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Some people are fans of the New York Giants. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the New York Giants. This 2017 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.


Your team: New York Giants.


Your 2016 record: 11-5. I will never feel stupider than buying into the whole “The Giants always upset the Packers in the playoffs!” hype only to watch them get shredded into pulled chicken by Aaron Rodgers. God damn them for making me look like a fool, and god damn them for making BOATGHAZI an eternal thing. If they had just won that stupid game and Odell hadn’t played like shit, you never hear about this boat trip again. Instead, it is now encyclopedic. “Odell Beckham, who once let down his team by hanging out on a boat, died today…” Odell takes will render all of us braindead.

Your coach: Ben McAdoo, who will never find a combination of haircut and facial hair that will work for him. Look at this poor bastard.

He looks like a teenager trying to sneak into a nightclub for the first time. What a big boy. No wonder he likes fiddling with walkie talkies and calling the same play 50 times in a row like he’s playing Madden ‘95. Anyway, McAdoo left Beckham in for the second quarter of a preseason game against Cleveland, and Beckham nearly had his leg sheared off in the process. I have no clue what this man was thinking. Oh man, remember when he showed his team the footage of a dude punching a kangaroo to fire them up?

“We have to stay hungry. We have to be hungry, and it’s time to … it’s time to eat.”


I… I think he wants them to eat the kangaroo.

Your quarterback: Oh great, here comes slack-jawed dolt Eli Manning yet again, ready to drool all over the field for another 17 weeks. He is history’s most indestructible idiot. It really is something. He is a cyborg made from discarded sweet tea bags and old hush puppies. We’ll never be rid of him. Anyway, Eli has been here for a thousand years, so you know what you’re getting: 4,000 yards, 25 TDs, a billion turnovers, and a perfect ratio of stunning victories to stunning defeats. Lather, rinse, repeat. By the way, Eli still hasn’t gotten enough shit for trying to pass off phony game memorabilia. Odell can get a million columnists screaming for his head for taking a boat trip, but here’s Eli skating by because everyone thinks he’s too stupid to be a criminal mastermind.


Your backup quarterback is former Jets prospect and “man whose jaw is used to protect fire extinguisher cabinets” Geno Smith. This is not a team that had any urgent need for Colin Kaepernick on the roster, but I’m gonna use this space to bring up what John Mara said about the idea, because John Mara is a gutless shitbag:

“All my years being in the league, I never received more emotional mail from people than I did about that issue,” Mara said. “If any of your players ever do that, we are never coming to another Giants game. It wasn’t one or two letters. It was a lot. It’s an emotional, emotional issue for a lot of people, more so than any other issue I’ve run into.”


Fuck you, buddy. Fuck you a million times over. You sons of bitches re-signed Josh Brown even when you knew about his domestic violence arrest and the police reports from it. And now you’re cowering in the face of some bullshit “I’m canceling my subscription, sir!” threats from fans who probably can’t get out of their season ticket agreements anyway? John Mara is a pathetic waste who gets to pretend he didn’t luck into an inherited fortune just because he looks like a banker from 1936. I hope he falls into a port-o-toilet.

What’s new that sucks: Well, Odell is hurt and may miss the first couple of games, so there goes every last exciting thing about this Giants outfit. These current Giants, of course, exist less as a football team and more as a weekly mood check of their star receiver and unofficial stickum spokesman. Here’s Odell getting shovey with a ref. And here’s Odell lobbying for a different officiating crew. And here’s Odell trying to put his head through a wall. And here’s Odell staring at the sun. And here’s Odell angling for a new contract, etc etc.


The NFL is a dry and humorless place, but the Giants organization is exceptional in their grim stoicism even by those standards. And so last year’s Boatghazi stuff was the perfect encapsulation of the “Mr. Mara” attitude a lot of people—fans included—around the team think it should have, as if they’re extra classy because one family of rich fucks has owned it forever. As long as I’ve been alive, the Giants have dined out on their bullshit Respectable Team Of Class vs. the Rowdy Jets branding efforts. They constantly act like the genteel aristocracy of football, which is how a rare burst of color like Beckham ends up scrutinized into dust…a man who will be driven to the edge by the takes raining down on him.

Brandon Marshall is here and hurt already. Elsewhere, burglars broke into a player’s home to write KKK and GO BACK TO AFRICA on the walls. It just goes to show you that New Jersey is ALWAYS on the cusp of hot new racialist trends before a place like Charlottesville even gets wind of them.


What has always sucked: The running game! This is the only team that has failed to average over 4.0 yards per rush in any of the past four years. Did they do a fucking thing this offseason to address the problem? Reader, they did not. No, it’s another year of failed Shane Vereen wheel routes and Paul Perkins busting out a 10-yard run once a lunar cycle. Every year, the Giants have the same problems because they are a running loop of Reverend Lovejoy saying “Constancy constancy constancy” in your brain. They haven’t had a tight end catch a pass since Mark Bavaro. Their best pass rusher is still the dude with a lobster claw. Ereck Flowers has all the blocking ability of a ghost. I know that Cleveland and Buffalo and the like are far more woeful franchises. But I just want you to know that if you isolate the single worst quarter of play from a single team in any given season, that quarter of play will usually come from the New York Giants.

Did you know? The entire New York Subway system is now offering riders the experience of what it would be like if you had to travel to the Meadowlands every day!


What might not suck: Landon Collins is good. Eli Apple has a good mom. Whatever. I still say fuck them all.

HEAR IT FROM GIANTS FANS!

Jim:

For love of God keep these guys away from boats.

Matt:

That fucking Baby McAdoo kid will be at one, if not all their games. He’s our Fireman Ed.


Mike:

I want to enjoy watching my team win handily, not have my brain concoct all too plausible scenarios about how they will blow a 5-point lead with 1:13 left on the clock and possession of the football.


Sean:

Half of our fan base are fart-sniffing old white men who hate our best player, and the other half are the real life inspirations for the @nycguidovoice twitter account who also hate our best player.


Martin:

Fist fuck Chris Christie.

Mike:

JUST BREATHE THROUGH YOUR NOSE, ELI.

Erik:

Last year, our star wide receiver’s abusive relationship with a kicking net overshadowed our kicker’s abusive relationship with his wife. Everybody was fine with this.


Oliver:

Fuck Josh Brown with Chris Christie’s beach chair.

Kevin:

I can’t wait to watch games with my dad and the instant the Giants are losing in the third quarter to have him dejectedly announce: “THIS GAME’S OVER” to the entire house in true Giants fan fashion.


Jeff:

One of the biggest stars to come out of New York is a whining man-child with a goofy haircut who can’t keep his shit together long enough to truly succeed, and yet, people STILL love him. And don’t even get me started on Odell Beckham Jr.


Zachary:

We are worse at running the ball than either the Seahawks OR Falcons in the Super Bowl. We gave a 4year/$62MM contract to a guy that has 1.5 hands. Our best player is constantly at risk for getting ejected from a game because he wants to spear every defensive back through the groin.


Matthew:

I once brought a girl home with me from a bar. In the middle of the night, she woke me up, saying I was screaming in my sleep. I asked her what I was screaming, and she said it was “DeSean Jackson”. So, as always, fuck Matt Dodge. I really wish I were kidding about this story...


Chris:

Our new coach looks like a chemistry teacher who has rumors of inappropriate conduct around him never confirmed but you always got an eye on that dude.


John:

Eli could win the next ten Super Bowls, and win Super Bowl MVP in all ten games, and the overwhelming response from the rest of the galaxy would be “Where did that small child steal a Super Bowl ring from? Does his mother know he’s out this late? He could hurt himself out there!”


Chris:

I went to the Lions-Giants game last season and I witnessed a man snorting cocaine off of a five dollar bill in his car before kickoff. Then, in the first quarter I got up to use the restroom and was walking down my row when I came to a man slumped over at the end of the row. I said “excuse me” and he responded by turning to his left and vomiting all over the empty seat next to him before getting up, walking down the steps, puking all over the railing, then throwing up on the glass that separates the upper deck from the section below it. I found him halfway into a garbage can, unloading his guts into it. I like to think that he wasn’t drunk; the Giants offense was just so bad last year that they caused people to lose their lunch. Fuck Ereck Flowers with a propane tank.

Matt:

Last year, during Week 4, the Giants were playing the Vikings on Monday night. There was one drive where the Giants were cruising, and Jon Gruden opens his big fucking mouth to blurt out, “I don’t know how the Giants will convert here, Sean. They have no full backs, no blocking tight ends, and Eli hasn’t run in six years.” Sure enough, they punted on third down. The Giants were cruising again, and Gruden again says, “I just don’t know how they can move the ball with no fullbacks or blocking tight ends.” They punted again. Do you know how fucking painful it is to listen to a mouth-breather like Jon Gruden repeat every issue with your team for the past decade on every single drive of a MNF broadcast?


Dan:

Eli is 36 years old and has started 199 games in a row, yet you know that in the near future he’s going to get his throwing arm stuck in a crane game because he really wanted the pretty puppy stuffed animal. McAdoo still looks like a guy who auditioned and failed to be in George Thorogood’s band.


Will:

Larry Donnell has literal penises for hands so thank god he is gone.

Sean:

McAdoo calling for an inside draw to Rashad Jennings on a crucial 2nd or 3rd down while Odell Beckham Jr. is on the field is akin to telling Eddie Van Halen to ditch the guitar and play tambourine.


Evin:

Intrigued and excited by the Davis Webb pick, I decided to look up one of his highlight reels from college. The first play was a fade route to the corner. Fuck.


Liam:

Despite being top-10 all-time in literally every QB category and being a mortal lock for the Hall of Fame, it is impossible to win any argument about Eli because there’s no rebuttal for his dumb face.


Steve:

After making the 10 mile, 8 hour trip from the city to a shitty ass swamp, your reward is watching the game in a stadium filled to the brim with the most miserable old fucks this side of a Trump rally. Stand up to cheer near these shitheads and you will be treated like the kid from Whiplash. They have to keep Strahan on the payroll just to beg the crowd to make enough noise that the players actually know there are people in the stadium.


Stephen:

Every time you think they’re going to throw to Odell, it’s another useless shotgun draw play to one of their fourth-rate running backs. Also, McAdoo looks like the wedding singer from Old School.


Mike:

Leading up to a winnable Wild Card game against Green Bay, all you read about in the New York papers was Odell Beckham’s boat party. What went relatively unnoticed, however, was the trash-talking secondary that never shied away from getting digs in at the notoriously petty Aaron Rodgers. They even nicknamed themselves the NYPD- the New York Pass Defense- a nickname so lame you’d think the Colts invented it. That braggadocious secondary was torched for 362 yards and 4 TDs, including the most poorly defended Hail Mary of all time, because they pissed off a first ballot Hall of Famer during the week.


Willie:

I love Odell for a few hours each week during the season, and then find him (and the ensuing coverage fracas) completely insufferable for the remainder of the week.


Dennis:

Eli would be considered too uptight for the Fifties. Add to that the constant complaints about the O-line, which despite lavishing approximately 627 first-rounders since 2010, still couldn’t stop an elephant from going through a catflap. The defense always seems to be “one player away” from being dominant. Funny how that player is always a linebacker, since they haven’t drafted a good one since before Lawrence Taylor’s third or fourth arrest.


R:

The o-line is about as effective at protecting the most important player on the team as Donald Trump Jr. is at avoiding self-incrimination.


Gabriel:

The only thing making our team passably good and fun to watch is a once in a generation wide receiver who’s skill for catching the football is only surpassed by his ability to invite unnecessary media attention. Fuck Jerry Reese with the long spire of Freedom Tower.

Jordan:

On paper, you’d think they should be solid. Stacked receivers, statistically solid QB, beastly defense. So it’s reasonable to expect that they’d do pretty well and get some easy wins. And yet. Watching good ol’ Eli “King of Interceptions” Manning standing behind his offensive line that is as tight as the Titanic’s waterline, and just KNOWING that he’ll throw directly at a defender has ruined my ability to watch them play. I end up stressed out screaming at the TV and get no enjoyment out of the game. And, when they get a big play off, someone far away from the action gets an idiotic and costs them the drive and the game. They literally NEVER have a game comfortably in the bag so fans can really enjoy the experience of watching. Fuck this team.

Jack:

I swear the Giants do everything in their power to give every single fan hope, only to fuck up in the lamest possible way. We had 4 Pro Bowlers (Collions, Jenkins, Harris & Beckham Jnr) making awesome plays all regular season, and by the time the Wild Card Game came around, I was so hyped and certain they could pull off the win. And of course they didn’t even turn up, and got fucking steamrolled by Aaron Rodgers and the Packers. And do you know the worst part of that game? I live in the UK, and had the privilege of staying up till 4.30am to watch that shit show. There’s nothing worse than turning up to work on a Monday morning on 3 hours sleep, knowing that you should have seen that loss coming a mile off and just gone to bed like every other sensible person.


Robert:

The owner thinks Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem is more problematic than a piece of shit placekicker beating the snot out of his wife repeatedly. Our most talented player partied on a boat before the start of the playoffs, an act which (a) doesn’t bother me at all but (b) leads to thermonuclear takes. Instead of stuffing the take masters into a bear’s asshole, Odell proves them all right by turning into Mittenhands McGillicutty. Now I’ll have to suffer through CAN ODELL WIN IN THE PLAYOFFS takes come January. It would almost be worth it for them to miss the playoffs just so I don’t have to listen to that garbage for a week.


Andrew:

Mara conveniently looks the other way when our gazillionaire dipshit QB likely defrauded a sports memorabilia dealer due to what appears to be abject laziness. We are in denial that the most talented offensive player we’ve had in 20 years is a Terrell Owens clone; we had a single need in the offseason (offensive line) and signed / drafted not a single OL; and we broke up our DL for no reason even though it was the best part of our team. Did I mention that we have 5,000 laminated plays and we only ever use 5 of them? Oh, and our head coach blames the team’s all-time greatest QB for all of the offense’s failings whenever questioned. Should be a fun 7-9 in our soulless, grey shipping container in the Jersey swamp this fall.


Brendan:

I used to be able to pretend that the New York Football Giants were a Classy Organization who wouldn’t stand for all the bullshit that other teams pull and/or let players get away with. Now I realize they’re just another shitty, craven organization and my moral high ground was just me kidding myself.


Matthew:

The GM. The offensive line was a disaster last season and the linebackers couldn’t pressure the QB or play coverage. Jerry Reese decides to fix these very obvious problems by signing yet another wide receiver and drafting a tight end in the first round, a round where a good TE hasn’t been drafted in 10 years. All the weapons in the world won’t matter this season when Eli has all of one second to pass because Ereck Flowers blew yet another block. The owner, who is very very proud of doing things the right way, until it turns out that he approved signing a known domestic abuser at kicker. When the abuser’s journals were then leaked, did the owner then face the media and explain why he approved that signing? No, he sent his coach out instead to answer for it instead. He has no problem telling you that Colin Kapernick’s politics are a problem, though. Odell Beckham, Jr. He’s great; he can make ridiculous catches and bail out all of Eli’s bad throws. BUT there are at least three times a game where he will do something completely idiotic. The New York sports media. The line doubles as MTA turnstiles, McAdoo ran the entire season out of the same offensive formation, the defense gave up 38 points to Green Bay in the playoffs, but the only story that mattered was that ODELL BECKHAM WAS ON A BOAT DURING AN OFF WEEKEND! AND HE MISSED OPTIONAL WORKOUTS IN THE SPRING! WAS HE BOATING DURING THE WORKOUTS?


Ian:

The boat trip. Goddamn it people have lost their minds over a bunch of guys taking a vacation in Miami a week before they have to go to work. They realize that them going to Miami is like me going to a goddamn Buffalo Wild Wings on a Friday, but let’s all act like they were juggling fireworks with JPP. Every dumb fan in the city thinks that boat cost them the game, despite the fact that our offense had been cold trash all season. If you want to get mad at Beckham, forget the boat. Focus on how he got his ass kicked by a kicking net, or how he turns into Samuel L. Jackson in A TIME TO KILL whenever he sees Josh Norman. Eli sucks. Our O-Line sucks. Ben McAdoo looks like every step-father. Our fans are garbage. Jersey sucks. I’m reasonably optimistic about the season, so I know this team is going to start 0-4 and MetLife Stadium will fall through a sinkhole in the swamp.


Matthew:

For the last decade, the Giants have had pressing holes at O-line and linebacker. During that time, the Giants have done zero to fill those holes. I was once excited that we drafted something called Clint Sintim in the second round. Despite only being 31, his college coaching career is now longer than his playing career was. Adding play-making wide receivers is great when your quarterback has more than 0.3 seconds to throw them the ball before being demolished by the pass rush. Good thing ODB and Brandon Marshall aren’t known for attitude issues!


William:

Eli is going to get hurt in week 3 and we didn’t sign Kap as a backup cuz some Trump lovers from Westchester wrote letters to the Maras saying they would boycott their season tickets. God forbid anyone who makes less than 500k a year get to go to a Giants game.


Matt:

My favorite team is run by a head coach that stands on the sideline reading a Denny’s diner menu and can’t even bother to look up and watch plays. How do I know? Because he runs the same goddamn formation on every play. Unless of course it’s 3rd and 15. In which case he’ll run the “I formation” out there. Gotta mix it up once in a while and keep the defense guessing! My QB is an idiot savant on the downside of 30 playing with a WR that has the temperament of Daddy Orange. Fuck Ereck Flowers with a beehive. The Giants should have known better to draft a guy named Eric that spells his name Ereck.


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