince Amukamara’s pectoral strain/tear was telegraphed by our work many months ago when we asked how a single franchise could have 3 players with pectoral MUSCLE tears within the same calendar year.  How could Walter Thurmond, Robert Ayers and Will Beatty all be hit with the same muscle injury in such a short period of time?  We connected those dots.  No one else even MENTIONED this ANYWHERE.  And then when it became FOUR PLAYERS, with Amukamara’s injury this year, no one wanted to discuss it except us.  Well, DRC is playing hurt.  Ayers is not 100%, Beason is not on the field, Kennard has a hamstring injury where he comes back less than 100%, and Amukamara is not on the field because of yet another muscle soft tissue injury.  Amukamara not being on the field was easily one of the biggest issues with why the NY Giants lost.  He is a competent and solid CB.  Like dominoes, he allows other CBs who do not play as well or as consistently as a Round 1 draft choice to match up on weaker opponents or stay on the sideline.  Think Trevin Wade.  Think any competent QB like Brees undressing Wade.  Who would you rather have out there, Amukamara or the depleted condition with Trevin Wade?  It is at this point that the nattering naysayers hit that reflex button and say, hey, injuries are excuses, they are a part of the game, everybody has them.  Generally speaking, that is absolutely true.  But in the light of Coughlin, it is not true.  He has watched his conditioning program devolve and has done nothing to change it.  He has had 7 consecutive seasons with an above average rate as compared to his peers, and it costs him.  It costs him dearly on days like this.  For sure, the lack of a pass rush is a killer.  And yes, it was not his fault that JPP went off playing with fireworks.  But those are the props, the noise, which allow others to gloss over the facts of the insane rate of injuries.  The NY Giants offense was as potent as ever yesterday.  Imagine where it would be with Will Beatty and Victor Cruz, two more players who have had soft tissue injuries.  Or the hamstring of Reuben Randle.  Each player has his own story, and you can say that Randle lacks/ed effort.  But COLLECTIVELY, the final product of 53 players is Tom Coughlin’s.  So when you are last in the NFL in highest injury rate for 2 (and likely 3 when the dust settles on 2015?) years, it is your collective problem to address.  Or not.

One of the worst moments for this franchise came in 2010 when the Giants surrendered a 3 TD lead in the last 7 minutes of a game and lost to the Eagles 38-31 after leading 31-10.  The game was lost in regulation when DeSean Jackson ran back a punt for a win with seconds remaining.  The comparison to yesterday’s ending was palpable.  Lou Musto called this a duplicate of Meadowlands II.  He nailed it.  This was yet more underachievement.  To have the game end like this was nothing short of negligence, to allow a shootout to be decided because you can’t punt the ball away out of bounds (or at the sideline) with so little time remaining.  Chance favors the prepared mind.  Bad things are ALLOWED to happen, like punters grabbing face masks, when the opponent is even in the POSITION to make a punt return.  None was necessary.  The team could not even make it to OT after fighting valiantly to take a 7 point lead.

And where is Jerry Reese in all of this?  If Coughlin is responsible for serial underperformance via poor clock management and consistent injuries well above the league average, doesn’t that exonerate Reese for having given his Head Coach the requisite talent?  That is a more complicated question.  But the answer is that it takes two to tango.  Together, both are involved in personnel decisions.  Back in the day, George Young was the sole final voice on personnel.  This was part of the reason why Parcells left.  Today, as I understand it, while Reese has the final say on personnel, he is also much more connected to other voices in the administration, including Coughlin.  As but one example, Mara voiced displeasure at the rate of raw draft picks, and dictated that the team start selecting on current ability instead of potential.  Reese is still the general architect.  So when his OL corroded this decade, it was his house that was crumbling.  And when we have watched 9 years of underwhelming (if not horrible neglect of) Linebackers, it was Reese’s house that was crumbling.  One of the reasons why the Giants have continually gotten abused year after year by Tight Ends is that Reese cannot find a LBer to cover them.  And when he finally does, in the 5th round with Kennard, Coughlin’s conditioning machine turns him into yet another hamstring soft tissue injury.  Now that is what I call tag team wrestling.  For sure, LBers don’t always cover TEs.  Sometimes you need the speed of a Safety to match up. But Safety is yet another dumpster fire for the NY Giants GM.  So every time you see a TE abuse the Gmen, look no further than Reese.

Giants fans can take a loss.  If we support a team, we just want to believe that it is doing the best it can do.  Yesterday’s 52-49 loss to the Saints was more underachievement.  Losing double digit leads to DAL and ATL in Weeks 1 and 2 was more underachievement.  The team is 4-4 and in first place vs the Romo-less NFC East.  Games are being lost because of underachievement.  In 2011, the only time in the last 6 years the Giants made the playoffs, there was underachievement then as well, as the team eked out a 9-7 record with a host of miracles to win a title.  That year covered up a myriad of problems surfacing.  Is it enough that the Giants win a division by default (DAL, arguably the best team, is now 2-5) and get more of the same?  The insane thing I will admit is that with Cruz and Beatty back, the Giants can actually make some noise.  Yet that fact is part of the reason why the team underachieves to date.  The bottomline for me as a fan is that I’d rather root for a High School that is 2-14 in the NFL with 2 wins from overachievement than root for a 8-8 team that should be 11-5 and underachieves. This is why I keep going back to Bill Parcells, who was the standard bearer.  He could take the team on either sideline and win with either of them.  I cannot say the same for Coughlin.  It was Parcells who said that “there is winning, and there is misery.”  Yesterday was misery.  Our loyalty as fans is still there.  We will be back at it next week.  And we will hope for Beatty and Cruz’s return.  And we will try to believe that this team can win a shootout in the Super Bowl vs Brady.  But that was 2011’s miracle.  Let’s manage expectations and note that we have more underachievement than miracles these days.