As a Giants season ticket holder, I had the privilege of attending this exclusive event for the 4th year in the row. It was another fun event hosted by Bob Papa and Dave Diehl at the iconic Beacon Theatre in Manhattan. Here are a few details.
- Without mentioning his name, Papa, Diehl, and even John Mara took some veiled shots at McAdoo. Mara is still seething at the way the Manning "benching" situation was handled. One thing I found interesting is that Mara said he was firm in his belief that Eli could still play at a very high level for several more years but left that for Gettleman and Shurmur to make the decision independently and they both felt very strongly about Eli as the qb for the next few years. Mara said Eli is throwing the ball in practice as well as he ever has in his career and is full of energy and determination.
- Pat Shurmur is who impressed me the most, and is still the most important and best offseason acquisition. He is gracious, direct, respectful, and doesn;t give any canned/bs answers to questions. He has an almost regal yet humble presence about him. The man is everything you want in a head coach, especially for this franchise.
- Bettcher looks and sounds the part of a football coach in every sense of the word. He speaks well and wasn't shy about the fact that he loves to bring pressure and that his scheme will feature 3/4 and 4/3 looks and could change from one play to the next. He made it clear that it's an aggressive, attacking, fly to the ball system. Seems like he's bringing more of a "risk/reward" than read-and-react/bend-but-don't break mindset. He pointed out that the there is a ton of competition in the secondary right now and a lot of talented guys at the CB and Safety spots fighting it out, which is a good thing.
- In the rookies segment, Saquon was Saquon. The guy just handles himself the way you'd want to see any guy on your team do so. He just makes you smile because you know he's such a rare talent and special person. Will Hernandez is a MAN. To say he's physically-imposing would be putting it lightly. He is a well-spoken, and focused individual but you just know he is not messing around. When asked which NFL player he models his game after, he said Al Faneca (which I thought was a great answer). The guy is hungry and quite frankly wants to kick ass on the football field (Eli later praised him as being "cranky" - mentioning that he's started several fights in practice already). Personality-wise, Zo Carter is my favorite guy among the rookies. He has a great sense of humor and just seems like a kind of dude anyone could get a long with and would be just a fun guy to hang out with (NFL player or otherwise). BJ Hill seems like a great kid with a good head on his shoulds and the right attitude. RJ McIntosh seems like a bit of a knuckle-head and still carries himself like a college kid but hopefully he'll learn how to be a pro. Lauletta talked about how amazing Eli is.
- In the Veterans segment (which also featured Landon Collins, Nate Solder, and Alec Ogletree), Eli absolutely stole the show with his deadpan humor. He is by far the most loved and respected guy in the room (by both the fans and his teammates). For what it's worth, he's still the best dressed guy on the team.
Clearly his communication to his manager was poor, or, less likely, his manager failed to follow his instructions but that should have resulted in immediate firing.
My opinion of Mara has dropped considerably in the last couple of years. Sure he took responsibility in words but his actions were clearly passing the buck. Fired two guys over it. And then pretends the new GM and Coach had a free hand in the QB decision - bullshit. Eli was always going to be the QB in 2018. No new GM or new HC was going to pick that fight after what went down last season.
Frankly, I don't think changing QB's when you're 2-8 or whatever the hell we were at that point should have resulted in such a major ruckus. Yes, it was handled poorly but Eli's a big boy making 20 million a year. His feelings shouldn't drive franchise level decisions. We cut Phil Simms, the 49ers traded Montana, the Colts moved Petyon. It's a business and sometimes it gets cold and impersonal. Deal with it.
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Even the most casual fan of the team knew the right way to handle the move to Davis Webb.
Since this scenario may pop up again this season, what is the right approach?
If an in game switch is a no go, and more importantly the starter should get the vast majority of the practice reps, whats the correct approach?
Was the "in game switch" really a no-go ?? Some of those games were pretty lopsided (and not in a good way).
In my opinion, Eli should have started, to bench him for Smiff was simply malfeasance. Webb could have started the 2nd half. At least we'd have some idea what the kid looks like in live action. That level of detail should have been discussed with the GM and Coach.
Drawing from our D-Day thread -- that would be like Ike saying "I think it'd be a good idea to invade France by Sea'......and then go off to inspect the bases in Burma !!
That's flipping cool! What were the comments on the thread by the hosts?
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In comment 13984646 Named Later said:
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Even the most casual fan of the team knew the right way to handle the move to Davis Webb.
Since this scenario may pop up again this season, what is the right approach?
If an in game switch is a no go, and more importantly the starter should get the vast majority of the practice reps, whats the correct approach?
Was the "in game switch" really a no-go ?? Some of those games were pretty lopsided (and not in a good way).
In my opinion, Eli should have started, to bench him for Smiff was simply malfeasance. Webb could have started the 2nd half. At least we'd have some idea what the kid looks like in live action. That level of detail should have been discussed with the GM and Coach.
Drawing from our D-Day thread -- that would be like Ike saying "I think it'd be a good idea to invade France by Sea'......and then go off to inspect the bases in Burma !!
Yes, the in game switch was absolutely a no go. From Eli's perspective it didn't matter who got the ball after him.
More importantly, although he never explicitly said this, I don't think Eli would give up many of his practice snaps as long as he was the starter. I think he believes that the starter should get the bulk of the prep work to put them in the best position to compete and win the game(can't fault him for this view).
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Even the most casual fan of the team knew the right way to handle the move to Davis Webb.
Since this scenario may pop up again this season, what is the right approach?
If an in game switch is a no go, and more importantly the starter should get the vast majority of the practice reps, whats the correct approach?
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In comment 13984646 Named Later said:
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Even the most casual fan of the team knew the right way to handle the move to Davis Webb.
Since this scenario may pop up again this season, what is the right approach?
If an in game switch is a no go, and more importantly the starter should get the vast majority of the practice reps, whats the correct approach?
Nobody ever said that a an in-game switch was a no go.
He said he wouldn't start a game knowing he was going to come out.
So if thats the case, how do you develop a plan to work in the young guys? And how do you prep them?
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This thread (including the BBI site name and the handle of the OP) just got referenced on WFAN (BMC show) by Maggie.
That's flipping cool! What were the comments on the thread by the hosts?
Just enough to reaffirm how awful that show is - they basically had nothing to add in terms of opinion, just basically read off some of the highlights.
If you could write a script to convert some BBI text to a radio broadcast, you could start your own WFAN in your basement.
I thank NYGmen58 again for his post.....that's some good stuff right there.
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In comment 13984728 ron mexico said:
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In comment 13984646 Named Later said:
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Even the most casual fan of the team knew the right way to handle the move to Davis Webb.
Since this scenario may pop up again this season, what is the right approach?
If an in game switch is a no go, and more importantly the starter should get the vast majority of the practice reps, whats the correct approach?
Nobody ever said that a an in-game switch was a no go.
He said he wouldn't start a game knowing he was going to come out.
So if thats the case, how do you develop a plan to work in the young guys? And how do you prep them?
He would not agree to a plan where he would be taken out regardless of the game status; i.e., if they were in the middle of winning a game or in a tightly contested thing where it was a scheduled benching, rather than performance in that game. It was presented to him that he let everyone know that he was only playing to selfishly maintain a streak and nothing more.
No sane coach benches a player no matter what, if they are in the midst of winning a game, just to put in an inferior product. That would be out and out throwing the game.
None of that was Eli saying he wouldn't start a game that he would not finish. That's simply not true.
Eli's had a couple of kids and a couple of rings. It may have taken something jarring like this to wake him up. If he's got 1 more MVP-type season in him this team will be tough to beat.
I thank NYGmen58 again for his post.....that's some good stuff right there.
Listen to his response at the 1:30 mark. And he does ask the question," how do you prepare?"
Link - ( New Window )
None of that was Eli saying he wouldn't start a game that he would not finish. That's simply not true.
He did say that, watch the interview I linked above.
And again, if you are going to base it on in game performance and score, how do you prepare for that? How do you get a decent evaluation only putting the back up QB in mop up situations? How do you split the practice reps?
Mara NEVER specifically defended himself for the Eli benching, nor did he specifically claim any degree of responsibility. When the subject came up, his reaction was a nervous and embarrassed smile -- IMHO -- after which came the joking about the reaction he got at home.
Everyone agreed (or stated) that they felt Barkley was the best player in the draft. Later on, I think Mara's response about picking a QB as the 2nd most difficult job was used to point out what a crapshoot that can be in a draft. He didn't name names, but he pointed out that QBs who are high draft picks don't always transition well into the NFL. (On the other hand, he didn't bring up Ron Dayne. NO reason he would have, of course ... just sayin')
Bettcher seemed a little uncomfortable at first, especially when asked to generalize about his philosophy. When he talked later about mixing up 3-4 and 4-3 he was more animated.
One of those "indirect" shots at MacAdoo came from Mara in a sort of mea culpa while endorsing Shurmer. Much like what he said about drafting QBs, he indicated that sometimes you select a very successful coordinator who then can't make a successful transition to head coach - and sometimes it takes a couple of years to figure that out. And separately, as was noted, Shurmer discussed what he learned with the Browns: said he had a list of things he needed to get done in the first six weeks and had checked them all off, and a separate list of things he would never do again.
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None of that was Eli saying he wouldn't start a game that he would not finish. That's simply not true.
He did say that, watch the interview I linked above.
And again, if you are going to base it on in game performance and score, how do you prepare for that? How do you get a decent evaluation only putting the back up QB in mop up situations? How do you split the practice reps?
Again, he's talking about the situation where he's jerked out no matter what. He never said that he wouldn't start a game where he was not guaranteed to finish.
For the second part, I think you've misconstrued "mop-up". That's when you're up a ton and just handing off to kill time. If you're down a ton, which was the more likely scenario last year, then you're still playing a quality defense and likely passing and playing even harder to try to get back into it. That's not mop-up.
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In comment 13984879 Bill L said:
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None of that was Eli saying he wouldn't start a game that he would not finish. That's simply not true.
He did say that, watch the interview I linked above.
And again, if you are going to base it on in game performance and score, how do you prepare for that? How do you get a decent evaluation only putting the back up QB in mop up situations? How do you split the practice reps?
Again, he's talking about the situation where he's jerked out no matter what. He never said that he wouldn't start a game where he was not guaranteed to finish.
For the second part, I think you've misconstrued "mop-up". That's when you're up a ton and just handing off to kill time. If you're down a ton, which was the more likely scenario last year, then you're still playing a quality defense and likely passing and playing even harder to try to get back into it. That's not mop-up.
we are saying the same thing. he wont start a game knowing he is going to come out.
Semantics about what constitutes "mop up", can we agree that the switch would only occur when the game is out of hand. The point when the defense is in prevent mode and and your own players are probably not going to lay it all on the line for the back up in a lost game. How do you get a decent evaluation in that scenario?
And no one wants to answer how you split practice reps.
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In comment 13984646 Named Later said:
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Even the most casual fan of the team knew the right way to handle the move to Davis Webb.
Since this scenario may pop up again this season, what is the right approach?
If an in game switch is a no go, and more importantly the starter should get the vast majority of the practice reps, whats the correct approach?
Nobody ever said that a an in-game switch was a no go.
Not sure if you are trying to be cute here, but Eli said that he didn't want to start a game that he was going to pulled from.
If in fact LT solder - LG Hernandez - OC Halapio - RG Omameh and RT Flowers (this is the group that I think ends up starting. B. Jones is also a possible starter at OC, depends on his development. I see Halapio as a savvy veteran next to rookie Hernandez.
As for Webb, I think we'll see a LOT of him in pre-season games. I'd love it if the man got to play some "mop up" duty games - LOL.
I too am really liking Shurmur and his experience & personality.
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In comment 13984728 ron mexico said:
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In comment 13984646 Named Later said:
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Even the most casual fan of the team knew the right way to handle the move to Davis Webb.
Since this scenario may pop up again this season, what is the right approach?
If an in game switch is a no go, and more importantly the starter should get the vast majority of the practice reps, whats the correct approach?
Nobody ever said that a an in-game switch was a no go.
Not sure if you are trying to be cute here, but Eli said that he didn't want to start a game that he was going to pulled from.
To be fair, Eli couldn’t win here. The reason Eli declined that option was because of the games started record. He didn’t want people killing the team (and him) for starting him just to a appease the record, and we all know that’s the narrative that people would have created. So no matter how this had played out, Eli looks like the bad guy.
A coach should be respectful of his QB especially of Eli's tenure/stature but he does not have to provide Eli with rational or thought process on everything, especially in a 3 win miserable season.
All Mac needed to do was say to Eli that he was probably going to start folding in the other QBs for the rest of the season based on how he feels the is going. And that he was going to take it week-to-week....that's all.
And if Eli wanted more info than Mac could just reiterate...we'll take it week to week.
Eli's had a couple of kids and a couple of rings. It may have taken something jarring like this to wake him up. If he's got 1 more MVP-type season in him this team will be tough to beat.
When has he ever had an MVP-type season?
Eli's had a couple of kids and a couple of rings. It may have taken something jarring like this to wake him up. If he's got 1 more MVP-type season in him this team will be tough to beat.
Really? Reese completely whiffed on multiple high end offensive line picks leaving a pocket QB with no line or threat of a running game to help him succeed. Did you read Pugh’s comments today? They didn’t even contact him regarding a new contract. And he was supposedly our best lineman! That’s the shit Eli has played behind for the last few years. Gettleman comes in, cleans up the line as best he could in one year and drafts the consensus best pick in the draft in Barkley, giving Eli the best RB threat he has had since Tiki Barber 12 years ago. Seems to me that people that understand football a lot better than we do (Gettleman and Shurmur amongst countless ex Giant players) feel that Eli was not the problem the last few years.