Ready, Set ...

Are the Giants ready to "go"? It will be interesting to see what tinkering the Giants do with their roster between Saturday's mandatory roster reductions and opening day. Of course, when it comes to the roster, one primary unknown remains Strahan. I'm in the camp that believes that although Strahan's play on the field would help win some games, his presence is an overall negative and the team, as well as the Giants organization, is better off without him. NFL players get paid handsomely to be professionals. To be considered a truly great professional requires more than simply excelling at one particular skillset in a chosen profession, even if that single skillset happens to be the most visible. Medical doctors understand it doesn't matter how great their surgical skills may be if their patients don't take their advice because of a lousy bedside manner. Trial lawyers understand all the legal knowledge in the world doesn't mean anything if their demeanor totally alienates juries. Examples abound.

Michael Strahan has excellent physical football skills which make him a very good (great) individual football player. But that doesn't make him a great professional. All the football skills in the world don't matter as much if you don't understand you a being paid millions of dollars to improve the overall team. Mr. jackass isn't a professional because he has never understood why he was being paid all that money. It isn't about the individual accomplishments Mike. You were paid that money to be a member of a team - to help the team - not to be an individual. He was a great individual player, but not a great professional. The Giants, as a team, would be much better off if they could only find a way to pursuade him to retire. Alas, I'm afraid that is not going to happen.

Enough talk about the jackass. The Giants have some pretty large issues heading into the 2007 campaign.

• No OL depth at all. If one guy goes down the season may be over. That is quite a gamble.
• No blocking TE
• No fullback
• Huge question mark at kicker
• Long snapper on IR
• No real depth on DL including DE (unless jackass comes back but even then Giants will probably ask for a roster exemption for a couple of weeks until he gets into playing shape while the Giants play 3 NFC East games in the first four weeks. Nice job Mikey).
• The secondary. I'll feel better when Ross and Webster are the starting corners (on merit) and there are solid backups behind them. But absent injury it appears Madison and McQuarters get the starting nod which means the secondary has not been upgraded. And both safety spots remain a problem. I was going to list "depth" a problem with the secondary, but that is a wrong term when it is the starters who are the problem and your backups aren't good enough to displace them.
• Brandon Jacobs. He's done a workmanlike job in pre-season. He's a load, no doubt about it. But... he has been unable to break free of traffic and run free this entire pre-season and thngs only get tougher during the regular season as teams spend all week long game planning how to frustrate him. Caveat: We haven't yet seen Jacobs into the 3rd and 4th quarters when the defenses get worn down. We'll have to wait and see.

The NFL season is not a race to the finish. It is a grueling 16 round heavyweight fight. It is easy to "blame" injuries for lack of success (ala 2006), but excuses are just that - excuses for failure. Successful teams - like NE - have sufficient depth to deal with injuries. NE didn't dress any of their starters last night and their backups gave the Giants first teamers a run for their money on both sides of the ball (yes, the Giants offense moved the ball but it wasn't necessarily easy, especially at the goal line). How many of you think you would have been "happy" with the outcome had that been reversed with the Giants not dressing any starters and playing their backups against NE's first team offense and defense? Point made. It would have been a total, unmitigated disaster.

I think the Giants are moving in the right direction. Many people objected to the use of "rebuilding" during the offseason. But what else can you call a transition between the end of the Barber-Strahan era and the beginning of the Manning-(defensive unknown) era? Speaking of Manning, I have what I perceive to be a sea change in his play. Yes, many say he has played well before in pre-season and early regular season, only to drop off after the mid-way point. But that is not what I am talking about. I have seen a noticeable difference in how he throws the football. His footwork is much improved and he is stepping into his throws and is throwing with confidence. While he has missed some throws (not many by the way), none have been of the type that worried me in the past - the type Phil Simms compared to a "wild pitch". His misses were still good throws mechanically. If this is indeed a sea change, his statistics will not matter to me at all (good or bad), nor will the record or any perceived "let down" towards the end of the season - so long as his mechanics remain solid. If that happens, all the rest will come with time.

Simms On Manning - Control vs Accuracy

I watched an interesting segment on ESPN the other night. Phil Simms was a guest and, of course, the subject was his view on quarterbacks. He was asked to give his list of the top ten quarterbacks in the league (he gave five and the only thing you need to know is that Donovan McNabb was #3).

They also asked Simms to identify the "up and coming" quarterbacks in the league - quarterbacks for whom he expected big things in the future. Eli Manning was not on either list.

Naturally, the discussion then turned to his views on Eli Manning and I thought his insights were very interesting. According to Simms, Manning's problem is not accuracy but control. Manning periodically loses control of the football resulting in a wild throw - similar to a pitcher who might be having a very good game and then suddenly throws a wild pitch 10 feet over the catcher's head.

Simms noted that, while every quarterback occasionally throws a "wild pitch", Manning does it too often to succeed in the NFL (I believe he said a rate of about four per game). He emphasized that "control" is a basic and essential skill for any NFL quarterback and that Eli Manning would never be a top ten or an "up and coming" QB unless and until his control problems were resolved.

The good news is that Simms believes control issues can be overcome. The bad news is that he hasn't seen any indication of that happening to date.

Giants v Panthers - First Pre-Season Game

This is going to be short and sweet for one simple reason... there isn't anything to write about. It was the first pre-season game so nothing much can be read into it. Pre-season games are for evaluating individual performances, especially the new players who are unknowns in game situations. Negatives, for the most part, can be ignored because they will likely be corrected. Rather, what I always hope to see are some exciting performances from a rookie or two that gets me so pumped up I can't wait to see him (them) again in the next game. To me that was the biggest disappointment about this game - there simply weren't any spectacular performances.

The one thing I did notice is that the kickoffs were consistently inside the ten yard line and, while I would like to see some cross the goal line, the kicking game was better than I had feared, and that is certainly a positive.