Big Blue View
The New York Giants have lost too much.
Since they won the 2011 Super Bowl, the Giants have the fourth-worst record in the NFL (83-145-1, .369). Since 2017, the Giants’ 44-104-1 (.299) are a half-game behind the New York Jets (44-105, .295) for the worst record in the league.
That losing is, of course, at the center of everything for the Giants. The bad product they have put on the field the vast majority of time since 2012, though, is causing them to lose other things.
The Giants have lost relevance. They are the league’s fourth-oldest franchise. They have four titles in the Super Bowl era, and eight in their history. They consider themselves an NFL standard bearer, a model franchise run the way NFL teams should be run. Yet, these days the Giants are a bottom-feeder franchise nobody talks about, nobody worries about, and certainly nobody holds up as an example of the way an NFL team should conduct business.
“I think the Giants are at a very ceremonious position right now with this coaching hire,” former Giant and current NFL Network insider Shan O’Hara told the ‘Valentine’s Views’ podcast this week. “They no longer have the luxury of ‘we can swing and miss again’. That’s it.
“Giants fans are at their wits end. Their patience rope is at the end. They have run out of patience. When you’re in this New York/New Jersey area the worst thing that can happen is you can be irrelevant, and that’s what the Giants have been trending towards. That’s when you know you are in trouble.”
Perhaps the Giants haven’t reached Brooklyn Nets-level irrelevance, but I would argue that they are mostly irrelevant to the rest of the NFL right now.
They are at risk of becoming irrelevant in another, perhaps more important, way for the long-term health of the franchise.
The Giants are at risk of losing a generation of fans. Of becoming a team that is no longer considered THE football team in this part of the country. There was a time when Giants’ season tickets were what everyone in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut market wanted, and that families passed down for generations.
I’m not sure that is the case any longer.
Pull up in the parking lot at MetLife Stadium for a Giants game and there are tailgates and people having fun. What there isn’t, in the parking lot or in the stadium, is excitement. There is often a helicopter circling above the stadium on game days, likely to protect the airspace from disgruntled fans wanting to send John Mara a message. The Giants are certainly not an event. These days, season ticket-holders are often selling their seats on the secondary market, resulting in home games rarely offering a home field advantage.
It had to be embarrassing for Cam Skattebo to stand on the field before the season finale with a microphone and try to get a “Let’s Go Giants!” chant going while hardly anyone responded before the Week...
