10 reasons the Giants will be a dumpster fire this season

For now, Giants fans will have to endure another season with Jones as the starter, which feels especially unfair given their season was over in 2023 before it ever really got started. And guess what... 2024 will be over before it starts, too.

2) Saquon Barkley is gone

Former GM Dave Gettleman and the Giants made the insane decision to select Barkley with the second overall pick in 2018 NFL Draft. He then mocked computer nerds far and wide for their egghead theories on why drafting a running back so highly is a poor use of resources:

(As a reminder, I'm contractually obligated to include that gif 👆 in every Giants dumpster fire post, even if Gettleman is long gone.)

Gettleman valued running backs, maybe more than any GM of the last quarter century. The new regime under Joe Schoen does not, as evidenced by their weird game of hardball with Barkley the offseason after he carried them to the playoffs in 2022. 

It's certainly not wrong to be wary of overvaluing running backs, given their extremely short NFL shelf lives. And yet, while the Giants may very well have been right to let Barkley walk in free agency this offseason, especially given his position and injury history, it is also inarguable that Barkley was the Giants' best offensive skill player over the last six years, and nobody else was even remotely close.

In 2022, he carried 198 times for 931 yards (4.7 YPC) and 6 TDs though the first nine games, and the Giants got out to a 7-2 start. He was on pace for over 2,000 yards from scrimmage at the time. In Week 9 that season, Barkley carried 35 times for 152 yards. But, he looked like the player he once was.

The over-usage caught up with Barkley and the Giants, as he was less effective thereafter. From that point on, the Giants finished out the rest of the season with a 2-5-1 record, and eked their way into the postseason. Barkley ended up finishing with 1,650 yards from scrimmage and 10 TDs. He still had a big game in the team's playoff win against the Vikings, he made the Pro Bowl, and he finished third in NFL Comeback Player of the Year voting.

In 2023, the Giants franchise tagged Barkley to his dismay. He still showed up for training camp anyway and played the good soldier. During the season, the Giants cycled through three ineffective quarterbacks, and there were times when the Giants' offense was so bad that they just gave the ball to Barkley over and over. In 14 games, he carried 247 times for 962 yards and 6 TDs, with a yards per carry average of 3.89. While 3.89 yards per carry isn't good, it was (a) behind a historically awful offensive line, and (b) a hell of a lot better than all the other Giants' backs, none of whom rushed for better than 2.82 yards per carry.

Whether the Giants were right or wrong not to pay Barkley, they're a worse football team without him, and he's now also playing for a divisional rival that has owned the Giants over the last 15 or so years.

Barkley was replaced in free agency by Devin Singletary, a committee back who has played both for the Bills and Texans. He has a nice career 4.6 yards per carry average, though he had his lowest YPC average (4.2) in 2023 in Houston when he had the heaviest workload of his career (216 carries). Over the last six seasons, opposing defenses keyed on Barkley when they played the Giants. They will not key on Singletary, which will make the passing offense even harder to execute than it already was.

3) The offensive line still sucks

The Giants' offensive line is awful every year, and in 2023 the team surrendered a staggering 85 (!) sacks on the season, by far the most in the NFL:

The five teams in the above chart had a combined record of 25-60 (0.294). If you can't protect the quarterback, you're probably not going to be a very good team. #Analysis.

Those 85 sacks that the Giants allowed were good for the second-most in NFL history:

As you might imagine, improving the offensive line was a priority for the Giants this offseason, and they signed five of them in free agency.

• Jon Runyan: Runyan has been a starter for the Packers the last three years. He's better in pass pro than he is as a run blocker. Three years, $30 million. He'll likely start at RG.

• Jermaine Eluemunor: Eluemunor has some guard/tackle versatility. He started at RT for the Raiders last season. Two years, $14 million. He's turn 30 during the regular season.

• Aaron Stinnie: Stinnie started at LG for the Buccaneers in 2023. He's a below average starter, but he's probably better than anything the Giants had at guard last season.

• Austin Schlottmann: Schlottmann has started 14 games in five seasons with the Vikings and Broncos, mostly at center, but also at both guard spots. I won't pretend to know anything more about him than that. 

• Matt Nelson: Nelson also has 14 career starts, all with the Lions, all at RT.

The Giants' starting offensive line is projected to look like this Week 1:

Thomas has developed into a good pro, and Runyan is solid enough. The rest is ugly:

• Neal is only a projected starter because he was the seventh overall pick in the 2022 draft. If he weren't, there would be no justification for him to be starting, as he has not only played badly, but also hasn't really shown flashes that could serve as reason for hope. He also had offseason surgery on his ankle.

• Schmitz had a bad rookie season. PFF had him down for five sacks allowed, a usually high number for a center, and (grain of salt) he was ranked 36th out of 36 centers by PFF.

• MORE NFL
• 10 reasons the Cowboys will be a dumpster fire this season
  
• How much did Eagles DC Vic Fangio play rookies with the Dolphins, Broncos, Bears, and 49ers?
  
• Five players the Eagles need to step up in 2024
  

• Eluemunor has been better at tackle than he has at guard over his career, but the Giants are moving him to guard, because of course they are. Most of his experience in the NFL — both at tackle and at guard — has come on the right side. It's an especially interesting choice to play Eluemunor at LG instead of RG because Runyan has said that he prefers playing LG over RG. So why are they playing Eluemunor at LG when most of his experience is on the right side and Runyan at RG when he has said that he prefers the left side? I would guess it's because they thought enough of Runyan to pay him $10 million per year and they want him to play next to Neal? If that's correct, then they're not only playing Neal without merit, but they're also shuffling their line otherwise to help him as much as possible.

4) They continue to let their rare good players get away

The Giants are paying Runyan and Eluemunor a combined $17 million per year. Neither player is special, by any stretch. Interestingly, $17 million per season is what S Xavier McKinney signed for in Green Bay, and it's also what it would have cost the Giants to franchise tag him this year. McKinney is still only 24 years old and he is one of the best safeties in the NFL. In 2023, he had 116 tackles, 11 pass breakups, and 3 INTs. It was a curious decision for the Giants not to tag McKinney, seeing as, you know, they don't have many good players. It's a lot easier to open up cap space than it is to find good players.

Personally, I'd much rather spend on my young, home-grown, top 5 type of impact safety than a couple of average offensive guards you can find with extreme ease.

This is nothing new under Joe Schoen. In previous offseasons, he let the following players acquired by the previous regime get away with nothing to show for it:

S Julian Love: Love was one of the best coverage safeties in the NFL in 2023.

S Jabrill Peppers: Peppers became a really good player in New England once he got away from the Giants.

CB James Bradberry: This maybe looks like a bad example at the moment given the bad season Bradberry had in 2023, but he was an All-Pro in 2022 who helped the Eagles get to the Super Bowl.

TE Evan Engram: Engram has 187 catches for 1729 yards and 8 TDs in two seasons since leaving the Giants to play for the Jaguars.

If you're going to let good players walk, you better have a good plan to replace them, and so far Joe Schoen hasn't, which brings us to...

5) Joe Schoen has brought in almost exclusively crappy players

• In 2022, Schoen added the following outside veteran players:

1. QB Tyrod Taylor
2. OG Mark Glowinski
3. iOL Jon Feliciano
4. TE Ricky Seals-Jones
5. RB Matt Breida
6. DT Justin Ellis
7. DE Jihad Ward
8. OG Jamil Douglas
9. OT Matt Gono
10. WR Robert Foster

None of those guys are still with the team.

• In 2023, Schoen added the following outside veteran players: 

1. TE Darren Waller (via trade)
2. LB Bobby Okereke
3. DT Rakeem Nuñez-Roches
4. CB Amani Oruwariye
5. S Bobby McCain
6. WR Parris Campbell
7. WR Jamison Crowder
8. WR Jeff Smith

Only Okereke and Nuñez-Roches are still with the team, and Rakeem Nuñez-Roches stunk last season.

The Giants gave up a third-round pick for Waller, who retired after one irrelevant season. This was also the offseason during which Schoen gave Daniel Jones the $160 million contract.

Here was the Giants' draft in 2022:

Aaaand in 2023: 

There's like one guy from those two draft classes who is clearly a good player, and the Giants took him at fifth overall. Between free agency and the draft, dude is batting like .079.

Schoen replaced Dave Gettleman, which is about as low a bar as a general manager could ask for, and there's an argument to be made that Gettleman was better than Schoen has been so far.

I'm sure the local beats have criticized Schoen, but where are the national folks? He's been legitimately horrendous in the biggest city in America and the average football fan couldn't pick him out of a lineup.

6) Are we sure the Giants won the Brian Burns trade?

When the Giants traded a high second-round pick (39th overall) and a fifth-round pick (141st overall) to the Panthers for Burns this offseason, it was regarded as a steal, perhaps partly because the Panthers are such a joke of an organization: 

If the Panthers hadn't gotten an insanely stupid offer for Burns previously, I'm not so sure the Giants' trade for him would be viewed quite as favorably. In addition to trading the two picks, the Giants then gave Burns a five-year contract worth $141 million (over $28 million per season), making him the second-highest paid edge rusher in the NFL at the time behind only Nick Bosa. (He has since been passed by the Jags' Josh Allen, by like $50K per season.)

Trade cost: Fine.
Contract cost: Very high.

Burns has 46 career sacks and eight forced fumbles in five seasons. His best year was 2022, when he had 12.5 sacks, the lone double-digit sack season of his career. He is a very good edge rusher, but he is being paid like an elite one. He has a more lucrative contract than guys like T.J. Watt, Myles Garrett, and Maxx Crosby, to name a few.

7) Their run defense sucked (again)

In each of the three seasons during the Joe Schoen / Brian Daboll era, the Giants' run defense has been trash.

Giants run D	2021: Stat (NFL rank)	2022: Stat (NFL rank)	2023: Stat (NFL rank)
Run defense DVOA	(32)	(32)	(29)
Rushing yards per game allowed	129.0 (25)	146.3 (28)	132.4 (29)
Rushing yards per attempt allowed	4.5 (22)	5.3 (31)	4.7 (31)
Rushing first downs per game allowed	7.4 (25)	8.1 (30)	7.9 (31)

Last offseason, the Giants signed a couple of JAG DTs in A'Shawn Robinson and Rakeem Nuñez-Roches. I didn't even mention them in our dumpster fire entry last year because, I mean, that wasn't really a serious way to address their awful run defense. On a side note, it always amazes me what some homer fans will latch onto as a way to discredit these articles. This dude Tommy, for example, chose my omission of Rakeem Nuñez-Roches, whose name he didn't even spell correctly:

"We signed Nunes Roches, clown!" 🤡🤡🤡. Lol. This Tommy fella also promised to come find me in a few months after Daniel Jones crushed it in 2023.

Update: I did not hear back from Tommy.

Anyway, once again, the Giants didn't make any real efforts to improve their run defense other than signing Jordan Phillips, who played for the Bills last year and who Eagles fans might remember as the guy who got mad because Philly fans were mean to him. And for the record, he was ranked 129th out of 130 interior defensive lineman by PFF in 2023.

Spoiler: The Giants' run defense is probably going to suck again.

8) Brian Daboll's leadership... 😬

Beyond the outcome of that game, I'd be concerned about Daboll's leadership if I'm the Giants. He publicly shamed Taylor on the field at the end of the half, and then threw him under the bus in the press conference after it. A couple weeks before that, he threw a tablet while reviewing a play with Daniel Jones:

And, I mean, just search "Brian Daboll mad" on Twitter and you could burn a half hour watching videos of Brian Daboll being extremely mad on the sidelines.

Daboll could have taken some accountability along with Taylor by stressing that it should have been on him and his staff to communicate that under no circumstances should Taylor alert to a run, and perhaps note that as a staff they'll have to be better at safeguarding against that kind of mistake in those situations going forward. But Daboll was basically like, "Nope, quarterback's fault." Taylor took accountability, while Daboll took none. Are you a coach, or a red-faced maniac? You can only keep up that kind of behavior for so long before you lose the players.

9) Fix your field, you morons

In an anonymous player poll conducted by The Athletic last season, MetLife was voted the worst stadium in the NFL. Beating out FedEx Field — a place where a railing collapsed, and where sewage rains down from the pipes, and where literally everything is awful — is truly an amazing feat.

And the reason why is simple. Players HATE the playing surface. Does John Mara intend on doing anything about it for the 2024 season? 

Nope. So they'll probably continue to be one of the most injured teams in the NFL, like they are most years.

10) They just don't have good players 🤷‍♂️

Who are the good players on this team? Dexter Lawrence is certainly good. Brian Burns? Kayvon Thibodeaux? Andrew Thomas? Is that it? And I guess we'll see about first-rounder Malik Nabers.

Back in May we put together a "Preseason All-NFC East team," offense here, defense here. No Giants made the offensive first team, two made the defensive first team.

So to recap, the owner stinks, the GM stinks, the head coach is a screaming maniac, they don't have a quarterback, and the supporting cast is bad. But other than that...

---

Email Jimmy: jimmy@phillyvoice.com