32 Teams/32 Days 2022: New York Giants

32 Teams/32 Days Hub

Team

New York Giants

Division

NFC East

Record

4-13, 1-5 in the division (4th place). But at least we beat Philly once.

Playoffs

Lol can you imagine?

Preface

I only had two weeks to write this after the previously tapped author dropped out, so I tried to spend my time on the parts I thought people would be more interested in (Golladay, for example). There's probably some stuff I completely missed, and some stuff I got wrong. Just remember all this before you write some ten page screed on how I'm an idiot because I wrote that Saquon ran for 95 yards in a game when it was really 96 yards, or ask why I didn't go into Belichick-level depth about Julian Love's versatility as a DB.

Warning: I didn't even pretend that I made this without the benefit of hindsight and the season having already happened. Grades/needs/etc. all are made with the benefit of hindsight. I can't pretend the season didn't happen already, and I'm not going to even try.

Overview and Pre-Season Overview

Look, I don't need to explain that New York is objectively the greatest city to ever exist: Past, present, and future. That’s just common knowledge. In contrast, our sports teams are more befitting of a lesser city; let’s say Cleveland.

We’re long-past the glory days of LT and absolute household legends like Scott Brunner. The Coughlin years were similarly good to us, and this absolute adonis still strikes fear into the heart of every Pats fan. The last few seasons have been bad, starting with this man who looks like he should be offering children candy out of a sketchy white van. 3 (now 4) coaches removed from Coughlin, we’re still struggling.

Coming into this season there was some cautious optimism: Judge hadn’t completely imploded his first year, and after 2020’s OL draft spree and signings, plus this year’s additions of Golladay and Toney this year, it was looking like we might even improve on 6 wins. Playoffs were a distant hope, but a hope nonetheless.

General Season Review

Pain. Both emotionally, as a fan, and physically, for the players. Injuries completely derailed any hope of our season turning out less than abominable. Instead of asking who to blame, the better question is to ask who's not culpable for the season.

Whatever Judge was doing to them in practice wasn't working: Injuries kept mounting as the season went on, and many of our worst losses saw 8+ penalties largely from discipline-based problems (unnecessary roughness, eg.). We were ranked 25th in terms of penalty yards allowed overall (as in, 7th worst). The OL by committee didn't work. Jason Garrett's playbook was 20 years out of date, and Freddie Kitchens didn't improve on it much. Our #1 draft pick tried to punch someone during the Cowboy's game. Danny Dimes looked really up-and-down, probably not helped by the fact that his OL was making him see ghosts but also just some poor decision making.

There were some bright spots, mostly on defense and ST. Basically, almost every game we won was off the back of defense and ST. Graham Gano was our leading scorer (lol) and almost received a pro bowl selection. Xavier Mckinney and Leonard Williams had fairly good years, all things considered. Azeez Ojulari I think was an excellent addition and fit right into the 3-4 scheme. Patrick Graham started the season off rough but made some excellent adjustments as the season went on.

Still, the last 4 games made it incredibly clear that we were going to clean house and start again. With Gettleman finally gone there's some hope for the future, but it's also fairly clear that next year is probably a wash as well (our cap space for next year being one of the big reasons).

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Team Additions

Most of these grades are obviously done with the benefit of hindsight, so while the Golladay signing for example was generally lauded as being a good one at the time, it's impossible to not view it through the lens of how the season went and I'm not going to even try.

Draft

Round 1, Pick 20: WR Kadarius Toney, Florida

If the theme of last year’s acquisitions were about the OL, this year’s theme was receiving threats. Golladay and Toney were big additions and expected to fill the WR1 role that Shepard and Slayton had previously been asked to fill.

It's hard to evaluate Toney given that he just didn't play very much. Whether it was because of injuries or just not getting targets, Toney's only really big game was against Dallas in week 5, but otherwise he's a bit of a mystery. It's not good that he was injured so frequently throughout the year, though, given his history of injury also in college.

Grade: C-

Round 2, Pick 50: LB Azeez Ojulari, Georgia

Ojulari was drafted as a pass-rusher who was expected to immediately make an impact on defense. There were concerns about his speed and ability to shed blocks, especially making the jump from college to NFL tackles. He wasn’t going to fit well into a 4-3 defense, but that was fine for the Giants.

Given all that, I think Ojulari had a great year. He recorded 27 QB pressures including 8 sacks. He got overshadowed by players like Micah Parsons, but he had a really good year and the Giants should be happy they drafted him. The big tell will be how he develops next year. He's a little inconsistent, and it'll be interesting to see how he develops next year.

Grade: B+

Round 3, Pick 71: CB Aaron Robinson, UCF

Given that he was a third round pick it's not like we immediately expect him to be Jalen Ramsey immediately. He had surgery that took him out for the first part of the season, and looked ok when he came back. Didn't light it up, but showed flashes of being a good physical CB.

Grade: C-

Round 4, Pick 116: LB Elerson Smith, Northern Iowa

I honestly don't remember him playing much. I looked it up and he spent a good part of the season on the PUP list. I feel like once you get into the later rounds it's hard to evaluate talent, but even still I would've expected more from him. He had a few tackles but compared to other picks (like, say, Ojulari) he just didn't make much impact.

Grade: D+

Round 6, Pick 196: RB Gary Brightwell, Arizona

Brightwell was drafted to add some needed depth partially, but also because of his special teams ability. Given how late he was drafted, I think he performed really well compared to expectations. He was mostly used on special teams, but even the few carries we saw from him he looked serviceable. Sure, he's not Saquon but he also didn't take up an early pick at all.

Grade: B-

Round 6, Pick 201: CB Rodarius Williams, Oklahoma State

Hard to evaluate Rodarius given that, well, he didn't play much.

Grade: ???

Round 6, waiver pickup from the Steelers: LB Quincy Roche, Miami

Given where he was drafted, Quincy Roche was an absolute stud. He was a consistent force on defense and often came up with some big plays. Similar to Ojulari there were a lot of concerns about him fitting into a 4-3 defense given his physical stats, but he fit in perfectly with our 3-4 defense and was 100% worth picking up.

Grade: A

Free Agency

WR Kenny Golladay

This was a big signing. We had been lacking a solid WR1 and Sterling Shepard, Darius Slayton, and even everyone’s favorite pro-bowler Evan Engram had been pulling that duty down. Not that they were bad! Darius Slayton had a great rookie year. But Golladay is clearly a level above that when he’s healthy and not getting into trouble, and the hope was he’d stay healthy and clean here.

I’m gonna be bold here and say the jury’s still out on this: Golladay was hurt for 3 games last year, had to deal with Jason Garrett and Mike Glennon, and clearly wasn’t happy for much of the year. He looked really good in some games (the Saints game in particular), but he was injured for three games (admittedly not the hip, which was the big concern) and when he really came back to full speed, Daniel Jones got injured. Hard to look elite with Mike Glennon out there. He'll still have to prove that his highlight reels in Detroit weren't mostly from Matt Stafford.

He might come out and have a monster year next year, but that’s largely dependent on some things only partially under his control. Golladay has to shake the label of being injury-prone, and unfortunately that’s probably just more circumstance than anything.

Regardless, though, we paid too much money for what he produced last year.

Grade: C-

RB Devontae Booker

This signing was originally a bit of a head scratcher, but I think it panned out beautifully for us. We didn't keep him this year for multiple reasons (the cap hit, he's getting on in RB years, we're committing mostly to a rebuild, etc. etc.) but he played really well for us and I'll argue was 100% worth the $2.5 million we paid him. Some of Saquon's best games were when he was able to split the carry load with Book, and Book was incredibly consistent as a runner. Unlike the rest of the team which suffered tremendously from the starters getting injured, I think Book proved he was worth the money and was a perhaps odd signing that worked out beautifully for the year.

Grade: A-

WR John Ross

John Ross was worth taking a chance on, for sure, and he came up big a few times during the season. Given that he was one of the few receivers who stayed healthy throughout the season, he was a solid use of $2.5 million also. He wasn't targeted much, but when he did make a reception he averaged about 20 yards. He looked significantly better than his time on the Bengals.

Grade: B+

QB Mike Glennon

Mike Glennon gets signed to backup Daniel Jones after we release Colt McCoy for cap reasons and sign Glennon for less money. Turns out, Colt McCoy was worth the extra million.

Grade: Is there a grade lower than F?

TE Kyle Rudolph

Rudolph was signed to be a red zone threat, but then we never really used him as such. It was weird for us to pay $12 million for a TE that didn't end up being all that useful, whether that was by design or not.

Grade: D+

CB Adoree Jackson

There were definitely some concerns we overpaid for him, which was the Gettleman special (good addition, bad price). Is he worth a $10 mill cap hit? Maybe? He doesn't give up big plays, but he also doesn't seem to really make them either. With Bradberry almost certainly gone, he's going to be a big part of the secondary moving forward, so we'll see if he can shake his sharp decline from Tennessee and be a defensive leader moving forward.

Grade: C

Other Free Agency signings not worth discussing

OLB Ryan Anderson

DE Ifeadi Odenigbo

OG Zach Fulton

DB Chris Milton

DB Joshua Kalu

TE Cole Hikutini

FB Cullen Gillaspia

C/G Jonotthan Harrison

DT Danny Shelton

ILB Reggie Ragland

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Stats

In Depth Stats Review: we sucked

There's not much to say here. We were bottom half of the league on pretty much every metric except a few defensive ones, and we regressed meaningfully in some areas even there. Our pass defense got slightly better than last year, but even then we put up multiple games with 300+ passing yards allowed, including one by Taylor Heinicke. Ouch.

Offensive

Stat	Value	Avg/game	League Rank	2016 Rank
Total Yds	4884	287	31	31
1st Downs	299	17.6	31	31
Total Passing Yds	3196	188	31🔻	29
Total Rushing Yds	1688	99.3	24🔻	19
Points Scored	258	15.2	31	31
Turnovers	30		32🔻	20
INT Thrown	20		29🔻	9
Fumbles Lost	10		23🔺️	24

Defensive

Stat	Value	Avg/game	League Rank	2016 Rank
Yds Allowed	6032	355	21🔻	12
1st Downs Allowed	365	21.5	25🔻	19
Pass Yds Allowed	3839	226	15🔺️	16
Rush Yds Allowed	2193	129	25🔻	10
Points Allowed	416	24.5	23🔻	9
Takeaways	22		14🔻	10
INT Forced	15		12🔺️	18
Fumbles Forced	7		20🔻	4

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Weekly Game Reviews

In Depth: Pre-season

In Depth: Weeks 1-5

In Depth: Weeks 5-11

In Depth: Weeks 12+

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Pre-Season Week 1, vs. Jets

Loss 7-12

It’s the pre-season and the games don’t matter. Sure. But still, this game was a sign of things to come: Poor OL play and bad depth. Yeah, they’re backups. But they’re playing the Jets backups. And they don’t look good. Offensive line woes already started showing in this game, and in a further sign of things to come Mike Glennon did not look great.

Pre-Season Week 2, @ Browns

Loss 13-17

Another pre-season game where the starters didn’t play (but maybe should have). We got better than the previous week, especially at OL. We got to see who would make improvements from week 1, and who didn’t. Also got to see Devontae Booker play a bit. Defensive mistakes piled up here, especially rush defense (which plagued the early season in general).

Pre-Season Week 3, vs. Pats

Loss 20-22

While the rumors were starters were going to play, none of the starters really played besides Daniel Jones. Evan Engram ended up getting hurt, which came back to haunt us a bit in the following weeks. There were some big concerns about how this OL would deal with someone like Von Miller the following week. We got to see some more from guys like Rodarius Williams and David Stills. In what would become a recurring theme, our defense played well for the first half before letting it open up in the second half.

Week 1, vs. Broncos

Loss 13-27

Ok, no more pre-season excuses. This game counted. This was a winnable game: The Broncos were just as bad, Bradley Chubb was out, it was a home game. Teddy Bridgewater isn’t exactly Aaron Rodgers. We were up at the half 10-7 after a big reception by Shepard. The OL, as feared, couldn’t really stop Von Miller. The defense got chunked apart: at one point the Giants offense didn’t see the field for close to an hour. Noah Fant was 6/8 on the day. Big, concerning loss.

Week 2, @ WFT (fuck you Dan Snyder)

Loss 29-30

Penalties and being chunked on defense added up here. More OL uncertainty but the team just looked undisciplined out there. The offense just couldn’t get it done in the red zone, which would become a recurring theme with the team. Graham Gano accounted for the majority of the 29 points, let that sink in. Very disappointing game we should've won.

Week 3, vs. Falcons

Loss 14-17

3 fumbles, 8 penalties on the game. That really says it all. Thank god for Graham Gano. The stats suggested we dominated this game, but just couldn’t get it done in the red zone again. Bad coaching really crept up this game: Undisciplined, cowardly calls, blowing timeouts because of players not set.

Week 4, @ Saints

Win 27-21

Honestly wasn’t expecting us to win this. Taysom Hill was a big problem for us, as was Kamara. Gano missed an easy 35 yarder. Golladay played lights out, DJ threw for 400+ yards. Letting Saquon use his speed wide works, who knew? An absolute 180 from the previous week. OL looked good with Skura in at LG.

Week 5, @ Cowboys

Loss 20-44

Absolute pain. We knew we would probably lose but not like this. Andrew Thomas being out hurt bad. Injuries started mounting, but the team just looked undisciplined also. This was the infamous game where Kadarius Toney tried to punch Damontae Kazee. Cowboys put up 515 yards on our defense. Ouch.

Week 6, vs. Rams

Loss 11-38

Clearly the Rams were good last season, but this was an all-around failure by the team. Our shaky OL vs. the Rams pass rush was a concern, but ultimately wasn't really the reason we lost this game. We expected to lose this game because of injuries and how hot the Rams looked at the moment, but this was a blowout by all accounts. Besides Xavier Mckinney, nobody really put up a noticeable effort on defense. We had no answer for Kupp, who made 9/11 catches.

Week 7, vs. Panthers

Win 25-3

I'm hesitant to call this an offensive win as much as just the defense making the GEQBUS look like shit, but this was a fun game nonetheless. We got to see Daniel Jones make a one-handed catch and see Bradberry get Darnold benched, but this mostly just the defense making some big plays after last week's embarassment.

Week 8, @ Chiefs

Loss 17-20

This was a very winnable game. It was close pretty much the whole game. The Chiefs weren't looking great at this point, and the defense managed to lock down Tyreek and Kelce pretty well this game. Ultimately we probably lost this game off penalties and all-around this game I'd just say Judge and co. got out-coached. Judge blames the headsets for blowing 5 timeouts on players not being set, despite nobody up in the press box.

Week 9, vs. Raiders

Win 23-16

Solid win largely off the back of great defensive play. Definitely a sign of Graham turning things around on defense. This was also right in the middle of the shitshow of the Raiders season, but a win’s a win. The importance of ST shines through here, as 9 of the points came from Gano.

Week 10

Bye

Week 11, @ Bucs

Result: L, 10-30

The game that got Jason Garrett fired. TB12 gets his revenge. Just bad play overall, had no answer for Brady even after they got handled by the WFT the previous week. Vita Vea wasn’t even playing and our OL still got manhandled. On the plus side, Andrew Thomas gets a TD. And Garrett got fired. Did I mention that Garrett got fired after this game?

Week 12, vs. Eagles

Win 13-7

This would be our last win of the season, so at least it was vs. a divisional rival. This was Kitchens first game as OC, and Daniel Jones's last game for the season. There weren't too many adjustments from the old playbook, though we did do some small-but-welcome things like target Golladay more in the red zone. This was largely a defensive win - Jalen Hurts recorded a 17.5 QBR for the game. Ouch.

Week 13, @ Dolphins

Loss 9-20

Daniel Jones is out, Mike Glennon gets to show why he doesn't get paid the big bucks. All 9 points come from Gano on offense. The defense can't really seem to stop Tua either, who mostly throws completions underneath and chips away slowly at us completing 30/41 on the day.

Week 14, @ Chargers

Loss 21-37

Wasn’t really as close as the score makes it look (which is saying something), we were trailing by 30 at one point. This is one game I might not blame too much on Patrick Graham: The defense was just out there too long. The time of possession differential here was ~10 minutes in favor of the Chargers. Still, they had no answers for Ekeler and Herbert.

Week 15, vs. Cowboys

Loss 6-21

This was an interesting game because as far as I know, only two starters were out for this game: Daniel Jones and Bredeson. However, it turns out that having a good QB is important.

Mike Glennon continues to suck, and Fromm gets his first start in garbage time. This turns out to not be a good idea, since Fromm looks reasonably competent in garbage time going 6/12 and picking up 82 yards, which everyone uses as ammo to ask why Fromm doesn't start the rest of the season (which he does and then does not look prepared for).

The defensive performance is admirable, including two sacks from Lorenzo Carter, but when Graham Gano is the only person to score points on your team it's hard to win.

Week 16, @ Eagles

Loss 10-34

What a huge difference this was from just a few weeks back. Fromm gets the start but gets benched partway through. Glennon and Fromm together put up.. 100 yards. Our one score of the game, until garbage time, is a single Gano kick. Most of our receiving core is active, including Toney, but it doesn't particularly make a difference.

To be fair, the defense didn't play super well here either. DeVonta Smith went 5/7 and picked up 80 receiving yards. Ouch.

Week 17, @ Bears

Loss 3-29

Fairly certain this is the game that got Judge fired. Mike Glennon records negative 10 net yards on the day. Yes, negative ten. Andy Dalton doesn't look great either thanks to a decent performance by the defense, but Mike Glennon records a QBR of 5 for this game and nothing else matters. Even Gano and a healthy-ish Saquon can't save this game. Judge releases a weird 11 minute rant after blaming Pat Shurmur, for some reason.

Week 18, vs. WFT

Loss 7-22

The suffering is finally over. Jake Fromm gets another shot to start but comes up short, recording barely over 100 yards for the day. This game epitomizes the whole season: The defense mostly holds Heinicke down, with 3 sacks and pressuing him on 33% of dropbacks. The offense... decides to do a QB sneak on 3rd and 9.

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Coaching and FO

In Depth Coaching and FO

Dumbass Dave, GM:

Wikipedia sums it up best here:

Gettleman's second tenure set the organization back many years with his decision making

Nuff said.

Joe Judge, HC

A Belichick disciple who, as far as I can tell, didn't piss off his players too badly. Still, for a coach who preached discipline we had a lot of discipline-based penalties. The coordinators he chose to bring on (Garrett, Kitchens) didn't do him any favors. I think he deserves another shot somewhere, with hopefully better choices next time around.

Jason Garrett, OC

Old man yells at cloud.jpg

Pretty much all of the complaints about Garrett during his stint in Dallas continued to be a problem here. Garrett wanted to run an offense from the 90s, and it turns out that modern defenses are really good at shutting those down.

Freddie Kitchens, OC

Hard to really make a judgement here: He inherited the team in week 11 and Daniel Jones's last game was week 12. He made some adjustments, but it was still largely Garrett's playbook and obviously couldn't cobble together more than 1 win on the rest of the season. I'm sure he curses Mike Glennon every night before he goes to bed.

Patrick Graham, DC

I'm also torn on Patrick Graham. He had spurts of looking really good and then spurts of looking really bad. The start of the 2021 season went abysmally for our defense, but by the end of it the defense was pretty much the only thing that didn't look like complete shit. Very interested to see how he does in Vegas.

Thomas McGaughey, ST

The only one retained by Daboll (though he did try to retain Patrick Graham), and for a reason. Our special teams were even more of a shining beacon in the darkness than our defense. The rest of the team was either bottom-half or even just bottom of the league, special teams continually looked like upper-half.

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Roster

Note: This is about the 2021 roster. Obviously, things have changed since that time.

All-Pros / Pro Bowls

Lol.

There were a couple giants who were on the cusp: Graham Gano, Cam Brown, Leonard Williams, and Xavier Mckinney. Graham Gano almost made it from fan votes for the pro bowl.

Still, just no. You could ctrl+f the AP all-pro announcement and you’d see the Giants mentioned zero times.

Team Strengths

• ST Our special teams performed consistently pretty well in 2021. Yes, there were some really boneheaded mistakes including by one Riley Dixon (have fun with him, Rams) and even a few missed easy FGs by Gano, but by and large our ST are continually ranked in the upper half of the league and deservedly so. I mean, shit, Gano was our top scorer of the year. Watching CJ Board make a couple of 15+ yard returns made special teams worth watching alone.

• Select Defensive Players As a whole the defense looked a bit worse than last year, but certain players continued to look dominant at various locations throughout the defense. There wasn't any one unit that looked overwhelmingly amazing, but thanks to these players the defense as a whole looked like the significantly better side of the ball:

  • Azeez Ojulari
  • Xavier McKinney
  • Leonard Williams
  • Quincy Roche

Team Weaknesses

• OL Depth We had OL problems all year long, partially caused by depth issues. Matt Peart had to shift around from tackle to guard, and didn't look good playing guard at all. A bunch of guys went out throughout the season: Gates, Bredeson, Thomas. With them out, we looked absolutely awful. Was it the worst offensive line in the league? Probably not, based on stats like QB Pressure % and scrambles. Still, it was really hard to watch Matt Peart drop a blindside block and see Daniel Jones get absolutely annihilated.

• Receivers? This one feels weird to type out because just looking at the roster, this should be a strength: Golladay, Shep, Engram, and even Slayton are all theoretically solid receiving threats. For whatever reason, though, our receivers looked absolutely garbage this year with Shep being our most reliable receiver by far. Some of that, obviously, is on Garrett and co. which is why I'm putting this a question mark - so we'll see this year, but last year they looked awful.

In Depth Offense: QB/RB/WR/TE/OL

In Depth Defense: DL/LB/CB/S

In Depth: ST

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Team Needs:

In Depth Team Needs

Draft Picks for 2022 draft

Round 1: Nos. 5, 7 (from Bears) overall

Round 2: No. 36

Round 3: Nos. 67, 81 (from Dolphins)

Round 4: No. 112 (from Bears)

Round 5: Nos. 147, 173 (from Chiefs through Ravens)

Round 6: No. 182

Cap Space

Short answer: We have none. Last I checked we were at $6.8 million in cap space (with about $20 million in dead cap), not including the $16 million total we'll need for signing our draft class (leaving us with -$10 million in cap space projected assuming we sign our draft class). Getting Bradberry off our books would give us more than enough there.

It's not as dire as it sounds. We'll be fine in 2023 with at least $55 million in cap space (assuming that we eg. pick up Daniel Jones's 5th year option). Gettleman screwed us, but not that bad.

Basically, we're pretty screwed for 2022 but fine after that.

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Final Thoughts

The nice thing about rebuilds in the modern era is that a good FO can show meaningful results in just a couple years. Yes, we're probably not competing next year. But we might the year after that, and if things go right we could be back to the playoffs and beyond in a couple years. Mara makes some really dumb decisions (TAUNTING) but he genuinely does seem to care about the team and I think New Yorkers have far more faith in him to right the ship than, say, Dolan.

Basically: Go Giants, go Knicks, go Yankees, go Rangers, fuck Boston. Amen.

Thanks

Thanks to u/ehhhhhhhhhhmacarena for taking a chance on me! I blind messaged once I saw the Giants writer dropped out and asked if I could take over.