There are many good ones to choose from.
My opinion, is promoting Jerry Reese to general manager. He made a lot of decisions that set the franchise back, including hiring Marc Ross. Reese's built the team based on athletic playmakers, ignored the OL, failed on every late round pick (outside Bradshaw), gambled on a lot of players with previous injuries who only lasted 1 contract. I still remember when they drafted David Wilson I said "Luxury pick. We're not that good."
What do you think was the worst management decision?
A close second is ANYONE that signed off on those drafts between the years 2011-2012-2013. Teams have bad drafts but to do it 3 years in a row to that extent, and when you had such a solid QB at the time, was egregious.
We are still trying to recover now years later...
Reese's part of it was not ignorance, as much as he was just a terrible evaluator of OL talent. Schwartz, Pugh and Richburg and Flowers were all either busts or disappointments acquired through the use of valuable resources. I won't even get into the long list of middle to late round draft picks who never materialized. Baas was a decent pickup but ultimately could not stay healthy. Beatty was actually his best work and in fairness, did earn a second contract with the team. Beatty's lifting injury was the bad luck in all of this that compounded a lot of the other mistakes made.
And it's a good point, above, about Dave Brown. That was a horrible use of the supplemental draft. But what made matters worse, was Reeves and GY failure to create a better platform for Brown to possibly succeed...
A close second is ANYONE that signed off on those drafts between the years 2011-2012-2013. Teams have bad drafts but to do it 3 years in a row to that extent, and when you had such a solid QB at the time, was egregious.
We are still trying to recover now years later...
Yup. This is the reason why the Giants have been so bad. The drafting from 2009 till 2013 was terrible...I mean incredibly bad.
People forget the Giants had 5 picks within the top 100 selections and really only came out with Hakeem Nicks.
True, but the hiring of Ray Handley is what made it worse. Handley was a RB coach. He wasn't a coordinator or head coach previously.
I can see not hiring Belichick simply based on his demeanor, but promoting Handley? Ugh.
I remember hearing the late announcement of his “retirement” affecting the Belichick decision, no?
you can trace the decline of this franchise to that moment ..
George Young did not believe him. Then he held out for a year and George traded him for 2 second round picks. One was a guy who was out of the league in 4 years and the other was Mark Collins who started at Corner for 2 superbowl teams, but was replaceable.
Fans often make excuses for George Young because the guy he drafted was great. They ignore that he REFUSED TO PLAY FOR THE GIANTS.
Lawrence Taylor and Reggie White were the two best defensive players I ever saw. There was no salary cap and no free agency. If the Giants drafted Reggie White I think they might have won 4 superbowls in 5 years starting in 1986. The Giant defense would have been better than the 1985/1986 bears defense with more offense.
Promoting Jerry Reese
Hiring Dan Reeves
Cutting Matt Stover
Parting ways with Ed McCaffrey
The Cedric Jones pick
The Ron Dayne pick
Zimmerman
George Young did not believe him. Then he held out for a year and George traded him for 2 second round picks. One was a guy who was out of the league in 4 years and the other was Mark Collins who started at Corner for 2 superbowl teams, but was replaceable.
Fans often make excuses for George Young because the guy he drafted was great. They ignore that he REFUSED TO PLAY FOR THE GIANTS.
Lawrence Taylor and Reggie White were the two best defensive players I ever saw. There was no salary cap and no free agency. If the Giants drafted Reggie White I think they might have won 4 superbowls in 5 years starting in 1986. The Giant defense would have been better than the 1985/1986 bears defense with more offense.
That's really unfair. Jints Central drafted very well in the '80s. They had a lot of hits in the draft.
And it showed with their most dominant period as a franchise, and two SBs.
you can trace the decline of this franchise to that moment ..
well at least his horse racing career seems to be going well
Yes, the Giants also let Lombardi, Landry and Belichick slip away. All terrible. But that's still a lower level of the organization. With the talent Mara provided in the 60s and 70s, the team wouldn't have won anything with a coaching staff of Lombardi, Landry, Belichick, Coughlin and Parcells, all in their primes.
In recent years promoting Chris Mara Senior Vice President of Player Personnel is on the list for me.
The worst "management mistakes" go far beyond individual player transactions. It's keeping Reese/Marc Ross in charge for 2 years longer than they should where they impacted literally 100's of transactions.
Collins was an excellent player. Lasker JAG. The other two 2nd picks were the Giants own pick (Erik Howard) and a #2 from Denver for Mark Haynes (Pepper Johnson).
The Giants #1 pick that year was Eric Dorsey who played Reggie White position and looked like Tarzan but played like Jane - not Reggie White.
Passing on Reggie White was one of many horrible decisions George Young made, but most of them happened after Parcells left. There was no second guessing or monday morning QBing on this. Even with no internet and much more limited coverage most Giant fans knew right away Young had blown the pick and not just because Zimmerman said he'd never play for the Giants. Zimmerman saying that was probably a big reason Young picked him. Young was vehemently anti player rights. See the 1987 strike. See plan B Free Agency. See the NY Giants in the 1990's.
Lol. That fucking suit. What a jackass
I guess no one saw this post?
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in hindsight. But let's be honest, no one saw what he did in New England coming. Nobody.
True, but the hiring of Ray Handley is what made it worse. Handley was a RB coach. He wasn't a coordinator or head coach previously.
I can see not hiring Belichick simply based on his demeanor, but promoting Handley? Ugh.
Handley was a bit more gregarious than Little B, but yeah a definitely screams "LOOK I'm facing smarter than everyone else in the fucking room" pick. Why not Coughlin?
Mcadoo was just an outright wtf pick, can't even ascribe a rational thought process behind that pick.
He was completely in over his head as an OC and then gets promoted to HC like a bad sitcom.
Had to be Mara.
It forced Gilbride out and made us change our offense, which ultimately led to Ben McAdoo. It all goes back to failure to address the offensive line IN TIME. Complete lack of foresight.
I don't see how anybody can argue from that after fall from being the #1 rushing team in the entire league in 2008 to the 32nd ranked rushing offense in 2011.
They needed OL depth as was Mentioned and Passed on Max Unger for Clint Sintim and David Wilson instead of
Cordy Glenn. His first 5 years as GM he picked Beatty in RD 2 and didn’t find anyone ever in the later rounds. And Beattywas never more than meh and a finesse guy. Whom The minute he was replaced by a very limited Dave Diehl the OL got better.
He was completely in over his head as an OC and then gets promoted to HC like a bad sitcom.
Had to be Mara.
McAdoo may have had a bad 2nd season as HC, but to say he was in over his head as an OC is just an asinine statement. Eli Manning's numbers in 2014-2015 are better than every QB not named Brady or Rodgers and are relatively even with Drew Brees. Despite throwing the ball more often, his INT rate was cut in half.
In his first year as head coach, the offense might've sucked ass, but they still had the second best record in the conference that year. They were forced to be a road playoff team because the team with the best record was in their division. (By comparison, Ray Handley took over a Super Bowl winning team and couldn't break .500.)
Only a dumb person would think Jerry Reese is the "worst management move" the Giants ever made. It ended badly, but he got to the top of the mountain twice. Use your brain people.
The answer is clearly hiring Ray Handley. He took over a Super Bowl winning team and even with a bunch of excellent assistant coaches did an abysmal job. This horrific hire is made exponentially worse by the fact the Giants didn't hire perhaps the best head coach of all-time already sitting on their payroll.
He was completely in over his head as an OC and then gets promoted to HC like a bad sitcom.
Had to be Mara.
All good questions, but I can share the Eagles interest in hiring McAdoo (which rushed the Giants decision) was 100% real, not a work to screw the Giants into hiring a mediocre coach, as some have theorized.
You may consider that Eagles related asshattery, comes from a conversation I was party to a couple years back that included someone who was “in the room” in Philly.
At the time, McAdoo was one of the hot young coordinators many teams are always seeking as next coach. Sometimes you get Sean McVay, other times, a guy who wears suits 5 sizes too big. It’s a crap shoot, just like the draft to a large degree
I've written this before, but to me, the biggest blunder was the way the org misread the team after the 2012 season and tried to squeeze out a title in 2013 because the Super Bowl was at MetLife. They didn't address the fact that the 2012 season was the end of the championship core that Ernie Accorsi helped set up. They had Eli in his prime and they should have started a rebuild and look to create a window for another championship or two before time ran out on Coughlin and Eli.
Instead, they went for more retreads, held on to guys like Diehl and Snee too long, and wasted the rest of Eli's prime by essentially trying to put together teams that were build to go 9-7 and hope to make the playoffs and get hot.
Gettleman gets heat, but he did was Reese should have done in 2013. Blow it up, tear it down and build it back up around Eli. Reese put far too many guys on scholarship and let guys hang around too long because they were draft picks.
Bottom line, Belichick coming into 1991 had Simms near the end of his career and Hostetler proved to be an ok QB, but not a franchise one. So he would have been faced with a total rebuild with no QB. The Giants still had another 5+ years of Eli before the decline and they blew the whole thing by putting off what really needed to be done.
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Imagine him and LT on the same D....
I guess no one saw this post?
We could have had Michael Irvin in the ‘88 draft instead of Eric Moore. Do you think Simms and Erhardt would have enjoyed that?
I've written this before, but to me, the biggest blunder was the way the org misread the team after the 2012 season and tried to squeeze out a title in 2013 because the Super Bowl was at MetLife. They didn't address the fact that the 2012 season was the end of the championship core that Ernie Accorsi helped set up. They had Eli in his prime and they should have started a rebuild and look to create a window for another championship or two before time ran out on Coughlin and Eli.
Instead, they went for more retreads, held on to guys like Diehl and Snee too long, and wasted the rest of Eli's prime by essentially trying to put together teams that were build to go 9-7 and hope to make the playoffs and get hot.
Gettleman gets heat, but he did was Reese should have done in 2013. Blow it up, tear it down and build it back up around Eli. Reese put far too many guys on scholarship and let guys hang around too long because they were draft picks.
Bottom line, Belichick coming into 1991 had Simms near the end of his career and Hostetler proved to be an ok QB, but not a franchise one. So he would have been faced with a total rebuild with no QB. The Giants still had another 5+ years of Eli before the decline and they blew the whole thing by putting off what really needed to be done.
Good post. It’s fair to wonder if the Giants would have stuck with Belichick through the transition away from the Simms/LT era. We can assume they wouldn’t have given him full control of draft and personnel as he has in New England, and we all know how George Young flubbed the early years of the free agency era. Maybe Little Bill would have pulled off another Super Bowl run with the remains of the 1990 team, maybe not . It’s no guarantee Belichick would have had the personnel to succeed once the mid-90s hit.
Belichick turned the Browns into a contender at 11-5 in 1994 and won a playoff game, after navigating through the end of the Kosar era. I’ve always thought the generally accepted narrative that he failed in Cleveland isn’t accurate...he built a legit defense (with Sagan as DC) in 94. Although to be fair, that was a veteran team with Testaverde at QB that he probably wouldn’t have kept together long. Model moving the team to Baltimore ended that run abruptly anyway.
They knew he was leaving before Belichick left for Cleveland. George Young told Belichick he was never going to be HC of the NYG. Young didn't like Belichick dipping his pen in the company ink while he was married and he thought Belichick didn't have the personality to manage the media in NY.
Parcells left when Tom Mara Jr sold the team. He was much closer with Tim Jr than Wellington and Young was the opposite which makes sense if you knew anything about the 4 of them.
Leaving when ownership changed was one of Parcells MO's. He left NYG when Tim Jr sold. He left NE soon after Kraft bought the team. He left the Jets when Leon Hess sold. He gave the Giants plenty of notice and they asked him to stay through the draft which he did.
Every new GM inherits players and chooses to build around them or change them.
With some of these posts you'd think there wasn't a GM from 2007 on, just Accorsi's empty rocking chair and a pile of of 1950s Colts photos.
A team who let Landry, Lombardi, and Belichick go. A team who had a historically bad 2 decades. A team that hired Ben MacAdoo and Ray Handley as head coaches. A team who currently employs the lesser grandkid who skips the draft for a horse race.
And the GM with 2 rings was the worst mistake ever?
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In comment 14531001 RobCarpenter said:
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Imagine him and LT on the same D....
I guess no one saw this post?
We could have had Michael Irvin in the ‘88 draft instead of Eric Moore. Do you think Simms and Erhardt would have enjoyed that?
Two or three posters mentioned White vs Zimmerman after I did. That’s why I restated it.