I’ve been thinking lately about the phrase “Giants football.” It’s a phrase that gets thrown around a lot by fans, coaches, bloggers and commentators as a way to describe how our team has achieved success in the past and how it will achieve further success in the future. It’s an ideology, a lens through which we, as fans, and the Giants, as players, are able to perceive the world of football and decipher meaning, and, in turn, direction, from what takes place within it. And yet, as with all ideologies–political, religious, ethical– it still exists as somewhat vague, with room for different interpretations and varying degrees of rigidity by men (and women) of good faith. But before you can apply a principle, or extract meaning from a trend or tendency, you must first define the parameters and boundaries of the principle itself, deconstructing it so as to see all of its parts in an effort to more-fully understand its value. And so we ask: what exactly is “Giants football?”
It is my assertion that one word encapsulates the entire meaning of “Giants football”–physicality. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone to use the word “finesse” to describe any facet of the New York Giants. For the better part of our history, we’ve made our living on the backs of our linemen. The uglies; the fat guys; the pigs. The guys in the trenches, battling it out on either side of the ball for physical dominance at the point of attack. Whether we’re talking about offense or defense, the foundation of the Great Wall of Giants Glory is centered on beating you up and knocking you down. The offensive line will dominate you, allowing the running game to shoulder most of the burden of our offensive attack. A winning game for the Giants is typically one in which our running back(s) eclipse the 100 yard mark and allow us to control the time of possession. We like to grind it out. To draw upon an analogy that would appeal to Tom Coughlin, we attack you the way armies fought in World War I and II. There weren’t tactical missiles fired from thousands of miles away, nor we there infrared imagery generated by satellites in space guiding every advance and retreat; rather, victory and loss occurred in the trenches, man-to-man, and with brute force. There isn’t much gadgetry to what we do; moreover, it’s often criticized as being too predictable. Like it or not, much of our game plan centers around our ability to physically impose our will onto you. It’s what we do, and it’s who we are.
Now, this is not to discount or discredit the importance of our quarterback and his passing attack. Instead, it clarifies and magnifies his role in our offense. While our quarterbacks have achieved great successes as part of our team efforts, they’ve very seldom been afforded the acclaim and adulation that comes with playing in Dallas or Minnesota. No, our guys adopt the same workman mentality embodied by our offensive linemen. They’re smart, they’re gamers and they take what they can get. Eli Manning is, without a doubt, the most high-profile quarterback to don a Giants jersey, yet he is still criticized because of the perception that he is simply a game-manager, a guy who is just out there to hand the ball off and dump the ball to the tight-end on the occasional 3rd and 5. It’s a perception fed by the identity of this team, but one that is mischaracterized and misinterpreted. Despite his detractors, Eli is emerging as one to the premiere quarterbacks in this league, surrounded by a stable of young and immensely-talented receivers, the likes of which have never been assembled in our history. It’s a fact that is generating much debate amongst Giants nation about how our team should proceed offensively going forward. Still, no matter how many Hakeem Nicks’ and Mario Manningham’s come through the Meadowlands, they will always be, in my mind, second fiddle to and dependent upon the running game to achieve their successes.
Defensively speaking, little needs to be said of our defense’s place in the pantheon of history. The Hall of Fame is filled with players who have played for the New York Giants. In fact, mention the name “Giants” and most people will immediately focus on one player–Lawrence Taylor, the most influential player in the history of defensive football. He imbued the entire NFL with an attitude and swagger that continues to this day. And he represents all of what it means to be a Giant, despite his off-the-field issues (which also continue to this day). And his compatriots–Carson, Banks, Armstead, Strahan– define Giants defense as a group of badasses who are hell-bent on hitting you. And doing it hard and often. In the 80s and early 90s, the linebackers were the standard bearers; in the 2000s and today, the defensive line–namely the defensive ends– has been assembled to bring pressure in waves. But no matter whom it is, opponents continue to expect a tough, painful game whenever they have the misfortune of facing us.
Now, as with any ideology, defining the parameters isn’t the key to providing direction. And, as Benjamin Franklin once said, “a plan without implementation is a hallucination.” Going forward, with a newly-assembled cast of characters on the defensive side of the ball, the question of how to climb back up that mountain appears to be a reversion to what has brought us 3 Super Bowl victories–defense. The adage “defense wins championships” is beginning to be replaced with a new directive–championships are lost by defenses that cannot defend the pass. With the NFL evolving more and more into a pass-first league, defenses are being forced to pick their poison–do they adopt a scheme that allows them to cover all areas of the field with faster, more athletic , and often smaller players in their secondary’s? Or do they orient themselves towards bringing pressure on the quarterback so as to limit the ability for them to gain comfort in the pocket? Both sides are gambles and are unable to completely eliminate the efficiency of the elite passing attacks; however, I believe that Perry Fewell is going to bring something that has been sorely-missed by this team–versatility. Reese learned the lessons of last season’s debacle, assembling a surplus at defensive line and safety. And I believe that he will adopt a scheme that accentuates the abundance of athleticism at safety while leaning heavily on the very same bounty of bulk along the defensive line. Offensively, I truly believe that we should strive for balance, but not be over-focused on it. In other words, why squander the gifts of one component while stubbornly asserting another one? If our running game returns to form behind a healthy offensive line, it should be the foundation of our entire gameplan it; however, should it falter, we can and should rely on Eli and his receivers to bridge the gap. They don’t all have to be post patterns, either. Gilbride would do well to look at Norv Turner’s hundred of screen patterns or Tom Brady’s use of Welker as a way to play clock-control football with your passing attack. We’ve got the tools, we just need to figure out ways to use them.
The potential of this defense, and the team as a whole, is immense. But this team has never thrived as front-runners; rather, we’ve always relished being underdogs, embracing the identity of the rough, rugged and downtrodden. And we would do well to look towards the lineage of what Giants football has meant in the past while search for what this team needs to be in the future. If they can be physical, if they can be impositional, and if they can be dominant, they’re sure to find themselves living up to the expectations of Giants nation and will replicate the successes of yesteryear.
