Blogs – Page 126 – Keefe To The City

Nov 3, 2018

I’m Embarrassed to Be a Yankees Fan Right Now

The Yankees haven’t played a game in over three weeks, but the time off hasn’t made it any easier to accept the way the season ended after last season’s October run.

I really didn’t think I would care at the inevitable outcome of this baseball season. After 108 regular-season wins and their postseason run, I thought I would be able to shrug off the Red Sox winning the World Series, but I was wrong. I was very wrong.

The Yankees failed to stop the Red Sox in the postseason after failing to beat them in the regular season. Ownership stood pat, worrying about the luxury tax and not actual wins and losses, while the Red Sox did everything they could to win a championship and they did. The Yankees came within one win of the World Series in 2017, and in 2018, Hal Steinbrenner decided to cut his team’s payroll by roughly $50 million because he was worried about money, something his family’s Yankees have never worried about. Meanwhile, the Red Sox and Dodgers came on spending, trying to improve their team in every possible way, and to no surprise, the two met in the World Series. I miss the Yankees not being worried about every penny and not caring about the luxury tax.

It’s not that the Red Sox won the World Series, well, OK, it is that. But it’s more of how they won. And I don’t mean by Aaron Boone, A.J. Hinch and Dave Roberts doing everything they could to roll out a red carpet and escort them right to a championship. I mean how they won with former Yankee letdowns Eduardo Nunez, Nathan Eovaldi and World Series MVP Steve Pearce serving as heroes in October.

The trio of former Yankees couldn’t have been more disappointing during their time in pinstripes. Nunez was an overhyped prospect who Brian Cashman who hung on to for too long before letting go for nothing. Eovaldi was a hard-throwing 25-year-old who couldn’t strike anyone out when they traded Martin Prado and David Phelps for him and he left the Yankees as a hard-throwing 26-year-old who couldn’t strike anyone out and who needed another Tommy John surgery. Pearce had one of the shortest and worst stints as a Yankee when he played for the team six years ago.

That’s the general overview of how each of the three were complete letdowns for the Yankees, but it goes much deeper than that. Much deeper.

EDUARDO NUNEZ
I don’t know if I will ever hate a player more than Nunez. Well, it’s not so much him I hate because it’s not his fault he’s not very good, it’s Brian Cashman and the Yankees’ fault for thinking he was going to be the heir to Derek Jeter at shortstop. Instead, Nunez couldn’t play shortstop, couldn’t play any infield position really, and was eventually moved to the outfield before being let go by the Yankees for absolutely nothing. In 2014, the Yankees were willing to give Nunez’s job to Yangervis Solarte, who at the time had never played in the majors, rather than go through another season with Nunez.

It was Cashman’s awful evaluation of Nunez that cost the Yankees back-to-back World Series appearances and possibly back-to-back championships. Had Cashman been willing to part with Nunez, Cliff Lee would have been a Yankee. If Lee is a Yankee, he isn’t a Ranger and doesn’t beat the Yankees in Game 3 of the ALCS, and the Yankees don’t lost the pennant in six games. Cashman kept hanging on to the bad-ball hitter waiting for him to figure how to field a ground ball or show any semblance of discipline at the plate, and it never happened.

Sure enough, it was Nunez coming up like a Gold Glove winner in the ALDS, and sure enough, it was Nunez connecting with a ball at his laces to hit for a three-run home run in Game 1 of the World Series. As hard as it is to accept the Red Sox winning another World Series, it’s even harder to know Nunez was a part of it. “Eduardo Nunez is a champion” is something I never thought I would write.

STEVE PEARCE
Here are a couple tweets of mine from Pearce’s Yankees tenure.

Steve Pearce is the worst Yankee ever.

— Neil Keefe (@NeilKeefe) September 5, 2012

I always thought people sitting on oil were the luckiest people in the world, but I was wrong. It's Steve Pearce.

— Neil Keefe (@NeilKeefe) September 7, 2012

Once Pearce left the Yankees, he played for every other AL East team and shoved it right up the Yankees’ ass.

Pearce was an awful Yankee. Yes, his time with the Yankees was a very small sample size of 12 games and 30 plate appearances, but in those plate appearances, he hit .160/.300/.280 with one home run and four RBIs. That was back in 2012 when the Yankees were trying to win the division and avoid the first year of the wild-card format, so his at-bats were going at a crucial time. Since then, Pearce has gone on to play for the Orioles, Rays, Blue Jays and Red Sox moving around the AL East and destroying the Yankees at every opportunity. Here is how he has done against the Yankees since they removed him from the team.

2013: 2-for-6, .333/.333/.500, 2B

2014: 14-for-47, .298/.411/.553, 3 2B, 3 HR, 7 RBIs

2015: 5-for-34, .147/.256/.294, 2 2B, 1 HR, 3 RBIs

2016: 13-for-47, .333/.447/.590, 1 2B, 3 HR, 6 RBIs

2017: 10-for-28, .357/.406/.750, 2 2B, 3 HR, 6 RBIs

2018: 11-for-37, .297/.395/.757, 2 2B, 5 HR, 14 RBIs

Aside from 2015, Pearce has essentially been David Ortiz 2.0 against the Yankees.

It didn’t surprise me at all when Pearce single-handedly put the Yankees away in the division race back in August and it was business as usual when he went 4-for-12 against the Yankees in the ALDS. It was just the icing on the cake when he hit three home runs and drove in eight in five games in the World Series en route to being named World Series MVP.

I don’t care what team Pearce is on next season, but if the Yankees face him, he needs to be hit on the first pitch he sees against them. I don’t care who the pitcher is, what the score is, what the situation is or how important the game is. Pearce needs to be hit.

NATHAN EOVALDI
Never trust a pitcher who throws triple-digit fastballs and can’t strike anyone out and that’s exactly what Eovaldi is. The Dodgers gave up on him and the Marlins gave up on him despite him being 24 years old with incredible velocity because he didn’t have an out pitch and he didn’t know where the ball was going. So the Yankees gave up Martin Prado and David Phelps because of the glamour of Eovaldi’s fastball, thinking they would be the ones who could fix him. They weren’t.

Eovaldi pitched to a 14-3 record in 2015, so every idiot that relies on wins and losses to determine a pitcher’s success thought he had a great season. It didn’t matter that he received 5.75 runs of support per game or that he routinely struggled to get through five innings and qualify for a win because he needs 20-plus pitches per inning. In 2016, it was more of the same. Eovaldi pitched to a 4.76 ERA over 21 starts and 24 games before being shut down for another Tommy John surgery, ending his time with the Yankees as they let him leave at the end of the season.

When Eovaldi returned to baseball this season and pitched well with the Rays, many Yankees fans started to think about a reunion, having not learned their lesson from the last time Eovaldi was a Yankee. When he was traded to the Red Sox, I laughed with excitement, envisioning him destroying the Red Sox’ chances at winning the division. Instead, he shut out the Yankees in the all-important August series (even if faced a JV lineup) and then shut them out against in September. I never thought he would be able to beat the Yankees in October in the Bronx, but sure enough he did, after getting more run support than any other pitcher against the Yankees in the team’s history.

Eovaldi beat the Yankees and the Astros in the playoffs, mixed in a few relief appearances and then became a hero for his bullpen work in Game 3 of the World Series, even though he took the loss after giving up a walk-off home run. (Only in Boston could a losing pitcher become a “hero”.) Now Eovaldi is a World Series champion and some dumbass team is going to give him an incredible free-agent contract after this stretch run in the regular season and postseason performance.

It doesn’t bother me that the Red Sox played “New York, New York” after they won or that they keep referring to the Yankees every chance they get in their offseason victory lap. It only bothers me that they won and that the Yankees didn’t because they didn’t play well against them and didn’t do everything possible to put the best team on the field.

I don’t want to hear Hal Steinbrenner talk about how angry he is that the Red Sox won and his Yankees didn’t. Steinbrenner has the ability to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It’s time this Steinbrenner acted like the real Steinbrenner and didn’t worry about money, only winning.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

Click here to purchase the book through Amazon as an ebook. You can read it on any Apple device by downloading the free Kindle app.

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Offseason

Nov 1, 2018

The Good and Bad of Bringing Brett Gardner Back

I have been torn on whether or not the Yankees should bring Brett Gardner back for a while. I have always been a Gardner fan, despite his streakiness, but it sure looked like he was done for most of the season.

Brett Gardner will be a Yankee in 2019. The Yankees decided to buy him out of his $12.5 million option for next season for $2 million and give him a $7.5 million one-year deal, saving $3 million and giving themselves outfield depth, which they desperately lacked in the second half of the season.

The return of Gardner has been a touchy subject as the longest-tenured Yankee is viewed as the unofficial captain of the team, and it’s been hard for Gardner fans to accept his decline. Generally, all Yankees fans like Gardner and appreciate the career he has had and what he has meant and produced for the team for over a decade now. But was it the right move to bring back the 35-year-old outfielder, who will turn 36 during the upcoming season?

I have been torn on this decision for a while. I have always been a Gardner fan, despite his streakiness, but it sure looked like he was done for most of the season. To determine whether or not Gardner should have been re-signed, let’s look at the good and bad of his return, starting with the bad since everyone always asks for the bad first.

THE BAD
Gardner batted .236/.322/.368 this season. That’s the worst batting average and on-base percentage and second-worst slugging percentage of his career. His .690 OPS was also the worst of his career. It’s never good when a 35-year-old puts up the worst numbers of his career in the final year of his contract and then the team brings him back for another season.

Gardner started the season the same way he has for the past several seasons: batting leadoff. But eventually his on-base percentage got too low to justify giving him the most potential at-bats over the course of a game and season, and starting Sept. 1 he was no longer batting first most of the time. (Tip of the hat to Aaron Boone who was willing to pencil in Gardner as his leadoff hitter for the majority of the first 135 games of the season despite his drastic decline in production. Just another example of “A’s across the board” for the manager.) For the last month of the season, Gardner was the Yankees’ No. 9 hitter … when he played.

The trade for Andrew McCutchen resulted in Gardner no longer being an everyday player for the final month of the regular season and into the postseason. It took an Aaron Hicks injury in Game 1 of the ALDS for Gardner to play the next two games of the series, and it took McCutchen being a complete non-factor at the plate for Gardner to remain in the lineup. After struggling to find and maintain any level of offensive production during the regular season, Gardner went hitless in the playoffs (0-for-8 with three walks) and looked completely overmatched at the plate.

On top of Gardner’s decline from leadoff hitter to No. 9 hitter to fourth outfielder is Clint Frazier waiting for his shot at being an everyday major leaguer. Let’s say Frazier is healthy in 2019 and moving forward. Where is he going to play? Aaron Judge is in right field. Hicks is in center. Gardner is in left. Giancarlo Stanton can rotate in the outfield to give those three days off. The return of Gardner not only means the Yankees are going to give a lineup spot to a 35-year-old coming off the worst season of his career, but that there is nowhere for Frazier to play, barring an injury to one of those four. (I’m not even going to get into asking where Jacoby Ellsbury is going to play because who cares? He should never wear a Yankees uniform in a real game again.)

The Yankees weren’t good enough to reach the World Series in 2017. They weren’t good enough to get out of the first round in 2018. I’m not sure that continuing to bring the same exact team back once again is going to get them over the hump. While Gardner might be very, very, very low on the list of reasons why the Yankees were eliminated short of their goal the last two seasons, his situation was a fixable one with the $2 million buyout.

THE GOOD
Gardner has been everything you want from a Yankee over a decade. He was a good, solid fourth outfielder/role player turned everyday center fielder turned everyday left fielder (thanks, Brian Cashman for signing Ellsbury!). He is the longest-tenured Yankee and though Judge is certainly the face of the franchise, it’s Gardner who is always there for a quote or state of the team when the media comes calling. From everything you hear and read, he’s an excellent leader and great clubhouse presence, and those things do matter.

Even with his ugly offensive season, Gardner still plays incredible defense, as shown by his Gold Glove finalist nomination. He plays left field at Yankee Stadium better than anyone, and the difference between having him in left or Stanton or anyone really is night and day.

For all of his flaws in the batter’s box in 2018, Gardner did bat .264/.350/.428 with a .778 OPS and a career-high 21 home runs in 2017. So he’s only one year removed from the best power showing of his career. Maybe there was an unknown injury or underlying reason why he fell off this past season. Maybe this past season wasn’t the beginning of the end, but rather an anomaly. Maybe after an offseason of rest, 2017 Gardner will be the Gardner the Yankees are getting in 2019.

Gardner might not have the stereotypical power that comes with left field and left field in the American League, but he won’t give away at-bats, will make every pitcher work to get him out and when he’s going right, he will get on base. Sure, he’s streaky, and there’s a reason why I have called him “The Streak” for a long time now, but the idea is that his hot streaks will outlast his cold streaks in 2019. If they don’t, well, the Yankees are still getting Gold Glove defense and a leader for $7.5 million, and if it doesn’t work out, he can return to the bench where he finished last season.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

Click here to purchase the book through Amazon as an ebook. You can read it on any Apple device by downloading the free Kindle app.

Blogs • NFL

Nov 1, 2018

NFL Week 9 Picks

I’m looking forward to football this Sunday because there’s no way the Giants can ruin it. Life without the Giants is appealing and after the last 25 games, I’m beginning to think life would be better without them.

I’m looking forward to football this Sunday because there’s no way the Giants can ruin it. They can’t put me in a bad mood or lose me any money. Life without the Giants is very appealing and after the last 25 Giants games, I’m beginning to think my life would be much better without the Giants in it period.

Detroit +6 over MINNESOTA
I’m an honorary Vikings fan for the rest of the season, just like I was last season. Brittni is a Vikings fan, so I’m forced to pull for them to some degree, and with the Giants playing for the No. 1 pick in 2019, it gives me something to care about.

The problem is Kirk Cousins is the Vikings quarterback and he sucks. He really, truly sucks. The best thing to ever happen to the Jets was that Cousins turned down their offer to sign with them and the Vikings gave him $95 million to possibly destroy their window of opportunity. The Vikings would be no different with Case Keenum still their quarterback, and I honestly think they would be better with him. They wouldn’t have had Cousins to single-handedly lose the Bills game and they wouldn’t have had him to give away the Saints game.

I knew Cousins sucked when in Week 17 in 2017, he had the ball with a chance to lead his team down the field against a Giants team that had already clinched and had nothing to play for and he was unable to. Right then, I knew that Cousins would never be anything more than an average quarterback, who will never win anything. So while I’m rooting for the Vikings to win the Super Bowl for Brittni, I know they have no chance with Cousins.

Pittsburgh +3 over BALTIMORE
I will never not take the points when these two teams meet in this era of their rivalry.

WASHINGTON -1.5 over Atlanta
A battle of two teams the Giants could have beat and didn’t. Neither team is very good, but I will never trust the Falcons in any game as long as Dan Quinn is their head coach. I would rather pick against him them and be wrong than pick for them and have Quinn call Julio Jones off the field in the red zone.

Tampa Bay +6 over CAROLINA
This pick is mostly about me wanting Ryan Fitzpatrick to completely take Jameis Winston’s job from him than it is me believing Fitzpatrick won’t go out and throw three first-half interceptions. Then again, if there’s any team I wouldn’t want to give six points with it’s the Panthers and their sporadic offense. Taking the points just makes the most sense here.

Kansas City -9 over CLEVELAND
I never understood how the Red Sox could watch Bobby Valentine on Sunday Night Baseball every week and decided to hire him as their manager. And I never understood how Browns ownership could watch Hard Knocks this season and not fire Hue Jackson and Todd Haley before the season even began.

Forget Jackson’s record with the Browns, which will stand for all of time because no organization will let a coach lose 15 games and then all 16 games and bring him back yet again. If you watched Jackson interact with his team and his coaching staff, you knew the Browns would never stop being the Browns with him as head coach. And if you watched Haley for five minutes on that show, you would question how he ever got a job in the NFL, let alone continue to get jobs in the NFL running offenses.

So now Baker Mayfield has been exposed to the real Browns in his second month in the league as they have fired the coach halfway through his rookie season. Normally, organizations pair a head coach with a young quarterback, but not the Browns. They retain the worst coach record-wise in NFL history and pair him with the No. 1 overall pick and then fire the head coach and name the most insane person to hold a coaching job in the league as their interim head coach. A person who was suspended for an entire season. I’m sure Mayfield enjoyed being the No. 1 pick, but he would have been better off falling in the first round.

MIAMI -3 over New York Jets
First, the Jets were going to use this season for Sam Darnold to gain experience, according to Jets fans. Then after their Week 1 win, they were maybe a wild-card team. Then after three straight losses, it was back to gaining experience. Then after beating the Broncos, it was back to the playoffs. Then after beating the Colts, it was possibly a division title. Then after losing to the Vikings and Bears, it was back to gaining experience.

This season was never about anything other than Darnold getting a full season under his belt so the front office could go out next spring and dominate the free-agent market with all of their cap space. Jets fans had their moments where they thought their team could sneak into the playoffs, but I’m glad they have come back to reality.

Chicago -10 over BUFFALO
It doesn’t matter if it’s Josh Allen or Nathan Peterman or Derek Anderson starting for the Bills, there’s no way I can justify backing them at any number. When you have thrown three touchdown passes in half a season in this version of the NFL where quarterbacks regularly throw four-plus touchdowns a game, there’s no line that would scare me off from going against the Bills.

Los Angeles Chargers 0 over SEATTLE
One day I will write about the Chargers and not have to delete “San Diego” and type “Los Angeles”. I don’t know when that day will be, but it will happen. It hasn’t happened yet for me and the ~~Phoenix~~ Arizona Coyotes either, but the same way I overcame the Tampa Bay ~~Devil~~ Rays, I will overcome this.

Houston 0 over DENVER
The Texans were supposed to be finished after the Giants beat them and the Giants were supposed to go on a run. Instead, since their Week 3 game, the Texans have gone 5-0 and the Giants have gone 0-5. The Texans are now in first place in the AFC South with Super Bowl aspirations in a week conference and the Giants are in last place in the NFC East with first overall pick aspirations in the 2019 draft. I didn’t see this coming.

NEW ORLEANS -2 over Los Angeles Rams
The Rams are the last undefeated team in the NFL, but they have been close to getting picked off for their first loss several times lately, and had Ty Montgomery stayed in the end zone last week, they might have lost to the Packers. The Saints are coming off an impressive win in Minnesota, which was their sixth straight this season, and the Superdome seems like an inevitable setting for the Rams to take their first L.

Green Bay +6 over NEW ENGLAND
The Packers went to the West Coast and came within an idiotic return of potentially knocking off the 8-0 Rams. Now they are getting six points on road against a lesser opponent? Am I missing something here? I realize it’s the Patriots and I realize the Tom Brady-Bill Belichick history and record at home, but this is still Aaron Rodgers. This isn’t Andrew Luck or the Dolphins we’re talking. This line seems way too high.

Tennessee +5 over DALLAS
Since the Giants have nothing to play for, there are very few things left for me to care about this football season. One of those things is the demise of the Cowboys under Jason Garrett. The Cowboys traded a first-round pick of Amari Cooper and nothing would make me happier than for Cooper to continue to be the bust he has always been. I desperately need this move to backfire and for the Cowboys to continue to be the poster team for mediocrity in the NFL.

Last week: 7-7-0
Season: 49-56-1

Blogs • Giants

Oct 31, 2018

Giants Are Close to Becoming Browns

The only team worse than the Giants since the start of 2017 is the Browns. The once-proud Giants are now a laughingstock.

The Giants won’t lose this week. That’s not a bold prediction or and it’s not me thinking a team with one win this season and four wins since the start of last season is going to win a game, rather it’s simply a fact. The Giants won’t lose this week because they aren’t playing.

This week will be what it feels like if the Giants seized to exist and I’m guessing it will feel really good. There won’t be disappointment or frustration or heartbreak or anger. There won’t be Eli Manning having less than a second to release the ball and there won’t be Manning getting knocked into next week when the offensive line has yet another breakdown. There won’t be Saquon Barkley having nowhere to go five yards behind the line of scrimmage or the constant one-yard checkdowns to the team’s best player. There won’t be Odell Beckham having a huge game statistically in a loss then calling out his team as if he’s not part of the problem. There won’t be Sterling Shepard or Evan Engram having drops at big moments in the game. There won’t be the defense bending and not breaking all game until the final minutes when it looks like the Giants might come back. There won’t be Pat Shurmur having no idea what to do when his team gets into the red zone or calling for unwinnable challenges or giving up points for fourth-down attempts. There won’t be any of the nonsense that has gone on for the last 24 games, which has caused me to wonder if the New York Football Giants are now the Cleveland Browns.

Here are the worst teams in the league since the start of last season by record and win percentage:

Browns 2-21-1 (.104)
Giants 4-20 (.167)
49ers 7-17 (.292)
Colts 7-17 (.292)
Raiders 7-16 (.304)
Broncos 8-16 (.333)
Jets 8-16 (.333)

The Giants might not be exactly the Browns, but they are pretty freakin’ close. The Browns have one more win and a tie than the Giants this season and no other team in the league is close to the two over the last season and a half. The teams after the Giants in those standings are either rebuilding, playing a rookie quarterback or recently won a Super Bowl and have a grace period. The Giants don’t fall into any of those three categories. They are just a bad team headed for the top of the draft despite not being in rebuilding mode. The Giants continue to be a losing team with no plan in place to restore winning.

This season was supposed to be different. A new general manager and a new coach and a new offensive line were supposed to remove the bad taste that Jerry Reese, Ben McAdoo and the 2017 season left in Giants fans mouths. But this season has been worse. The 2017 Giants could use the injury excuse as Manning was throwing to no-name receivers for most of the season and the defense was missing big names a majority of the time. The 2018 Giants? They have been mostly healthy, have had Beckham and Shepard all season and added Barkley. Yet somehow they are worse than the team which won three games a year ago. I didn’t think that was possible.

I felt good about the Giants this season, and in Week 1, despite the loss, I came away with the positive idea that a three-win team from a year ago could go toe-to-toe with the AFC runner-up. After Week 2, I was demoralized, and could see the Giants’ season spiraling out of control. The loss in Dallas was the single-worst performance I had maybe ever seen by a Giants team in my lifetime and the team was once again 0-2 with their season on life support.

Week 3 provided an unfavorable matchup against a quarterback who can run and a pass rush that hadn’t displayed their abilities, but the Giants magically came out of Houston with a win. The feelings after the Dallas loss had been erased and chalked up as a bad performance and I could see the Giants going on a run. Instead, they gave away another winnable game, this time at home against the Saints to fall to 1-3. It was a disheartening loss, but the season could still be saved.

Then in Week 5, the Giants pulled off a late-game comeback to take a one-point lead on the Panthers. As I started to think about the weeks ahead and planning the Giants’ path to winning the NFC East, Graham Gano drilled a game-winning 63-yard field goal as time expired. It was as crushing as any regular-season loss could be, but the rest of the division was letting the Giants hang around at 1-4 and a Thursday night home game against the Eagles could put the Giants one game back in the sloppy NFC East.

Normally, the home team has an incredible advantage for the short-week Thursday game. Not the Giants. The Giants were flat-out embarrassed at home, losing by three touchdowns, and finally showing even the most optimistic Giants fans that this season is just a continuation of last. The Giants had 11 days until their next game, which gave them just enough time to come up with a new and different way to lose a game, and against a Falcons team, which can’t stop anyone, the Giants scored three points in the first half and six points through three quarters. Then this past week, the Giants scored three points in the first half at home against the Redskins and still had only three points on the board through three quarters.

I’m not sure people understand how incredible it is to be held to three points in a half in an NFL game in 2018. The league has done everything it can to increase scoring and essentially make it impossible to play defense and the Giants still can’t score. The Giants have been held scoreless in eight of the 32 quarters (25 percent) they have played. They have scored three points or less in 12 of 32 quarters (38 percent) and have seven points or less at halftime in six of their eight games (75 percent). Most of their scoring has come in the fourth quarter with the game already out of hand and the opposition trading yards for time on the clock. The only time the Giants have had more than 16 points after three quarters was in their Week 3 win in Houston when they had 20. Their point totals through three quarters in their games: 9, 3, 20, 10, 16, 13, 6, 3.

I’m not sure where the Giants go from here. Ideally, they would use their near-top-of-the-draft pick on either a quarterback or offensive lineman and the following picks on those same things. Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that will happen with a front office that saw the 2017 Giants and their 3-13 record and thought they could be a playoff team in 2018 with the addition of a running back and a rookie offensive lineman and without a pass rush.

It’s depressing to realize the next meaningful Giants game will be Week 1 next September, nearly 10 months away. While nearly the rest of the league and the rest of fans have a reason to get excited for Sunday (or Monday or Thursday), I’m relegated to gambling and fantasy with no real football to care about. It’s not a place I thought I would be in when the season began, but it’s a place I have grown accustomed to as a Giants fan.

Blogs • Giants

Oct 29, 2018

Giants-Redskins Week 8 Thoughts: Different Week, Same Game

The Giants’ latest loss dropped their record to 4-20 since the beginning of 2017. I didn’t think things could get worse after last season, but they have gotten much worse.

There’s no need to watch the Giants anymore. Not only because their season is over and they have nothing to play for, but because I know how every game will play out.

The Giants are unable to score touchdowns, they get behind, they stage a late comeback in garbage time to keep the score close and then either the defense can’t get a stop in the final minutes to get the ball back or the Giants need to recover an onside kick for a chance at a miracle win. Every week that same game unfolds and this week it was no different.

The league has made it virtually impossible to play defense in 2018, but not when it comes to playing against the Giants. The Giants scored just three points in the first half and 10 in the second half with seven of those 10 coming with the game over. They were held scoreless in two quarters and essentially scored six points in a home game … in 2018. Odell Beckham, Saquon Barkley, Sterling Shepard and Evan Engram are all on the Giants and the team scored six points in a home game … in 2018.

The only thing left to do when watching this team is laugh. Laugh at the offensive line, laugh at Eli Manning’s checkdowns to Barkley, laugh at Beckham’s big numbers in losses, laugh at Shepard’s drop, laugh at Engram’s all-around game, laugh at the defense when it needs one stop to potentially win the game, laugh at the offense on every red zone trip. And most of all, laugh at Pat Shurmur look completely bewildered and out of place on the sideline as head coach.

The new Giants regime royally screwed up. They looked at the 2017 Giants as anomaly and a team that dealt with injuries and turmoil and decided the team was closer to the 2016 version which won 11 games and not the 2017 version with won three. They built around a three-win team instead of rebuilding it and tried to patch up an offensive line when what they needed was a new boat. Prior to the season, Shurmur said the team would go as far as the offensive line would take them and the offensive line has brought them to one win in eight games.

Before the latest loss to the Redskins, the Giants got rid of another former first-round pick and a big free-agent signing. It was the first time the front office let it be known that they screwed up as they decided to start selling off pieces in an attempt to stock up on draft picks to actually rebuild. Everyone thought the Giants missed their chance at a quarterback of the future picking near the top of the draft in 2018 and no one thought they would be back in that spot for a long time. But they will be back in that same spot and possibly even at the top of the draft let alone near the top of it in 2019. They are every bit as unprepared, frustrating, undisciplined and flat-out bad as the other one- and two-win teams in the league and they have just as much of a chance as any of those teams at the first overall pick. The only difference is those teams were built on the idea of picking first in 2019. The Giants were built on finishing first in 2018.

The Giants won’t lose this week thanks to their bye. But when they return from a week off, they will have half of their season left with nothing to play for. When the 2017 season ended so early, the team gave up and decided that with nothing to play for, they weren’t going to play. This regime thought last season was an anomaly, but over the second half of the season, they will find out just how different this team is to last year’s, if it’s different at all. So far it is hasn’t been.