Jerry Reese was so bad for many years and really left the Giants talent level roster wise so thin, that makes the work Dave Gettleman has done for the past 3 years look better than what it truly is.
Absolutely, no denying the Giants roster talent wise is better but the way Reese bottomed out on his way out, it would have been extremely hard for any new incoming GM to NOT improve over what Reese had done. This was never going to be a quick fix and would have taken any incoming GM several years to build a solid foundation.
Positives have been hitting on potentially a Hall of Fame talent like Barkley and finding a franchise QB in Jones. There are also many young talented prospects on both sides that can speed up this current rebuild.
Although the biggest negative in my mind was the quote from Gettleman in his introductory press conference. He stated his focus will be to rebuild the trenches and address both sides of the line. In three full offseasons as the GM he's made several investments with trades, free agents and spent high draft capital on both sides but the O-line and D-line still struggle. Three years of massive investments in the secondary and they still struggle.
Is this 2020 Giants Roster better than the roster Gettleman took over in 2018, yes....although is that good enough?
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i don't see how the Barkley pick is even debatable now. last week showed that we could get the same rushing results with any of 50 other RBs and Barkley is a net negative in pass blocking. even if Barkley goes on to have a HoF career drafting him at #2 overall set us back - we'd have been better off investing in the trenches or elsewhere on the defense. and passing on Barkley doesn't mean taking Darnold.
I am optimistic though that bringing Judge on board will improve not just our coaching but also personnel acquisition. We'll see.
If you consider "retooling" to mean that even last year we were left with less than 10 players from the previous regime, I don't really think you understand the word very well