Lombardi commented on the first episode of Hard Knocks talking about how he believes the Giants are just now picking players without any team philosophy. Credit to Go Terps who I've seen make this point here. Lombardi credits NYG for being one of the greatest sport franchises of all time, but they've gotten away from what George Young built. Young built a system and everyone followed the system already in place including Parcells and Belichick running the defense. Now, the Giants sit and listen to what Shane Bowen has to say, but his point is the system should already be established.
All of the coaches who have come through (McAdoo, Shurmur, Judge & Daboll) have further moved the Giants away from the success established with what George Young believed.
Interesting discussion linked below. Starts at the 3:15 minute mark.
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He may or may not have thought about pivoting to a new QB in the draft, but the Jones Experience has been renewed.
We may not like it - I detest the idea for the 6th time - but that's where we are. Schoen believes in Jones.
Speaking of Slayton, he really comes off as a seasoned pro.
We had a very strong, frequently broadcasted organizational philosophy under Joe Judge...we were going to be tougher, we were going to outwork everyone, and we weren't going to make mistakes. Overly simplistic and not effective - at all.
What is the Chief's organizational philosophy? Have a HOF QB and head coach and let them go to work? But even then, I have seen them win SBs because of the running game and a great defense. The most important thing is to have competence and coherence as an organization. The philosophy, for any organization is to bring in good players, coach them well, and have them play well.
One of the issues in our past has been having a GM and HC with different visions. We have that now. I am sure they know their philosophy, but they aren't going to broadcast it every 5 minutes - even on hard knocks. They are either good or they aren't. We will see. If Evan Neal had turned into the all-pro we thought he would be and if JMS had played really well, we would be talking about our strategy of building the team from the bottom up with the best bookends in Football and a solid interior with our FA acquisitions. But it hasn't worked out. If Nabors turns out to be an all-pro and Hyatt and Robinson emerge, we will talk about our organizational speed. We have two potentially great pass rushers. Perhaps that will be our philosophy.
It really just comes down to whether they play well or not. Are they coached well. Are they developed well. Like many of you, I can't identify an organizational philosophy in many NFL teams - except perhaps teams like Detroit that will supposedly punch everyone in the mouth and go for it all the time, until the playoffs, when that philosophy causes them to lose games.
Continuity, cohesion and culture are the reason that teams win.
But let’s not confuse incompetence with no identity. This team has just been completely incompetent at evaluating the offensive line and to boot they have a bad quarterback who doesn’t help the line pre or post snap. They want to throw the ball but have had to adapt due to incompetence. This off-season they invested in a WR, TE, and the OL and are moving away from the high priced RB because they want to throw the ball.
He may or may not have thought about pivoting to a new QB in the draft, but the Jones Experience has been renewed.
We may not like it - I detest the idea for the 6th time - but that's where we are. Schoen believes in Jones.
Sadly, Hard Knocks appears to have confirmed that you have been right about this for a long time now. Schoen and Daboll will sink or swim with DJ now.
Philosophical identity is a "result", not a "cause". The misery of Joe Judge was that he attempted to define and establish an identity rather than simply attempting to become a winner. Doing all of the mud slides in the world will never make up for passing on Micah Parsons for Kadarius Toney. Or passing on Josh Allen for Daniel Jones. Or passing on Justin Herbert because of Daniel Jones. The Gettleman trifecta! Not only in terms of missing out on the self-evident talent, but also in the catastrophic hit to locker room credibility that the franchise has a clue as to what it is doing. You cannot make big mistakes in identifying, selecting and retaining talent in this sport. It is fatal.
Had the Saints simply been smart enough to select LT and not George Rodgers in 1981, perhaps the Saints have four Lombardi trophies and we are still without a championship like the Browns or Lions.
Philosophical identity is a "result", not a "cause". The misery of Joe Judge was that he attempted to define and establish an identity rather than simply attempting to become a winner. Doing all of the mud slides in the world will never make up for passing on Micah Parsons for Kadarius Toney. Or passing on Josh Allen for Daniel Jones. Or passing on Justin Herbert because of Daniel Jones. The Gettleman trifecta! Not only in terms of missing out on the self-evident talent, but also in the catastrophic hit to locker room credibility that the franchise has a clue as to what it is doing. You cannot make big mistakes in identifying, selecting and retaining talent in this sport. It is fatal.
Had the Saints simply been smart enough to select LT and not George Rodgers in 1981, perhaps the Saints have four Lombardi trophies and we are still without a championship like the Browns or Lions.
Excellent post.
Philosophical identity is a "result", not a "cause". The misery of Joe Judge was that he attempted to define and establish an identity rather than simply attempting to become a winner. Doing all of the mud slides in the world will never make up for passing on Micah Parsons for Kadarius Toney. Or passing on Josh Allen for Daniel Jones. Or passing on Justin Herbert because of Daniel Jones. The Gettleman trifecta! Not only in terms of missing out on the self-evident talent, but also in the catastrophic hit to locker room credibility that the franchise has a clue as to what it is doing. You cannot make big mistakes in identifying, selecting and retaining talent in this sport. It is fatal.
Had the Saints simply been smart enough to select LT and not George Rodgers in 1981, perhaps the Saints have four Lombardi trophies and we are still without a championship like the Browns or Lions.
Good post. And it aligns to why you wanted the Giants to draft Nabers so badly. They need high end talent.
Nothing more, nothing less. Bringing up George Young, who Giants fans obviously love and know well, had his struggles in the 90's. Can't always be perfect.
with short schemed touches and their RAC abilities nabers and wandale in particular should be in for very big seasons even if the downfield stuff remains inconsistent.
YAC has not been an issue for Slayton under Kafka. In 2023 he was 11th among NFL WRs with 6.0 YAC/R, in 2022 he was 8th among receivers at 5.7 YAC/R. Pre-Kafka is a different story.
Maybe Wandale gets a mulligan for returning from injury but on 79 targets Slayton had 298 YAC last year, and on 78 targets Robinson had 238. I'm firmly of the opinion Nabers will get the catch and run targets Robinson got last year.
If the offense is the low air yards, high volume approach of 2022 then yes, Jones has showcased he can do that. But in 2022 he also had fewer than 2 deep attempts per game. If he can't stretch the field more, it's certainly easier to keep the shorter stuff in front of them on defense.
And teams that win have some sort of mystical "identity" and teams that lose don't.
And teams that win have some sort of mystical "identity" and teams that lose don't.
I think identity is synonymous with "does something well." It's no big mystery shitty teams don't do anything well.
And teams that win have some sort of mystical "identity" and teams that lose don't.
I think there's an identity that's persisted over those 30 years: a family driven enterprise that's heavily nepotistic and slow to adapt to change.
The major changes in the NFL (the merger, FA/salary cap, Polian passing rules/rookie wage scale) have been followed by long periods of poor decisions and bad Giants football.
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but Lombardi is an ass clown yet you continually post his shite...
This. At this point, Lombardi is coming across as a stalker.
Stalker is the right word! It’s as if someone at Giants HQ has shit in his coffee!
Lombardi is a hack.
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The Giants philosophical "Big Blue Wrecking Crew" identity of the 1970s was "nice" but largely irrelevant until Lawrence Taylor came along in 1981. Add the leadership of Parcells, the character of Simms and a championship in 1986, and the philosophical identity that characterized this franchise for thirty years was born.
Philosophical identity is a "result", not a "cause". The misery of Joe Judge was that he attempted to define and establish an identity rather than simply attempting to become a winner. Doing all of the mud slides in the world will never make up for passing on Micah Parsons for Kadarius Toney. Or passing on Josh Allen for Daniel Jones. Or passing on Justin Herbert because of Daniel Jones. The Gettleman trifecta! Not only in terms of missing out on the self-evident talent, but also in the catastrophic hit to locker room credibility that the franchise has a clue as to what it is doing. You cannot make big mistakes in identifying, selecting and retaining talent in this sport. It is fatal.
Had the Saints simply been smart enough to select LT and not George Rodgers in 1981, perhaps the Saints have four Lombardi trophies and we are still without a championship like the Browns or Lions.
Good post. And it aligns to why you wanted the Giants to draft Nabers so badly. They need high end talent.
I still would have preferred Drake Maye... not trading Barkley and McKinney at the trade deadline made no sense.
Look at the Patriots. They were great when they had great players. Once that dried up, the same "identity" started failing. Players are the key here...dominant players make dominant teams.
Things have changed in the NFL in the last 20, 30, 50 years, thanks to rule changes. The game is now a passing game, with the run being less important. Defenses now compete with speed/pressure, with size being less important.
Because of the rule changes, the QB position is vital to a team's success. You can't compete for a championship without a top tier QB. QB's who "manage" the game simply won't cut it.
I guess the conversion from the old NFL "grind and pound" pre merger to the American Football League "Mad Bombers" is almost complete. Like it or not, that's the way the game is going.
I think that's right. They took 3 legitimate swings at improving the pass catchers last year in Hyatt, Campbell, and Waller. None of those really moved the needle for various reasons.
The pass catching group on paper should be very efficient this year. Schoen said they needed a number one receiver and they unequivocally got one.
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I've run this site, I've noticed that Giants fans love teams that win and hate teams that lose.
And teams that win have some sort of mystical "identity" and teams that lose don't.
I think there's an identity that's persisted over those 30 years: a family driven enterprise that's heavily nepotistic and slow to adapt to change.
The major changes in the NFL (the merger, FA/salary cap, Polian passing rules/rookie wage scale) have been followed by long periods of poor decisions and bad Giants football.
this is correct but the pros/cons of both sides need to be understood.
their nepotistic preference directly led to hiring coughlin,
their hands off ownership style allowed EA enormous trust to make the move for Eli,
their slowness directly led to not giving into the pressure to fire Coughlin, pressure that was even more enormous than the trust given to EA, and they got 2 super bowls because of it.
you can add the promoting of Jerry Reese to the list of things they did that were key to winning 2 SBs and having a very solid first decade of the modern era.
the second decade was a disaster because they bungled moving on from all of the above, but that too needs context. replacing any 1 of those people would have been hard, which is why they were hesitant to do so.
replacing all of them correctly would have been close to impossible - and with their inability to accurately evaluate their own leadership it was actually impossible. the only hope surviving post-Coughlin/Eli was if Jerry Reese had been a truly elite executive but he unfortunately wasn't.
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the bigger question is health. comp% and comp% above expected haven't historically been his issue. the most productive receiver he's played with is slayton, a downfield target with a high drop rate, and not a ton of RAC.
with short schemed touches and their RAC abilities nabers and wandale in particular should be in for very big seasons even if the downfield stuff remains inconsistent.
YAC has not been an issue for Slayton under Kafka. In 2023 he was 11th among NFL WRs with 6.0 YAC/R, in 2022 he was 8th among receivers at 5.7 YAC/R. Pre-Kafka is a different story.
Maybe Wandale gets a mulligan for returning from injury but on 79 targets Slayton had 298 YAC last year, and on 78 targets Robinson had 238. I'm firmly of the opinion Nabers will get the catch and run targets Robinson got last year.
If the offense is the low air yards, high volume approach of 2022 then yes, Jones has showcased he can do that. But in 2022 he also had fewer than 2 deep attempts per game. If he can't stretch the field more, it's certainly easier to keep the shorter stuff in front of them on defense.
slayton's yac improvement is real however remember he can add chunks of rac yards downfield from the point of the catch on, which is yac but running by people downfield is not quite the same as making guys miss. attempts that far downfield are lower probability compared to an easy dump off around the LOS that can turn into a chunk.
last year 209 of wandale's yac yards were on catches 0-9 yards downfield. 63 of them were behind LOS.
slayton had 123 0-9 and 28 behind the LOS. he had more downfield including 97 on 20+ yards downfield (wandale only had 5 such yac yards).
so even in the rehab year wandale had almost twice as much YAC production around the LOS making people miss. that is his game and i suspect nabers will also get a lot of usage there.
Schoen clearly has a sense of what he wants to do. Go vertical, protect the passer, get the D off the field, and have an offense that scores points. Doesn’t mean he’ll be successful, but saying he doesn’t have an identity for the team is foolish.
with short schemed touches and their RAC abilities nabers and wandale in particular should be in for very big seasons even if the downfield stuff remains inconsistent.
YAC has not been an issue for Slayton under Kafka. In 2023 he was 11th among NFL WRs with 6.0 YAC/R, in 2022 he was 8th among receivers at 5.7 YAC/R. Pre-Kafka is a different story.
Maybe Wandale gets a mulligan for returning from injury but on 79 targets Slayton had 298 YAC last year, and on 78 targets Robinson had 238. I'm firmly of the opinion Nabers will get the catch and run targets Robinson got last year.
If the offense is the low air yards, high volume approach of 2022 then yes, Jones has showcased he can do that. But in 2022 he also had fewer than 2 deep attempts per game. If he can't stretch the field more, it's certainly easier to keep the shorter stuff in front of them on defense.
slayton's yac improvement is real however remember he can add chunks of rac yards downfield from the point of the catch on, which is yac but running by people downfield is not quite the same as making guys miss. attempts that far downfield are lower probability compared to an easy dump off around the LOS that can turn into a chunk.
last year 209 of wandale's yac yards were on catches 0-9 yards downfield. 63 of them were behind LOS.
slayton had 123 0-9 and 28 behind the LOS. he had more downfield including 97 on 20+ yards downfield (wandale only had 5 such yac yards).
so even in the rehab year wandale had almost twice as much YAC production around the LOS making people miss. that is his game and i suspect nabers will also get a lot of usage there.
I don't disagree Slayton is a different type of receiver than Robinson, and potentially Nabers, but the yards all count the same and require making people miss.
At the end of the day a player like Slayton eating up 770 yards on 79 targets is better than Robinson eating 525 on 78.
Look at the Patriots. They were great when they had great players. Once that dried up, the same "identity" started failing. Players are the key here...dominant players make dominant teams.
Things have changed in the NFL in the last 20, 30, 50 years, thanks to rule changes. The game is now a passing game, with the run being less important. Defenses now compete with speed/pressure, with size being less important.
Because of the rule changes, the QB position is vital to a team's success. You can't compete for a championship without a top tier QB. QB's who "manage" the game simply won't cut it.
I guess the conversion from the old NFL "grind and pound" pre merger to the American Football League "Mad Bombers" is almost complete. Like it or not, that's the way the game is going.
The NFL is a copy cat league. Everyone saw KC win it throwing the ball hitting the 15-20 yard zones in the playoffs so now we very one wants to do that. No
Schoen clearly has a sense of what he wants to do. Go vertical, protect the passer, get the D off the field, and have an offense that scores points. Doesn’t mean he’ll be successful, but saying he doesn’t have an identity for the team is foolish.
Well, to be clear, it's Daboll's system and Schoen is leading the search to find the pieces.
The part I doubt we will ever know is if Daboll really believes in Jones or if he's being a good soldier, following orders, and will try to make the Jones take the next step.
If Skinny Daboll fires a tablet at him, that'll answer the question.
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The part I doubt we will ever know is if Daboll really believes in Jones or if he's being a good soldier, following orders, and will try to make the Jones take the next step.
If Skinny Daboll fires a tablet at him, that'll answer the question.
When Fat Dabs threw the tablet in the Seattle game, I thought that was end of the Jones Era.
If Skinny Daboll fires a tablet at him, that'll answer the question.
When Fat Dabs threw the tablet in the Seattle game, I thought that was end of the Jones Era.
Fat Dabs was part of doing everything possible to make it hard for the kid. They asked Dabs to slim down.
Barring the unexpected, Jones will be starting Week 1 vs. Minnesota. But I think it'll be a short leash if he doesn't play well.
Barring the unexpected, Jones will be starting Week 1 vs. Minnesota. But I think it'll be a short leash if he doesn't play well.
When they get a load of how crappy Lock is later this month, that leash will be pretty long for Jones.
And teams that win have some sort of mystical "identity" and teams that lose don't.
Next week will be interesting to see how the QB evaluation is portrayed.
The Bills traded out of picking Mahomes to the Chiefs (a team they now can't beat in the playoffs). Yet, no one talks about it because they landed Josh Allen.
The Giants will look like fools if any of those hit and they still haven't resolved QB in 2-3 years.
Next week will be interesting to see how the QB evaluation is portrayed.
There are a lot of ways to improve the position. They could have traded out of #6. It's the Giants biggest need but they behave like they have the position solved.
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I think there's a good chance Dabs is out on Jones. That's just a guess obviously. Remember how giddy he was with Jones on 1/1/23 during/after that Colts game? I think that admiration is long gone.
Barring the unexpected, Jones will be starting Week 1 vs. Minnesota. But I think it'll be a short leash if he doesn't play well.
When they get a load of how crappy Lock is later this month, that leash will be pretty long for Jones.
Maybe. But Lock is more of a downfield thrower. He might fit the Daboll offense better than Jones.
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Well-& I've said this before-if just one of JJ, Nix, or Penix hit...the Giants are going to look like fools. And I know the caveat that QBs are helped by their environment (Is Mahomes THE Mahomes if he was drafted by Jacksonville instead of KC? Doubtful)...but it's going to be a bad, bad look for this regime after giving Jones that contract.
The Bills traded out of picking Mahomes to the Chiefs (a team they now can't beat in the playoffs). Yet, no one talks about it because they landed Josh Allen.
The Giants will look like fools if any of those hit and they still haven't resolved QB in 2-3 years.
Which is a very distinct possibility.
Based on how John & 'The Nephew' were talking about Saquon, I can only imagine how they feel about Jones.
Jones hasn't been good, but Dabka got the most of out of him in 2022.
Lock is more physically gifted than Jones. He has a plus arm. So, I don't it's a stretch to think Dabka could get to the bottom of Lock; and he plays his best football.
Even before the ACL tear opposing Ds took away his ability to run.