Photo : Adam Hunger ( AP )

Some people are fans of the New York Giants. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the New York Giants. This 2019 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.




Your team: New York Trust Fund Yokels.

Your 2018 record: 5-11. You people better fly to Oakland to personally kiss Jon Gruden on his foaming mouth, because that man spared you from being the most embarrassing non-Washington franchise in this sport two years running. There’s not enough room on the internet to go through the honey-do list of fuckups that the Giant have checked off in the past 12 months, but I’mma give a whirl anyway, because I hate them just that much. Let us begin…


They lost at the gun to Carolina thanks to Graham Gano dead-eyeing a 63-yarder. They beat the Bears but only after somehow failing to recover an onside kick and then letting Matt Nagy indulge the Eagle lingering within by running a successful Philly Special to send the game into OT. They gave up a TD to Tavon Austin, who I thought had been out of football since the Clinton Administration. The Giants also gave up seven sacks in a loss to the putrid Skins, with their Booboo Bear of a QB un-dancing his way around in the pocket like a dad waiting to take his kid home from a birthday party. Signing Nate Solder did NOTHING except make this line more expensive. In fact, this iteration of the line let Eli Manning get sacked more often than he’s ever been in his career.

I can, indeed, go on. They traded away Snacks Harrison and Mom Guy Eli Apple in the middle of the season, kicking off a fire sale that they’re still branding as a trusted process of addition by mass subtraction. Every contract the Giants have is an albatross and must be dumped; then they just do the same shit again with a worse player. Even the Trump Administration isn’t as picky about who they let inside as the Mara family is.

Speaking of which, I’m proud to report that the final stage of the Giants’ long-gestating effort of directing fan and media resentment toward their only exciting player came to a riveting conclusion last season. They fined Odell Beckham for not telling Lil Wayne that he was positively delighted with his situation with the team. and refusing to state that Eli is a big boy who wears bigboy pants and always knows what’s bestest for everyone. They watched Odell get hurt and miss the end of the season once again, not that they gave the remotest of shits about it. If anything, Odell’s murdered quad was the highlight of the season for all the aspiring slumlords in the stands and a front office that has fashioned eating their young into a long-range master plan. When the team finally traded Beckham to Cleveland, it served as an ejaculatory triumph for anyone who instinctively hates it when people who are not fans of Jimmy Buffett enjoy a boat ride.

Your coach: Pat Shurmur is in a hilarious position, because if his new rookie QB sucks, he’ll be fired, but if that QB somehow turns out to be good, he’ll be given one more year and then fired for a better coach anyway. Shurmur is perfect for the Mara family because he looks like someone sanded off his face with a DeWalt orbital multi-tool. OC Mike Shula’s offense is a perfect match in pale despair. I know you guys were relieved when Ben McAdoo and his tight end fade routes were dismissed. Little did you know that swapping those fade routes out for 50,000 play-action mini bootleg passes to the tight end (always with the tight ends) would not achieve the desired result.


Your quarterback: MAKE THE FACE!!!!


That’s a random Giants fan and 2001 Curt Schilling lookalike with the landmark reaction to the Giants grabbing a 10-foot pole and reaching beyond the fucking sky to take Duke quarterback and lab-grown dullard Daniel Jones with the sixth overall pick. God, even his NAME is boring. Look at that poor fan go from shocked to cynical in less than a single second. That’s what happens when the team you love remains pathologically determined to try to live down the fact that Bobby from Bayonne couldn’t get over Eli being benched two years ago for one game. For Geno Smith. That single misunderstanding now serves as this team’s Rosetta stone. It’s like the Giants deliberately waited on replacing Eli until they could find another soft-featured gape-mouthed Southern dude to take the spot. What was it about heir apparent Daniel Jones that drew the eye of team GM and bowling alley manager Dave Gettleman?



“I had decided to stay for the [Senior Bowl] game. And frankly, he walked out there and I saw a professional quarterback, after the three series that I watched. I saw a professional quarterback, so that’s when I was in full-bloom love.”


That’s right. Three series in a meaningless exhibition game that serious prospects often tend to blow off. Wait till Gettleman watches game tape of Garrett Gilbert playing in the AAF! It’s a real indictment that Eli Manning is still this roster’s best quarterback. Of course, the real reason the Giants drafted Jones was because his college coach was the same guy who helped develop Eli’s brother. Why it’s like I’m looking a younger, more boring, and less talented Eli! OH GOODY! Fittingly, the Mara family would always prefer jobs be inherited rather than earned. Eli is eight stages of life beyond finished, and everyone knows it. All the Giants had to do was replace him with someone people want to watch. And they just keep refusing to do that.

As for Eli, who should have been shot years ago and exchanged for a cash reward from local authorities, à la dead swamp rats in his home state, Gettleman is again waging a disinformation campaign that not even a fucking four-year-old could buy into…

“This narrative that Eli’s overpaid and can’t play is a crock,” Gettleman told reporters Monday in a conference call… “In my mind, there’s been this negative negative narrative on Eli for the last four or five years,” Gettleman said on SiriusXM NFL Radio. “It’s part and parcel (to the fact) they weren’t winning.


Oh wow, people were down on Eli because his team kept losing games? Almost like your QB play and your record are inextricably linked somehow! I’ll say this for Eli over the past five years: He didn’t throw 27 picks in any of those seasons, the way he did SIX years ago. That’s how you know he’s back on the path to greatness. What in the living fuck is wrong with these people? Is it drugs? I’ll be deeply worried if it is NOT drugs causing this behavior. Eli is wilted lettuce in a bag, and to replace him somewhere down the road, they brought in a guy who could get out-thrown by Alex Smith RIGHT NOW.


My son and I have more advanced games of catch, and I’m fucking brain-damaged. If there’s one thing New York doesn’t have enough of, it’s wealthy, underachieving Duke grads. You will not encounter a more detailed, nor a more effective campaign to waste Saquon Barkley’s prime. Even the Detroit Lions are impressed by this. How do you out-Jets the Jets even as the Jets have won just 14 games in the last three seasons? This is how.

What’s new that sucks: Great news! You guys are finally rid of that pesky Odell and his GLORY HANDS. The one exciting thing they’ve had over the past few years, yet they acted like HE was the real problem. Anyway, the Giants moved quickly to replace Odell by wildly overpaying a 30-something slot guy in Golden Tate and then watching Tate get suspended four games for shooting blanks. I hope that Tate and Russell Wilson’s ex-wife are finally able to bear a child to call their own one day. Fingers crossed!


Elsewhere, the Giants are still behaving like an organization that terminally thinks it’s one or two guys away from a playoff run. In exchange for Beckham (of whom Gettleman once lied, “We didn’t sign him to trade him”), they got budding disappointment Jabrill Peppers, plus first-round pick Dexter Lawrence and a linebacker from Old Dominion in the third. All three of those men are now inevitably destined for a recurring SportsCenter graphic showing how lopsided the Beckham trade turned out to be in Cleveland’s favor. Oh, but Dave Gettleman watched them play Pop-A-Shot at Dave & Buster’s a while back and fell in love. Lineman Mike Remmers is here now, too. When you’re not cut out for the VIKINGS offensive line, this is where you go to fail upward.

Safety Kamrin Moore was arrested for stepping on a woman’s neck and then, because that apparently wasn’t enough to please him, knocking her out cold to boot. Janoris Jenkins’s brother is accused of killing a guy in Janoris’s house. Landon Collins went to the Skins, which is much much less amusing than Ereck Flowers doing likewise. Jared Lorenzen died. Their sixth-round pick and his friend both got shot hours after the draft—the latter ended up dying—which was an obvious sign to Mike Francesa that the Giants don’t know how to draft character guys.

“When you finish your draft and stress how you went out of your way to take the right kind of guys, the guys you want on the team, the guys who are gonna be great-character guys, and you stress that as strongly as the Giants did, it looks pretty bad when one of them gets shot on a Saturday night. It does not look good.”


Now if Corey Ballentine and his friend had been shot on a TUESDAY? Whole other story. Daniel Jones would get shot on a Tuesday. That’s when civilized folk take a lead slug to the asscheek.

Sterling Shepard busted his thumb. Corey Coleman tore his ACL. Your starting Week 1 wideouts could be Darius Slayton and Alonzo Russell. Even the Titans think that’s bleak.


What has always sucked: The Eagles have an honest-to-goodness plan and a forward-thinking GM. The Giants have Pat Shurmur and Daniel Jones. They also have fans who are identical to Jets fans, only they can afford slightly more potent alcohol and have a lower tolerance for it. And the architect of this all is a glorified human resources termination consultant who morphs into Bret Stephens the second anyone points out how much ass this team eats.

“I’ve been a part of teams that went to seven Super Bowls. I had a hand in some of them. But today, there’s no patience. And there’s no room for civil discourse in our society, which I find sad.”


This guy operates out of the Meadowlands and is looking for civil discourse. Does he want fans to serve him fresh strawberries and cream between quarters, too? He should have taken a job as a fucking mailman if he wants niceties. THIS IS FOOTBALL YOU FUCKING BABY. It’s funnier when the Giants fail because, to paraphrase Krusty, they’re the saps with dignity. They are eternally high on their own bullshit, and even more determinedly so when they fuck up. John Mara thinks he runs a country club. Meanwhile, his GM is a casting extra from Cake Boss, his QB room is a turnip truck, and his fans are miserable Parcells wannabes who would drink Captain Morgan straight out of the gutter if they saw it available out in the open. I hope this team never turns it around. Given present leadership, I’m pleased to report they show no signs of ever doing so.

What might not suck: Ereck Flowers was finally shot out of a cannon and landed in Washington, the absolute ideal place for him to cap his prolific career as a fallen oak leaf.


HEAR IT FROM GIANTS FANS!

Sean:

Fuck, dude. Fuuuuuck. FUUUUUUCCCCKKKKKK.

Ed:

Our Facebook Boomer meme of a GM.

Larry:

Eli Manning.

Eric:

Daniel fucking Jones...I knew it was coming before Goodell opened his dumb fucking mouth, I knew it was coming since 1988.


Bryan:

Maybe I’m the one who sucks.

Sara:

Dave Gettleman is an ambulatory bag of infected anal warts and racism. I wouldn’t trust him to watch a bee in a jar.


Mike:

I have zero confidence of finishing above last place.

Todd:

This team is the Never Trump Republicans of the NFL.

Warren:

The Giants are to the NFL Draft as what a Grizzly Bear is to a 4-year-old’s birthday party. Sure it’s a spectacle, but in the end, everyone is just searching for answers.


Joe:

At least the Eagles earned it, and I hate myself for thinking that.

Mike:

Our new QB looks like if someone scraped dead skin of Dave Brown’s non-throwing hand, put it in a Petri dish and grew a new QB out of it.


Dan:

The organization is defined by trying to be the whitest team to go 6-10 and doing it THE RIGHT WAY.


Devin:

If Gettleman were POTUS he would be trying to win the next world war by investing in muskets and horses.


Chad:

Our biggest free agent signing is someone who once broke into a donut shop to steal donuts. The ugly-ass mall next to the stadium has been under construction for 15 years and still isn’t open.


Oliver:

The average Giants fan calling into WFAN makes the average anti-vaxxer look like a Nobel Prize winning biologist.


Matthew:

I have no recollection of the Giants making a 4th-and-1 in the last 20 years.

Martin:

I haven’t thought about the Giants in months. These have been good months.

Jim:

The Giants are preparing for the future by drafting a quarterback from Duke. THIS IS THE SECOND TIME THEY’VE DONE THAT.


Ken:

They drafted a QB with the number 6 pick the first round that they could’ve signed as an undrafted free agent.


John:

Our arrogant douche GM made a jar of mayonnaise the franchise QB based solely on his performance at an exhibition game.


Dusty:

The only times I’ve really ever talked with my dad have been when the Giants are relevant (they really weren’t in 2011 and barely were in 2008). Needless to say, I haven’t talked to him in 10+ years.


Dennis:

The New Jersey Venn diagram of Trump voters, Francesa listeners, anti-vaxxers, and fans who celebrated when OBJ was traded is a solid fucking circle.


Ben:

Our best QB in history had his dad force the team to draft his 2.0 version so he could keep his job.


Ryan:

The Giants went three years (2015-2018) without scoring at least 30 points in a game.

The Giants haven’t averaged over 20 points per game in a season since 2015.

Since realignment, the Giants have only won the division thrice. For reference, the Skins have won the division more in this decade than we have.

This team hasn’t beaten the Eagles or the Cowboys since Trump took office.

Eric:

I remember crushing losses and Manningfaces more than anything fun, exciting or interesting.


Rob:

Daniel Jones is a tub of Greek yogurt from a university that is simultaneously the most-hated in the country and totally irrelevant in football. Fire Gettleman.


John:

It’s like our football players are sourced from Westworld or something.

Peter:

A few months after Super Bowl 46 where we beat the Patriots (again), I was lucky enough to go to an event where our esteemed owner, John Mara, showed up with the Lombardi trophy and answered softball questions about how great the Giants were. Some moron who just graduated from college asked Mara for advice as he was setting out on a career in business. Stunned at the question, Mara paused and said something like “I don’t know…marry well—I inherited a family business.”


“Giants fan named Kevin #1,873,553”:

We drafted a QB from Duke.

Evin (I swear):

The most exciting thing about the New York Giants is the possibility that ‘BJ Hill’ might be a place rather than a player.


Sean:

We traded a generational talent and the franchise’s best player since LT to the fucking Cleveland Browns because our egomaniacal dinosaur of a GM wanted to appease Vinny from Staten Island.


Tyler:

I’m increasingly convinced that we’ll have Eli literally forever. Daniel Jones will be pummeled into a frothy mayonnaise, cybernetic appendages will be perfected and approved, and we’ll get more Manningface for years to come.


Scott:

In baseball, I root for the Yankees, who are too good. In basketball, I root for the Knicks, who are too bad. But my football team, the Giants, were always the juuuuust right bowl of Goldilocks porridge: good enough to win a few Super Bowls with likable players and memorable seasons, but never so dominant that they became a hated pariah (hard for an entire sports fandom to hate you when you’re, at worst, the third most loathsome team in your own division). I had a perfectly balanced fan experience going until Dave Gettleman swaggered up, traded the best part of the porridge for some warmed-over slurry, then took a Daniel Jones-sized shit in the slurry bowl. Now I have to root for the Knicks AND the NY football Knicks? Bullshit. Fuck Gettleman, Fuck John Mara, and Fuck James Dolan while you’re at it. I hope they all get eaten by bears.


Andrew:

The Star-Ledger has us finishing at 6-10 in 2019. That prediction includes the concession that we will receive two gift wins in weeks 16 & 17 (Washington and Philadelphia) because both teams, for different reasons, will have nothing to play for. Were that prediction to come true, it would be Pat Shurmur’s winningest season ever as a head coach.


Matthew:

I can’t tell you how many Giants fans I know that swear they hate Trump yet reveal their MAGA card when they take umbrage over this goddamn fucking boat ride.


Michael:

Dave Gettleman is the kind of GM where you just start writing off any hopes of realistically competing until he’s removed from the picture.


Derek:

FUCK DAVE GETTLEMAN AND HIS FAKE FUCKING BOSTON ACCENT.

Steve:

This team is exactly what it would look like if your average shithead racist Long Island dad ran it.


Dan:

I have a fucking Dave Brown jersey. My aunt gave it to me for Christmas one year. Because I’m a fucking idiot, I wore it in rotation with my Rodney Hampton jersey, and I was that tool who taped over the nameplate and wrote “BURRESS” when the Giants signed Plax. It would not take a lot of work to convince me that my actions directly led the universe fire that handgun into Plax’s leg. Fuck me with a Newark Airport Taxi medallion.


Markell:

If I have to hear one more time about “Culture” (read: having the most obedient team) from one of these WFAN regurgitating mouth-breathers I’m gonna jump off the Chrysler Building.


Sean:

A screenshot of the text chain between my brother, dad, and I during the draft is attached for posterity. My friend, and Eagles fan, called me and just laughed the entire time.


Brendan:



The fans are incredibly self-important. You can’t spend ten minutes on a Giants forum without reading about how classy the organization is, how the Giants invented this, perfected that, won the best Super Bowls, have links to all the great coaches. The implication being that we are all smart, successful, important and great by association and certainly not complete fucking saps like those Jets fans on Long Island. People also cite the number of pre-merger NFL Championships the Giants won like anyone gives a fuck. There’s a persistent, widely held belief that Bill Belichick has always wanted to coach the Giants, that we are his one true love and how if Bill had to lose those Super Bowls he must take some solace in the fact that he lost them to us. This crap pops up every so often and rumors of his imminent resignation/triumphant return run rampant during our now frequent coaching searches. If you think Bill fucking Belichick is out on his boat “VIII Rings” thinking about anything other than the Pats and the blonde divorcée he’s banging I’ve got a bridge to sell you.


Jay:

Since Super Bowl 46, John Mara has done everything in his power to join James Dolan, Jeff Wilpon and whatever Johnson is “running” the Jets to form the Mt. Rushmore of dipshit second-generation NY sports owners. These guys are born with everything, yet every decision they make is completely idiotic and detached from reality. The organization is reactionary, dimwitted and slow, much like the offense throughout most of the franchise’s history. Dave Gettleman looks, sounds and acts like a 7th grade gym teacher from Worcester, right down to the stupid athletic shorts and whistle like he’s coaching up the fullbacks.


Samuel:

My whole life I’ve heard people talk about this organization as one of the more stable in the NFL, and I cannot for the life of me understand how that’s still something anyone seriously believes. Fuck Matt Dodge.

Josiah:

I’m praying Pat Shurmur shows up on the preseason sidelines with slicked-back McAdoo hair just so I’ll have something - ANYTHING - to laugh about.


Ryan:

We drafted the second coming of Barry Sanders and will do to Saquan Barkley what the Detroit Lions did to Sanders for 10 years, until Saquan announces his early retirement because Daniel Jones never panned out and Eli still hasn’t retired.


Jim:

I’ve seen this happen with several friends of mine after they learn they’re about to become fathers - anxiety about bringing a new life into the world just as it’s become crystal clear that the world is irrevocably fucked, manifesting as a creeping, pervasive, minute-to-minute unease. My first son is due to arrive in October and I find myself experiencing this very feeling... except about making the boy a Giants fan. Just as we draft The Ghost of Dave Brown.


Rich:

We traded our best player in decades for nothing because he was supposedly a locker room cancer. Meanwhile, it takes weeks to drop Josh Brown after he beat up his wife; Kyle Lauletta can’t beat out Eli’s desiccated corpse to get into a game, and was arrested for leading the police on a car chase; and one of our safeties nearly killed someone. Our coach can only call one of 2 plays on every down: 1) run it up the middle with Saquon; or 2) throw it to Saquon 2 yards behind the line of scrimmage. I can only hope we pull a Cardinals and trade Danny Jones for peanuts next year and use our likely #1 pick to draft an actual talented QB.


Frank:

Sure, Jerry Reese had his problems, but at least I got to go into most seasons under his tenure with a realistic expectation the Giants could make the playoffs. They even won a couple of titles! Now, all I have is this fucking clown who is smugly proud of himself for being an idiot and who has a penchant for getting rid of good players. I guess I am happy for Beckham, as he now gets to play for a fun, young, competitive team with lots of upside instead of being stuck with what has become a dumpster fire of an organization. The thing about this current piece of shit GM is that he doesn’t even stay true to his own dumb-shit “philosophy”. Landon Collins was exactly the type of hard-nosed, tough, old school-type player he claims to love. And then he just let the guy walk. None of it makes sense. When I got back from Afghanistan, one of my Marines signed my platoon flag with the following message: “Thank God our deployment went better than the Giants’ season.” I am confident that I will be able to say that every year for at least the next decade. Fuck the following people forever: DeSean Jackson, Jason Witten, Jay Glazer, Ereck Flowers, Troy Aikman, Mike Bloomberg, Jeremy Shockey, and Ben McAdoo. Double fuck the current chud in the front office.


Patrick:

Our old man GM who overvalues white players declined to re-sign Landon Collins, traded Damon Harrison, traded Odell fucking Beckham, and I’m sure would re-sign Eli even if his fucking arm fell off. We basically have Phil Mushnick running the front office. God I hate this fucking team.


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! I have a text thread with some of my Giants fan cousins, and the Monday after Green Bay’s thrashing of the Giants all one cousin wanted to talk about was how Odell Beckham blew the game for them. The argument included all the typical dog whistle comments about leadership and maturity. He belabored these points even after I pointed out that the 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. In that moment, I realized I’d just seen a glimpse of the future. Our fans will rationalize how the Giants were right to let the closest thing they’ve had to an offensive Lawrence Taylor walk in free agency because he dances too much in the end zone. P.S.: that cousin thinks Notre Dame can turn it around under Brian Kelly. They won’t.


Kenton:

Every week on a Tuesday after all the games are done, a user on the NFL sub-reddit compiles the best content from each team’s respective sub-reddit. It’s usually gifs of important plays, funny memes, or Jags/Lions fans joking about killing themselves. But the Giants fans’ posts are NEVER interesting. They’re never funny or clever or remotely charming. Almost every post in the Giants subreddit reads like it was made by the Catholic church. I’m just like the rest of them. This organization and I deserve one another.

Greg:

After milquetoast-in-chief John Mara spent all last season gaslighting the fanbase about its franchise icon, our sentient cobb salad of a GM traded away said icon—the most exciting and talented player in the history of the franchise—for a bag of deflated footballs and a box of donuts. Daniel Jones is the future of our franchise: a guy I personally witnessed lose 59-7 on his own Senior Night to WAKE FOREST. Our completely inaccessible stadium was the most expensive in the history of the world when it was built and looks like a cement truck took a big dump in a parking lot.


Mike:

I grew up without a lot of money. For my 12th birthday present in 1979, my grandfather was able to get my father and me tickets to my first live Giants game. It wasn’t exactly a hot ticket, as the Giants were playing the last game of their 15th consecutive season outside of the playoffs and the Baltimore Colts were in last place in the AFC East and hardly a rival, but it was the biggest thrill of my young life. It was freezing and my dad took me, for the first and last time, to the souvenir stand at the game and bought me a Giants pom pom hat. That hat is my favorite memory of my father and I still wear it every time I shovel snow, which happens pretty frequently around here. Want to know what else I remember every time I am shoveling snow? Mike Siani: lost to history for the rest of the world, but permanently etched in my memory, catching a touchdown pass right in front of me, as the 4-11 Colts annihilated the Giants 31-7.


James:

Fuck David Gettleman with a vibrating porcupine.

Ed:

I hope Odell wins the next 20 Super Bowls.

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