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Why to stay tuned to the Giants: Brian Daboll test, Saquon Barkley demands, 2024 roster hints

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The only span of time ahead when the Giants and their fans are assured of peace and tranquility and a weekend without football anguish will come during the last few days of November and the first few days of December. That is when the team finally gets the respite of a bye week — no bad football! — and a break that cannot get here soon enough.

Haven’t we all had enough?

Game after game filled with inferior performances, inadequate offensive talent and production, plays not made, decisions gone haywire, new crops of injuries, losses that end in a rout and close games that slip away.

A four-game losing streak was interrupted by a rare victory, over the Commanders, a shelter from the storms that followed with a game the Giants absolutely threw away to the Jets and the ignominy of losing to a Raiders operation that had just fired their general manager, head coach, offensive coordinator and had installed a barely used rookie at quarterback. That the Giants lost in Las Vegas, 30-6, was an afterthought to the news that Daniel Jones was lost for the remainder of the season to a torn right ACL.

Is there anything left to see here?

The Giants are 2-7, and expecting anything other than a blowout loss to the Cowboys this Sunday in Arlington, Texas, is wishful thinking. Feel free in the coming weeks to take a stroll during the hours the Giants are on the field, taking in what is left of the fall foliage. Or take a drive when the temperature dips. Or … read a book? Is that done anymore?

Josh Jacobs’ two touchdowns led the Raiders to a 30-6 beatdown of the Giants in Las Vegas, a loss that has many New York football fans looking toward next season.
Getty Images

If you care to follow along and accept more punishment from the Giants the rest of the way, you might be rewarded with knowledge about the direction the team will take in 2024.

There are too many snaps remaining to ignore what comes next in the final eight games. That is half a season. The Giants are not going to make a run at anything other than the No. 1 pick in the upcoming NFL Draft, but that does not mean what happens between now and game No. 17 is irrelevant.

Here are five reasons to stay engaged:

The coach

Think about how satisfied you were with Brian Daboll at this time one year ago.

The Giants were 7-2 in his debut season as a head coach at any level. There was the likeness of Daboll’s shaved head and thick beard on T-shirts. Fans were thrilled with his two-point conversion bravado in his first game, his everyman persona, his emotive outbursts on the sideline, his cool demeanor with the press and his ability to coax Jones into eliminating the turnovers and bad play.

Think of where you are now with Daboll.

That first-year pixie dust that magically and deservedly landed him the Coach of the Year award blew away into the air pretty quickly, didn’t it? It will be interesting to see how Daboll handles all this. He lost Jones and backup Tyrod Taylor, and the Giants are down to QB3, practice squadder Tommy DeVito.

A season after being named the NFL’s Coach of the Year, Brian Daboll must guide the Giants to a very different sort of postseason fate.
USA TODAY Sports

Daboll does not show much public angst. How he navigates his team in the second half of a lost season will come down to something other than wins and losses. The belief is he will be back in 2024, but it would help his job security if he is able to prevent this dire situation from completely unraveling.

The line

Yeah, we’re back to the Giants offensive line, the place where dreams too often go to die.

What thus far has been a turbulent mess — eight different starting combinations in the first nine games — might actually be coming into clearer focus.

Left tackle Andrew Thomas is back after missing seven games due to a strained hamstring. Rookie center John Michael Schmitz is back after missing three games because of a shoulder issue. Right tackle Evan Neal returned after missing two games due to a sprained ankle, but is now hurt again, a sprain to his other ankle. Justin Pugh, after emergency fill-in work at left tackle, started last week in Vegas at left guard, his most comfortable spot. And at right guard, it’s becoming apparent the coaching staff might have made a mistake sitting Mark Glowinski in favor of Ben Bredeson.

Injuries have created chaos along the Giants’ offensive line, but the second half of the season promises more stability.
Charles Wenzelberg/New York Post

There is more to be seen with this group before it is safe to assume what happens here next season.

The running back

Since returning from a three-game absence caused by a high ankle sprain, Saquon Barkley has averaged 24.3 rushing attempts in the past four games. That is quite a workload. Lest we forget, Barkley is playing on a one-year deal for $10.1 million. Beyond that, there is no financial commitment linking him to the Giants.

Barkley, who has repeated many times his desire to stay and eventually retire with the Giants, is averaging 4.0 yards per attempt, but adding mileage to his tires does not make him more of an attractive option the next time he engages in contract talks.

He turns 27 on Feb. 9, more advanced than middle age for a running back. A team guy, does he eventually balk at getting the ball so often that it takes a toll on his body, reduces his effectiveness and decreases his worth to the Giants or any other potential suitor?

The free agents

Barkley is one of 26 players on the roster set to become a free agent after this season. He is the marquee attraction in a group that also includes Taylor, Bredeson, safety Xavier McKinney, cornerback Adoree’ Jackson, linebacker Isaiah Simmons and wide receiver Sterling Shepard. The performance level down the stretch will be a factor in how the Giants decide to proceed with these players.

Saquon Barkley’s impending free agency may make for some complicated decisions regarding his playing time with the playoffs all but out of reach.
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Other than Barkley, the most notable player here is McKinney. The Giants refrained from making an extension offer to McKinney last season after he broke several fingers in an all-terrain vehicle mishap while vacationing during the bye week. This season, he has been on the field for every snap on defense in the first nine games — his endurance is exceptional. His production, though, is not, and if he is looking to become one of the highest-paid safeties in the league, he will likely have to find another team to pay him that way.

The keepers

Just because a player is under contract for 2024 does not mean he is assured of a spot. When the season goes south, some go along for the ride and others do everything possible to ascend. Pugh recalled how when he was a rookie in 2013, the Giants lost their first six games. “You find out what you’re made of in these scenarios and the guys you want to be in a fight with,” Pugh said. “We got to keep doing the little things right, fight for the season, finish the season. Every guy in there has to realize you’re fighting for a job. This is what happens a lot of times when you get in these scenarios. You’re fighting to keep your job, your livelihood.”

Which players are up for this fight? We shall see.


Want to catch a game? The Giants schedule with links to buy tickets can be found here.


Join the club

Pugh said he put his hand on Jones’ shoulder and said “keep fighting’’ at halftime Sunday inside the visitor’s locker room at Allegiant Stadium. What became official after an MRI this past Monday was already highly suspected a day earlier — that Jones had a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee.

After missing three games with a neck issue, Daniel Jones returned in Week 9 only to see his season come to an early end after suffering a torn ACL.
Charles Wenzelberg/New York Post

Wide receiver Wan’Dale Robinson saw Jones after the game and did not offer much in the way of conversation.

“I know what that’s like, and you don’t want to be bothered too much,’’ Robinson said.

Yes, Robinson knows what it is like. So does Pugh. So do many other Giants players who during their NFL careers experienced the same injury that befell Jones. Those three letters are attached to the résumés of so many athletes, an immediate season-ending injury that is so commonplace that it is almost a surprise when a player tweaks a knee during a practice or a game and it is not diagnosed as a torn ACL.

On the offensive depth chart, Pugh and Robinson are joined by Barkley, Shepard, Matt Peart and Marcus McKethan as former ACL reconstruction surgery patients. On defense, Aaron Robinson, D.J. Davidson and practice squad linebacker Darrian Beavers came back from torn ACLs.

Wan’Dale Robinson is one of a large contingent of Giants players to have suffered, and recovered from, ACL surgery.
AP

“We’ve had a lot. It was the ACL club in there for a year,’’ Shepard told The Post on Tuesday, speaking on behalf of his partnership with LaQuinta for personalized holiday hype talks at LaQuinta.com/hype. “When I had mine, I was doing my rehab and we were all at different stages, but I was messing around with the guys, like, ‘I’m about to catch you. I’m going to start running,’ because Beavers did it like months before me. It’s not a good thing to have other guys in there, but it definitely helps you mentally through the process.”

If Jones needs guidance, inspiration or basic information as to what comes next for him, he has plenty of teammates who can provide day-by-day and month-by-month info based on their own rehabs.

Asked and answered

Here are two questions that have come up recently that we will attempt to answer as accurately as possible:

The Rams signed Carson Wentz. Why didn’t the Giants make a move to add a proven quarterback?

It is not a bad question. Jones is gone for the season. Tyrod Taylor is on injured reserve and out at least the next three games. You can debate what Wentz — the No. 2 overall pick in the 2016 NFL Draft — is at this point in his career, but it is not up for debate that he has a track record that DeVito, Matt Barkley and newly-signed-to-the-practice-squad Jacob Eason do not.

The Rams signed Carson Wentz this week, a choice the Giants passed on despite the loss of their top two quarterbacks to injuries.
AP

Wentz was sitting out there, unsigned. Sure, he does not know the Giants’ offense and it would take him a few weeks to get up to speed. Sure, his NFL career has been on a steady decline. But he did throw 27 touchdown passes and only seven interceptions as the Colts’ starter in 2021. Wentz did not play well last season with the Commanders, but at least he did play — he was not out of the league. Jones missed three consecutive games with a neck injury, and Wentz could have come aboard back then as an alternative to Taylor.

Is there anything positive going on with the Giants?

Well, let’s see. It is not a long list. How about the play of Micah McFadden? Of his six tackles against the Raiders, two were for a loss and he added one quarterback hit. The Giants signed Bobby Okereke as their middle linebacker, and the search for an inside linebacker to work in tandem with him might lead to McFadden. He was a 2022 fifth-round draft pick out of Indiana, and it took him a year to get his NFL sea legs under him. At 6-foot-2 and 232 pounds, he is not the biggest guy, but he moves well, hits hard and has shown an ability to drop in coverage that is more than adequate. Perhaps he is a building block for 2024.

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