"To keep their championship core intact, the Giants have constructed a team that features a handful of household names alongside a large collection of unknowns.
In addition to Manning, whose salary cap figure of $20.85 million is the NFL's highest, the lavish deals given to guard Chris Snee and safety Antrel Rolle mean almost one third of the team's salary cap space is allocated to three players.
When the salaries of veteran defensive ends Justin Tuck and Mathias Kiwanuka, cornerback Corey Webster and center David Baas are added to that, the seven players account for roughly half of the Giants' $123 million payroll. No team spends a higher percentage of its salary cap on its seven best-paid players according to Spotrac, a website that compiles salary data on all 32 NFL teams.
The upshot is a roster devoid of depth, with little money available for mid-level players."
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Its not that the money is tied up in seven players, its that those seven players aren't performing to their paycheck.
Hopefully the cap space issue will be resolved next season.
I mean what was the point of giving him all of that money after 2 Super Bowls? We are really dumb sons of bitches.
The Giants didn't fuck anything up by giving him that deal, generally speaking.
I disagree. In addition to OL and LB:
RB - dangerously thin, even when Wilson and Brown are healthy.
TE - highly questionable, though Donnell and Robinson may turn out to be quality players.
DE - uncertain, since the Giants' scheme depends on star-level production from the DEs but JPP hasn't come all the way back from his back troubles, Kiwanuka and Tuck are only average now, and we don't know what we have in Moore.
CB - Amukamara and pray for rain.
S - Will Hill had a great game Sunday. If that's who he is, and he can keep his head screwed on straight, they have a player. Rolle needs to go. Who knows what they have in Taylor, and who knows who Stevie Brown will be post-ACL.
What I honestly believe is that they thought that they could go with a half measure, keep a competive core intact, and rebuild on the fly. In retrospect, they should have gutted the veterans back in February and just taken their lumps this season anyway.
Hindsight is 20/20
Basically, I think the Giants are thin or questionable almost everywhere on offense and defense except DT and WR. They even lack depth at QB, though I think they moved to address that when they drafted Nassib. On special teams, they have a great KR in Wilson, if they use him there; a good punter; and an outstanding long snapper. They're only ok at PR and gunner.
I think the secondary would be fine if the injuries hadn't hit. Imagine Rolle, Brown, and Hill as the trio of safeties. Put Kenny Phillips In the mix if he hadn't re-injured the knee after two solid productive years in 2010 and 2011.
If they had kept Boley and Blackburn they could have gotten by another year at linebacker while they looked for replacements.
Can't say much for the handling of the offensive line. The veterans broke down all at once at ages not that advanced for O-Linemen. Baas may have been Reese's worst mistake, but everyone makes mistakes.
A lot of the bad moves that they made, such as releasing Boley and Bradshaw, may just have been that they couldn't even afford them under the salary cap.
And who's fault is that?
I do think they rightly expected to get more out of the guys on the offensive line. 31 is not really old for an offensive lineman. I think the offensive line will come together a bit as the year moves on...and I would not be surprised to see the team with 5 wins, which would it better than the alternative of nothing coming together as the season progresses.
We will see
What I honestly believe is that they thought that they could go with a half measure, keep a competive core intact, and rebuild on the fly. In retrospect, they should have gutted the veterans back in February and just taken their lumps this season anyway.
Hindsight is 20/20
100% agreed. We tried for one last hurrah with the core, and it was one year too late. A calculated risk that backfired. Luckily, it seems as if the cap planning is strategically sound and we can cut bait and rebuild in the offseason without too much pain. Unfortunately, it means a wasted year of Eli's prime.
Hard to do it any other way with a team that won two championships. Newsome looks like he took the other approach (blow it up early) in Baltimore, but the early returns aren't all that promising either. Might just be that the hangover year is the best time to rebuild.
Canty and Boley were terrible last year..in fact Boley was on the street until a couple weeks ago..
Arcanum : 10/9/2013 10:56 pm : link : reply
Of the o line and LB position, I think the Giants are in pretty good shape.
I agree with Great Dane.....there are more holes on this team than Swiss Cheese....
And we are depending on the same people, who created these holes, to fill them?
A matter of perspective.
As far as how the holes grew - that's a by-product of success and time. Guys got older faster than could be expected (look at the age that some other OG and DE retire and then look up how old Snee and Tuck are). Kenny Phillips was technically a casualty last year, thanks to a degenerative knee condition that couldn't be predicted. We picked a safety high to help offset that, and the guy never stepped on the field because he was critically injured in a non-football accident. Our expensive OL FA acquisition has been perpetually injured. These items are nothing but dumb luck.
Some of the holes are definitely because of misfires. These guys certainly have their faults, and one of the biggest is their inability to scout and draft/sign LBs. We've drafted OL that haven't been able to stay on the field; IMO, the jury is out here, because we haven't seen these guys exposed to live reps to judge them. It's altogether possible though that the OL is another area where Reese and co. misfired.
Do you really think it's different elsewhere with an established franchise QB? I'd bet if you looked around the league and found a franchise QB on a team that has experienced some success that you'd see a similar situation, that 3-4 players account for 30% of the cap or more.
We're having an entirely different conversation if Snee doesn't fall apart early and Baas isn't constantly injured.
This isn't the 1961-1963 Giants who aged and did nothing about it until it was too late..
Pre-FA you rebuilt..This era, you re-tool, IF, IF, you have core players young enough and in tact, which we do
No TE's....Wilson may prove to be a mistake....Will Nicks be back?
Defensive line? Can JPP come back? Hankins? Moore? Pure speculation....
NO LB'ers.....Rolle will not take a pay cut.....Stevie "ACL" Brown? Will "Stay Klean" Hill?
Where is this core? We have relied on guys who can't stay on the field....bring them back?
I agree, Reese made the mistake of keeping this team together after the '11 season, to try and repeat....it was either that or start to retool, and he chose wrong....
Barring a very major miracle, we are picking top 10 or better?,and also likely to make almost all the moves in Optimus's salary cap/cut analysis recently, in a good draft year, and, for + or -, some part of a new coaching staff.
In today's NFL, quick turnarounds can happen.
Defense: JPP, LinJo, Hankins, Moore, Hill, Prince, Hosley, Perhaps Stevie Brown
Probably left out some, but enough talent to fill in with FAs as needed and of course the draft, UDFAs and FA..
The plan would have worked had it not been for debilitating injuries to guys like Snee, Tuck and Webster.
performances, below average backups, and those dreaded injuries.
Meanwhile, of the young guys who Doomster rants that we don't know a damn thing about, Moore missed most of training camp & the 1st couple of games with a shoulder injury. Robinson missed most of training camp & each game w/ a foot injury. Taylor missed most of training camp & each game w/ all sorts of stuff. Hosley has missed more games than he's played. It's Reese's fault that he didn't make sure that Chad Jones knew how to drive before drafting him. It was Reese's fault that Connor, who looked to be better (if only slightly) than Blackburn, didn't last one game. It was Reese's fault that Andre Brown broke his leg 2 years in a row (this time much earlier) & that the Stevie Brown, w/ the most Giants INTs in the last 30 years, didn't make it out of pre-season. It was Reese's fault that Bennett got $5 million/year from the Bears.
And where were the reliable backups to all theose injured players supposed to come from? 5th-7th round picks that every GM "blows" every year?