I’ve been taking victory laps on my Twitter for the last few hours in the form of digging up old Dave Gettleman-related tweets in an attempt to ease the immense pain the New York Giants caused me – and surely countless others – today.
Admittedly, it did help me to feel a bit better for a short amount of time.
Now, though, it’s time to get back to being rational and trying to examine what the New York Giants can do to start to dig themselves out of the massive hole the once-proud franchise currently finds itself in. The action plan for that centers around firing GM Dave Gettleman immediately — like tonight, immediately.
Some critics of this course of action may attempt to argue it won’t do any good and that the embattled executive deserves the chance to see this season through in the (one in a million) chance that this lousy football team turns things around and makes the playoffs. Where they are most wrong is that Dave Gettleman deserves nothing but (possibly) a handshake and walking papers. The ship for this regime to have any success sailed on the night Saquon Barkley was drafted second-overall and crashed about two years ago.
Now, it’s time for owner John Mara to step up and realize that irreparable damage will likely be done if he allows Gettleman to oversee operations at the looming NFL trade deadline. Think about this simply: if you were running a business, would you let a manager whom you were almost positive you would soon be firing hang around and make important decisions regarding the future of your business?
Especially when the said manager has a guaranteed contract that has to be paid out fully – no matter what – and your business is extremely profitable and not strapped for cash? It should be an easy decision, but unfortunately, nothing has been easy for this ownership group to figure out over the past decade. If John Mara still cares about the average New York Giants fan this will not be a difficult decision to make — the jury is still very much out on that, though.
Taking a deeper dive into the context, it is easy to realize that having a GM that will be far more concerned about saving his job than the long-term well-being of the New York Giants, you can begin to understand just how much damage could potentially be done if Gettleman is not removed from his post in the near future.
Just imagine ‘DG’ making another Leonard Williams-type move at the trade deadline (although, to be fair, Williams has played well as a Giant), where he forfeits assets instead of acquiring them. The New York Giants are already in a messy salary cap situation moving forward, this franchise can not afford for it to get even a slight bit worse under any scenario.
Dave Gettleman’s track record makes it clear to us that it will get worse, and we’ve only seen the version of ‘DG’ that might have felt somewhat secure in his standing, so far. I don’t even want to think about the things a desperate Dave Gettleman could be capable of.
Hopefully, we won’t have to find out what those things are.