As I look over the blog page, it is great to see everyone back. Many of the guys have not written anything in over a week and all of a sudden they are all back and ready to go.
If only the Giants can say that next year. However, during the bye week the Giants have coming up, both defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, and offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride will be having interviews and the Giants do not plan to step in and stop it. Even if the Giants did step in, they would still have the same interviews in the offseason.
The Giants need to finish this year strong because without those two coordinators next year they will not be nearly as good no matter who comes in (especially on the defensive side).
Hopefully interviews this week do not effect the team's performance in the divisional round of the playoffs but it will without doubt effect the Giants next season.
With these 2 guys gone, you are losing the Super Bowl winning defense followed up by the number 1 seed defense as well as the Super Bowl winning offense and the number 1 seed offense.
To be honest, I do not care as much about Kevin Gilbride. It took me only 4 games as him heading the offense to be able to predict the next play coming with 93% accuracy. Kevin Gilbride is incredibly predictable and it gets very frustrating. However, something about him may change in the playoffs. Last year in the playoffs and especially in the Super Bowl I predicted plays with only 45% accuracy approximately. He seemed to call his plays much differently. Maybe it is all part of his plan. He is predicatable in the regular season (and it works) and then when teams think they know him in the playoffs, he is unpredictable.
That of course is not a bad plan and if that is actually what he thinks about when running his offense then god bless him. But he has not called in the playoffs yet this year so we have to wait and see.
Now if he is so predictable you may ask why it works. Even though teams may or may not know what play is coming, it works so well in this offense. Before becoming offensive coordinator, Kevin Gilbride was Eli Manning's QB coach. He knew Eli Manning inside and out. He knew his strengths and weaknesses. When Gilbride became offensive coordinator he knew exactly what plays to pick to fit Eli Manning's strengths.
But because Gilbride (at least in the regular season) is so predictable, I do not mind it if he is gone. Kevin Gilbride sometimes comes up with such awful awful play calls as well.
But the biggest problem is going to be the loss of defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo. The Giants defense during their "awful" years were just so pathetic. The Giants had the worst coerage ever and everything was so sloppy. Spagnuolo was able to really unite the defense and make this defense one of the strongest in the league. Spagnuolo's defensive style fits the Giants talent perfectly. People should just say Spagnuolo runs a "Giants Defense." It fits that team that well!
Despite how good Spagnuolo is, I still don't see the Giants stopping anyone on 3rd down in my lifetime. It is something the Giants could never do whether it was the 2000 Super Bowl, the 4-12 2003 season, last year's Super Bowl, or this year's number 1 seed team. The Giants are awful on 3rd down and for some reason do their worst defense on 3rd and 10 or longer. On 3rd and 10 they give up 15 yards, on 3rd and 22 they give up 25 yards. It is just the way they are.
But generally speaking, their is nobody in New York that I can see criticizing Steve Spagnuolo. No defensive coordinator will be able to come in and do as good a job as he did.
Next year's Giants schedule as we know it now looks like this:
HOME: Atlanta, Carolina, Oakland, San Diego, Arizona
AWAY: New Orleans, Tampa Bay, Denver, Kansas City, Minnesota
Luckily, the Giants are not facing too many teams with high powered offenses. Of course missing from the above schedule is the divisional opponents. So they will be facing the Eagles, and Cowboys but Tony Romo should really just quit football and Mcnabb could possibly no longer be an Eagle.
Either way, the Giants still will struggle a bit. The talent is still there but if someone not similar to Spagnuolo comes in, the defense will not work.
To sum it all up, I think you will notice only minor differences in the offense without Gilbride. I think defensivley, things will be so different. I think fans will get completely frustrated and ask themselves how this same defense was the Super Bowl champs and then the number 1 seed the next year. People are going to think that this current Giants defense is a huge fluke. It actually could be that bad.
The Giants need to finish up strong because I think the Giants could fall into another draught. Coughlin will really start looking a lot like Jim Fassel.....
Mark Elliot Wishnia <---------------------------CLICK!
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