Big Blue View
The 2007 team rose from the ashes of the 2003 collapse
The other day I wrote a piece about the Pro Football Focus re-draft of the 2011 NFL year. That season was notable for the New York Giants because they won the Super Bowl, but their draft that year was disappointing and set the stage for their downfall to come. BBV member Nygs 0439 preferred to look at the bright side of life as a Giants fan:
I thought that was a good idea, because there are some lessons to be learned in how the 2007 Super Bowl Giants were built. There are no direct parallels between the stories of what happened then and what is happening now, but there are some similarities that are worth noting.
Two-minute history: The Giants had gone to the Super Bowl in the 2000 season but been thrashed by the Ravens. They dropped to 7-9 in 2001 but rebounded to 10-6 in 2002. That’s when the trouble began. In the Wild Card Game, they blew a 38-14 lead with 4:27 left in the third quarter in San Francisco, eventually losing 39-38 when a bad snap prevented a potential game-winning field goal attempt.
In 2003, the Giants began 4-4, but injuries struck and they lost their last eight games to finish 4-12. Head coach Jim Fassel was fired, but GM Ernie Accorsi was not. That Giants team was not devoid of talent. It still had Kerry Collins at quarterback and weapons in Tiki Barber, Amani Toomer, Jeremy Shockey, and Ike Hilliard, yet it scored only 243 points, third-worst in the NFL. On defense it had a stout defensive line led by Michael Strahan in his prime, yet it gave up 387 points, fourth-worst in the NFL.
People think that things changed when Accorsi swung the draft day deal to get Eli Manning, but Eli was terrible when he finally was put in as starter midway through his rookie season, when the Giants finished 6-10 despite having Kurt Warner, who would later win his second Super Bowl, at quarterback. The Giants, as part of the deal for Eli, had given up their first and fifth round picks in 2005, and they had no seventh round pick either. It looked bleak for them to substantially improve through the draft...yet they got cornerback Corey Webster in Round 2, defensive Justin Tuck in Round 3, and running back Brandon Jacobs in Round 4, as Nygs0439 reminds us. That’s a 75% hit rate despite no first round pick. They also signed free agents Plaxico Burress, Antonio Pierce, and Shaun O’Hara. With modest improvement from Manning, they made the playoffs in 2005, but they were shut out by Carolina 23-0 in the Wild Card Game.
Here’s a summary of the primary players on the Giants roster in 2003, 2005, and 2007:
The players in boldface above are the returning starters from two years earlier, with the number of such starters in parentheses. By 2005, half the offense had been together for...
