Very interesting conversation. Brian Williams was a DB on the Giants team in 2011. He was released mid-season and was mainly a special teams player, but he had a very long and solid career in the NFL before coming to the Giants, mainly with the Vikes and Jags. I was in the Charlotte airport getting ready to go to the UK - he saw I was rooting for the team, he introduced himself and we talked for about an hour.
He had lots of interesting comments:
- Not a fan of the Giants. Didn't like the way the team handled his released, but he did say that they gave him a Super Bowl ring and he will always remember that.
- Not a fan of Perry Fewell. Said he was really poor at communicating gameplans, made fun of the way he would draw diagrams and felt he disliked him from the time he spurned Wake Forest for NC State while Jim Caldwell was HC at Wake. Said Caldwell and Fewell were close.
He felt that Fewell never really looked at him as an option to play on the D.
- Said the defensive players were divided on Eli. Tuck and Osi were Eli guys, but said it was frustrating that he'd throw a few balls a game that made guys shake their heads.
- Said the practices were a mess. He thought they were pretty bad in Jax his final year there, but he said in NY it was much worse. Not a whole lot of positive comments about the prep.
- Said Randy Moss was the best teammate he had
- Intimated that JPP wasn't the shapest knife in the drawer
- Thinks Barkley is amazing. Reminds him of AP in many ways
- Best athlete he ever played with - Matt Jones
- Always felt like the Giants FO was a mess. Didn't care too much 'for Jerry Reese. Basically said out of the team he played for, the Giants were his least favorite.
- Liked Mike Tice but said he was an example of a coordinator who was over his head as a HC.
- Tore his ACL when he was 30 and playing in Atlanta. Said it was a tough injury to come back from, and he never really had the same aggression after that.
Really good conversation. I came away with the impression that he is a guy who was able to take his success on the field and do some things off the field. He's still quite tight with many players and he said he still bleeds purple. We were talking about the officiating and he said it is pure crap and has been for some time.
Very enlightening to get the fairly anti-Giants take, similar to what we heard on the board from Bryan Kehl.
I'm not buying his story.
I admire yoiur integrity. Again thank you.
Practice seemed disorganized? Seemed like the Giants won two Super Bowls. That doesn't happen by accident over the course of a season and, to the chagrin of people trying to reconsile it all as a fluke, certainly not twice.
Actual games are chaos so perhaps the looseness was by design. I'll give the guy that got to and won big games multiple times on multiple teams the benefit of a doubt.
Jacksonville Jaguars (2006–2008) Jack Del Rio
Atlanta Falcons (2009–2010) Mike Smith
Giants were his last team.
JohnB : 12/3/2018 9:09 pm : link : reply
Seriously.
He can complain all he wants but that team won the Super Bowl! There are a lot of players would would have loved to be a part of that team and never get anywhere near that level. He has a ring and bitches.
Sour grapes from a guy how got cut and thus wasn't there to beat the Pats in the big game. Boo hoo.
I took it more as a guy who shared his playing experience and simply had a different take on his view of the Giants. He wasn't really trashing the team - just felt that his experience with them was not as good as other places. He was fully up front that after he injured his ACL that he wasn't the same player, and he still wanted to be a starter and felt he didn't get a chance. I think there was some frustration the he wasn't looked at to play D, but rather just ST, but it isn't like he holds a grudge against the team.
Mike in Ohio - I was in the A Terminal, which very much is a renovation zone, and the lone bar down that wing was pretty packed. I actually was able to have a conversation with him because we started off talking about being squeezed in the corner!
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That they went to win the super bowl.
I would sign up for that again and again
Neither of the teams that won the Super Bowl could honestly be called the best team in the league. Shit, the 2016 Giants with McAdoo won more regular season games than either the 2007 or 2011 teams.
The Coughlin era is a Patrick Crayton broken off route in 2007 and about a dozen plays that went our way in 2011 away from not being especially memorable. You never give back the Super Bowls, but when analyzing the era objectively for any information on how to move forward, I think it's important to be honest with ourselves.
I could not give a shit if our Super Bowl winning teams were the "best team in the league"- because they sure beat the "best teams in the league" on their way to both trophies. Did the better team lose? That's too bad.
And, you can point to those exact same lucky bounces/plays or circumstances in every team's championship season.
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In comment 14204438 FatMan in Charlotte said:
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practices were just a lot less organized than other places.
Sort of a free-for-all of sorts. Wasn't a lot of situational planning. Felt that Fewell didn't really prep the guys all that well.
Again - we won the SB that year, but Williams was released in the middle part of the year, so there may have been changes made or there may have been different ways they ran things at the end of the year, but I thought it was an interesting comment.
I can attest to this. I worked for Virginia Tech under Coach Beamer and our practices were scripted out period by period and organized down to the every minute. We had an airhorn that was blown to change periods and drills.
After I graduated I got a pass to watch a Giants training camp practice in the bleachers in 2007. The first thing that I noticed was how the practices felt like Chinese fire drills. They didn’t seem organized at all coming from the structured environment I was used too.
Weird that someone is confirming it from the inside. I just chalked it up as the NFL being a different animal.
We had practices like that in HS, I'm 100% sure that a two time super bowl winning head coach known for his schedules and rules didn't run a chinese fire drill. I'm sorry this is all just totally the opposite of what we know of TC. I was up in Albany in 2012, those players knew exactly where to go and what to do and TC was a taskmaster in every single moment and drill.
Yeah, strange. Sounds as though Williams is just bitter person for whatever reason that happened to him. Bitter comments on things
I don't get the ragging on the '07 team as not being the best team in the country, of course New England were...but the '08 Giants lost Strahan and still dominated the 2008 regular season so we were clearly a team peaking at the right time. You can't call beating the Patriots a fluke as we went 3-1 over 4 years from 07 to 11 and the 1 was a 3 pt loss. The 2007 Giants took time to get used to Spags' D and once they did they looked like a hell of a team. 10 wins was a good return for a team with a new DC facing a tough schedule.
Now the '11 team is maybe a better conversation. That seemed a lot more like a veteran team that knew how to win getting hot.
As to Williams' comments I am sure that's how he viewed things and I can absolutely believe Fewell was a terrible DC. I am surprised to hear a Coughlin practice described in those terms but I do think TC did rely far too much on his DCs and it is clear from his time here when he had a poor DC the unit suffered.
Garbage.
I didn't know about Kehl, so this is the first I've heard an ex-Giants player complain about the org. Most praise their time w/the Giants....go figure.
He can complain all he wants but that team won the Super Bowl! There are a lot of players would would have loved to be a part of that team and never get anywhere near that level. He has a ring and bitches.
Sour grapes from a guy how got cut and thus wasn't there to beat the Pats in the big game. Boo hoo.
I tend to agree....cut from a team mid-season that won the SuperBowl? How would anyone feel about that?
I didn't know about Kehl, so this is the first I've heard an ex-Giants player complain about the org. Most praise their time w/the Giants....go figure.
If memory serves, Kehl posted here several years back and shared some negative perspective about the Giants - mostly about how they drafted guys who weren’t a fit for the scheme they were trying to run (I think he felt this happened to him).
Fewell, whom I recall was liked a lot by TC, came from Bills (iirc), and there were lots of head scratching blown assignments or coverage schemes. It's not implausible that Williams experience with practices there may have been run differently than the offensive side. A lot of red flags, many of which were widely shared by football watchers generally and lots here.
Funny that Kehl is brought up in this context, the guy Gil Brandt thought was the steal of the draft when the Giants picked him on Day 2 or whatever it was back then.
https://corner.bigblueinteractive.com/index.php?mode=2&thread=523290&show_all=1 - ( New Window )
Meh. As stated earlier, every team has its share of fortunate calls, bounces, etc go there way in Super Bowl winning seasons. Luck plays some part but a very small part.
2011 was a marvelous fluke that is highly unlikely to ever be duplicated by anyone.
2011 was a marvelous fluke that is highly unlikely to ever be duplicated by anyone.
And yet one week later Cruz slips in the redzone and Eli's throws a pick six that seals the game for the Seahawks. Score a touchdown there and they still finish 9 - 7.
2011 was a marvelous fluke that is highly unlikely to ever be duplicated by anyone.
Greg, if you actually go through every team's championship season, you will find multiple plays, lucky bounces, bad penalties or even lack of penalties called that have assisted teams on there way to a championship. It is not the Giants who are the only team to benefit from these on the way to a championship.
I mean, if JPP doesn't block that field goal in Dallas, the Victor Cruz play doesn't even matter either.
And, wtf with the Kehl thread. Missed that altogether, must have been one of those stretches when I just didn't check in for days. Was he BK, or was it understood to be a BBI mole?
I mean, if JPP doesn't block that field goal in Dallas, the Victor Cruz play doesn't even matter either.
Why is this so hard to grasp? Yes, championships always involve some luck. None of them other than 2011 that I can think of involve a lot of luck simply to even make the playoffs.
He made this comment in one of his long responses
Ultimately, Kehl was proven right. The Giants draft picks not only had talent issues, they didn't even fit the schemes Coughlin or Fewell/Spags were running. Over years and years that disconnect helped lead to the implosion that we have seen that only now Gettleman is starting to dig out.
It also speaks to the criticality that Gettleman and Abrams are clear on the types of players will fit what Shurmur and Bettcher want to run.
There still doesn't seem to be much of a coherent personnel philosophy, which is a big reason why I'm not terribly optimistic about the future.
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Thanks, Greg. I was wondering why Eric said at the top, 'well played, sir', as if the poster was one of BBI's own, and the banter with FMiC. Guess I'll have to carve out some hours for reading!
That thread was the 2nd time he showed up and posted photo proof because a lot of posters didn't believe it was him on the first thread.
He made this comment in one of his long responses
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PS - want to know why Seattle got so good all of a sudden? They broke from NFL tradition, and their scouts and GM went to the coaches to ask them who to draft and sign...to fit their scheme. Unlike NY, they never draft a guy who doesn't fit their scheme.
Ultimately, Kehl was proven right. The Giants draft picks not only had talent issues, they didn't even fit the schemes Coughlin or Fewell/Spags were running. Over years and years that disconnect helped lead to the implosion that we have seen that only now Gettleman is starting to dig out.
It also speaks to the criticality that Gettleman and Abrams are clear on the types of players will fit what Shurmur and Bettcher want to run.
This post by Dorgon in the Kehl linked thread still makes me crack up 3 years later
dorgan : 10/22/2015 7:27 pm : link
all your fingers on both hands?
You're hired!
Terps, to be fair, he was talking about it back in 2015. And the particulars were Reese and Coughlin. They are gone. The question is now if Gettleman is on the same page as Shurmur and Bettcher. Based on this first draft, the signs are positive. Granted Barkley can play for anyone, but Hernandez, Carter, and Hill are all picks to play a scheme. Even Beal, who we never got to see play, fits the tall corners that Gettleman likes. Jury is out on Lauletta, but Shurmur is supposed to be a guy who can groom QBs in his system.
By the time Kehl came, the rift between Coughlin, Reese and that clown Ross were causing cracks everywhere.
Weren't Abrams to small degree and Gettleman to a major degree part of the front office then? That doesn't sound like problem solved to me.
Weren't Abrams to small degree and Gettleman to a major degree part of the front office then? That doesn't sound like problem solved to me.
Actually, you raise a good point. Scouts are paid to scout players. They do their reports on everyone. There are for sure certain guys who the big boys in the front office will have an interest in and they will show up at games specifically to scout in person (ie- Gettleman going to West Virginia to see Grier in person).
But it's up to the GM to actually pick the player that they feel will fit their scheme. Gettleman wasn't selecting anyone, that job fell to Reese, using Ross' input. Gettleman's job with the Giants was as Sr. Pro Personnel Analyst. Meaning he was responsible for free agents and guys cut. Think guys like Madison Hedgecock and Dominik Hixon being picked up and fitting in. Kevin Boothe. That was Gettleman.
Ross was so bad at his job it was insane. It's no wonder one of Gettleman's first moves was to fire him last year.
Racer : 11:08 am : link : reply
?
He didn't get to Jax until after TC and he really didn't offer up an opinion about him
I mean if there was a year not to bash Eli...
He wasn't really ragging on him as much as he was saying eli was a guy they relied on, but he made some head-scratching throws
He wasn't really ragging on him as much as he was saying eli was a guy they relied on, but he made some head-scratching throws
Gotcha. That makes sense. Eli’s big games came probably after he was gone.
Furthermore, not really a surprise that a player standing around unimpressed likely doesn't impress coaches and is a mid-season cut.
Thanks for sharing - nice story.
I didn't think the niners or pats were the better team when we played during the regular season and was not surprised when we won in the post season.
Yea, we could have been 8-8, we also could have been 12-4. Some bad breaks in the pack, eagles, and seahawk losses. Hell, even the first skins game. The only team I didn't want to face was the saints. Thankfully a flukey win by the niners spared us that fate
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If Rolle vouched for Fewell I don't take that as a mark in Fewell's favor.
Early days but if these guys can stay on the same page and take it forward together then we will be significantly better off.