Big Blue View
The Giants are hoping to transcend an eight-year run of historic failure for the franchise. Here are three Secret Superstars who could help them pull it off.
It’s not just that the 2024 New York Giants finished with a 3-14 record, and were a team that was singularly unimpressive in just about every category that didn’t have something to do with Dexter Lawrence. No, these Giants have been pretty bad for a while now, with all different types of leadership up top. Since the 2017 season, Big Blue has had the NFL’s worst record (40-91-1), and of course, the NFL’s worst win percentage (.307).
You’d have to go back to the misbegotten Giants of the 1970s, when the team was shuffling from coach to coach and personnel guy to personnel guy in whipsaw fashion, to find such a record of consistent disappointment.
By the end of the 2024 season, team president, CEO, and co-owner John Mara had endured more than enough.
“We stunk this year,” Mara said in January. “It’s my instinct and my strong belief that we are going to go in the right direction. It’s hard for me to say we’re going in the right direction right now, because we’ve been going backward.”
Okay, whatever THAT means.
As to the decision to keep head coach Brian Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen on board despite all of this. Mara spoke to a need for greater consistency.
“When you make these changes — and God knows we’ve made them in the past and been impatient in the past — when you do that, you feel like you take one step forward, two steps back, and I just didn’t want to fall into that cycle again,” Mara concluded. “I wanted to give people a chance to build this thing the right way, and to get us to where we need to be.”
Whether that’s the right decision or not, it is what it is. The Giants have spackled over football’s most important position with the additions of veteran quarterbacks Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston; hopefully the selection of Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart with the 25th overall pick in the draft can lead to something more lasting. There have been serious adds to a defense that fell all over itself last season, and hopefully the offense can at least hold things together enough for meaningful improvement.
If that is to actually happen — and there’s more than enough legitimate reasons for doubt — it will be about more than just the guys at the top of the roster, because there’s not enough top there for this franchise at this point. In the continuation of our “Hidden Gems” series, we look at three Secret Superstars on the team — one underrated veteran, free agent, and draft pick.
When it comes to Secret Superstars for the Giants who were on the roster last season... well, you have to look around a bit. One guy who...
