NFL-Giants: NY Giants football news

Everyone is busy evaluating and grading the 2013 drafts even while they say it’s impossible to know anything before the new millionaires take an NFL snap. So while everyone is knowingly wasting their time with the 2013 draft, I thought I’d review the Giants 2012 draft.

NFL.com gave the Giants an A in the days immediately after the draft. All these great players are entering their second years in the league. Poised for greatness. Time to bet on Giants games right? Well, let’s see if the Giants really had an excellent 2012 draft.

1 – David Wilson, RB, Virginia Tech (5-10, 206)
2 – Rueben Randle, WR, Louisiana State (6-3, 210)
3 – Jayron Hosley, CB, Virginia Tech (5-10, 178)
4 – Adrien Robinson, TE, Cincinnati (6-4, 264)
4 – Brandon Mosley, OT, Auburn (6-6, 314)
6 – Matt McCants, OT, Alabama-Birmingham (6-6, 308)
7 – Markus Kuhn, DT, North Carolina State (6-5, 299)

David Wilson seems to have been a good pick. A little fumbilitis kept him off the field for some of 2012 but he was dynamic on kickoff returns (26.9 average per return) and some of his most exciting returns were called back due to penalties. He only had 71 carries, but averaged 5 yards per carry. If he stops fumbling – and his ball handling seems better, this guy is a keeper. Certainly fun to watch.

Rueben Randle seems to have been a decent pick. His stats in 2012 were OK – 19 catches for 298 yards and three touchdowns. He needs to run better routes, but if that comes with experience his size makes him a tough receiver for your average corner to cover.

Jayron Hosley is still a question mark. He played in 12 games with six starts, but missed four games with hamstring, shoulder, and quadriceps injuries. He also got dinged up in the preseason so can he stay healthy?

Adrien Robinson is still a question mark. He was active for two games in 2012 and never had a catch.

Brandon Mosley sat out 2012 with an ankle injury. We still don’t know if he can play NFL ball.

Matt McCants was a practice squad player in 2012. A project, he may not be ready for the big show just yet.

Markus Kuhn was a good pick. When a seventh rounder is an active part of your defensive tackle rotation his first year in the NFL, that’s nice. He played 10 games before tearing an ACL so hopefully he comes back strong. Good against the run. Still inexperienced so could improve a lot.

So basically, the Giants have two picks that were obviously good ones: Wilson and Kuhn. Kuhn is gold in the 7th round. A first round running back should be good so no extra points there. Randle was probably a good pick, but your second rounder should be good too so no extra points. All the other picks are still unknowns at this point. I give the Giants a B for 2012. What’s your grade for the Giants 2012 draft?

Interesting article here about agent Andy Ross and draft day. They talk about Justin Pugh, one of Ross’ clients and how the draft went down from Ross’ perspective. They start with some background and then how he told Pugh to be ready for the first round and to be ready to drop.

“Ross has established a track record for pushing players into the first round — starting with Brown, continuing with Hood, and most recently this April again along the offensive line with Pugh.”

So they make it sound like the Giants chose Pugh because his agent did something special. What exactly did he do? Well, nothing during the draft:

“He’s barely on the edge of his couch, scanning from notes to cell phone to Tweetdeck to Excel. “OK, Giants, c’mon!” he yells, realizing that looking over all the data in front of him isn’t going to change a damn thing about the next 10 minutes.”

But before the draft he does PR and sends Pugh to get in shape at CES Performance and Trigger Point Therapy.

One interesting comment is that the Giants told Ross, they were looking at Pugh as a possibility at #19. I wonder why they mention that to the agent. And I like the following quote from Pugh: “Throughout the whole process, Andy said ‘Trust me and we’ll get you into that first round.’ I saw what he did with Duane Brown and Ziggy Hood, and it’s happened again with me. I couldn’t be happier with my selection of Octagon. I was set up perfectly.”

John Mara of the New York Football Giants had this to say:

“That’s what’s happened quite a bit right now. You find players who are quality players who haven’t gotten the big money offered to them, that want to go somewhere where they can maybe reestablish themselves as top flight players and maybe get the big contract the next time around. And we’ve been able to take advantage of that with a few of the guys that we’ve signed. So that has been a little bit surprising to me. But when you think about it, maybe it really shouldn’t be because the cap has been relatively flat, there wasn’t a big increase this year. I think that has a lot to do with it.”

You can see it worked out well for Martellus Bennet, who signed a 1-year deal with the Giants and then got paid some bigger money after a productive year in New York.

Jerry Reese said of the Redskins and other college-like offenses: we think we have the personnel to beat those guys.

Last time I saw the Giants play the Redskins, RG3 and Alfred Morris gashed the Giants in the running game and it was ugly to watch. Do you agree with Reese or do the Giants need to get a different kind of player than what they currently have on the roster in order to handle some of these running games?

Reese says the draft strategy does not change at all. I wonder about that.

I think it’s fairly obvious that the Giants want to sign Cruz to a long term contract and that this is likely to cost Big Blue 10 million a year. Do you think he’s worth it?

The spot of ball after Bradshaw’s run with about 1:30 to go left Coughlin and us fans irate. I’m not sure if he definitely got the first, but at the very least it was so close that it would only have been inches and forced a measurement. The line judge spotted it an entire yard short. Inside 2 minutes, the official in the booth needs to review that. An understandable error from the on-field official maybe he thought Bradshaw’s knee was down before he stretched across the 33. But the call on the field was clearly bad from the replays so wake up replay booth guy.

One sided officiating:

Dallas CBs got to do whatever they wanted to Giants receivers but Giants fans had to deal with potential heart attacks when the refs threw a flag on Prince near the end of the game. Even though it was offensive pass interference, you just knew the refs were throwing the flag against the Giants. Thankfully they huddled up and decided not to make the fix as obvious as that call would have made it. (joke – I’m not a conspiracy guy – I just think the refs suck) One set of rules for Scandrick playing the slot and another for Hosley. Same with Claiborne and Prince.

Amukamara had been warned earlier by an official that his coverage was teetering on the edge.

“I was warned, but I’m an aggressive corner, I like to put my hands on them,” Amukamara said.

He was sure that on the play that produced his puppy dog face, he did not interfere with Dallas receiver Kevin Ogletree.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Amukamara said. “He was the one grabbing me. “The ball was overthrown and we were both touching each other. Usually in that situation the call does go to the offense. Thank goodness they reversed it.”

Equally mind boggling = Hosley’s first illegal contact. He initiated contact within the 5 yards, but then was practically attacked by the receiver who nerly took Hosley’s helmet off. And yet the call was on him?

Several very bad missed holds in Dallas’ backfield, Cruz especially victimized.

The clock: We want to give them a TD but that would be too obvious since Bryant was clearly out of bounds. Let’s put some extra time on the clock instead so Dallas can run more plays. WTF? There were 6 seconds when Bryant landed out of bounds so why move the clock to show 10 seconds left?

The Cowboys turned the ball over 6 times and the game still came down to the last second after the Cowboys had a TD overturned because Dez Bryant’s finger came down out of bounds.

I guess you could call it mind boggling or heart palpitating that the Giants nearly managed to lose even though they won the turnover battle 6-2. Somehow the Giants offense got nothing going (1 of the Giants’ 2 TDs was scored by JPP on an interception return). There will be time for more analysis later. Now it’s time to enjoy the win.

The ref watched Trent Williams of the Redskins stick his finger into Boley’s facemask. And he watched Boley hit back. And he penalized only Boley. Great to have the old refs back.

Another 4th quarter win thanks to Eli. Eli didn’t have a great game but he was sure clutch, along with Chase Blackburn.

RG3 looks like a real talent and may actually have the Redskins among the NFL elite one day soon. The Redskins offense and RG3 were helped big time by the running game, which the Giants had no answer for. It may have been an ugly game, especially with the redskins running at will against the Giants defense, but no win in the NFC East is supposed to be easy.

Cruz, is the Giants all-pro receiver, among the best in the NFL no question. Without him, the Giants win fewer games. Need to sign him to a long-term deal.

So the regular refs, including Jeff Triplette, are back and the officiating is still terrible. A brilliant Broncos comeback could have been ruined by a horrible offensive pass interference call against Denver late in the game. This negated a long completion and probably took points away from Denver because i don’t think Decker was down by contact. So that was a touchdown in my book. According tot he professional refs we have back on the field it was something else.

The terrible offensive pass interference call on Decker certainly gave the Chargers the ball back when they didn’t deserve it. Luckily, this call didn’t decide the game, but it could have and it was bad. Can’t the NFL do something to make sure these kinds of mistakes don’t change the outcome of a game?

Jeff Triplette is still employed by the NFL.

But Monday night has another important lesson for Giants fans: Eli Manning is 10 times the QB Phillip Rivers is. That guy was a turnover machine tonight.