I probably won’t be writing too much on here this semester since I will be a bit preoccupied — but once I return to the states in June, I will be sure to catch up on all things Mets since it will be a couple months into the season. In the meantime, feel free to follow along on the IC blog.

The news had broke a couple days ago that Fisher was interested in becoming the next head coach of either the Rams or the Dolphins. Each team has a head coaching vacancy as they try to rebuild their teams.

The update last night was that Fisher had agreed to become the coach of the Rams, specifically because there was a disagreement between Fisher and the executives of the Dolphins regarding the breakdown of power in the team. Fisher wanted full control of the roster while the Dolphins still wanted their general manager to have a part in making decisions about the team’s roster.

While I do believe Fisher is one of the best coaches alive, I do believe he might be asking for too much power. To ask for control of the entire roster minimizes the role of the general manager and other executives. I know many teams have head coaches with quite a bit of control, such as Andy Reid in Philadelphia, but sometimes I think it is important to keep the powers separated a bit in case something goes wrong. I definitely think the coach should have more power than a manager does in baseball, and I believe that he should have some significant power in deciding the roster. But if a team starts losing, having the ability to adjust some of the power isn’t as difficult when there are some separation of powers.

If Fisher wants to become a general manager, he should go ahead and look for a general managing job — but he might be asking for a bit too much as a head coach. But if this is what the Rams are looking for, maybe it will be the answer.

Just a few hours later, I realized the Giants would be in the same position again.

The Giants dominated the Falcons in the second half on Sunday, as Eli Manning andthe Giants offense were firing on all cylinders while the Giants defense shut out the Falcons altogether and had several key fourth and 1 stops.

The Giants running game, which ranked dead last during the regular season but had been improving in recent weeks, was rejuvenated on Sunday as Brandon Jacobs (92 yards rushing) and Ahmad Bradshaw (63 yards rushing) found holes in the defense and helped wear down the Falcons. This opened up the passing game and Eli Manning found both Hakeem Nicks and Mario Manningham in the endzone for a combined three scores. I predicted earlier in the week that Nicks or Manningham would have a big game because of all the hype surrounding Cruz. The Falcons shut down cruz, but the Giants just have too many weapons.

The Giants have never looked like a more complete team than I’ve seen in the last two weeks — every single aspect of their game has been solid and they have not been turning over the ball at all. The best improvement I have seen is on the defensive side, which looked shaky earlier in the season. However, they have really found their groove in recent weeks and it is quite impressive when a defense shuts out an offense in the playoffs. The key fourth and 1 stops were the most impressive part of the game by the defense, as those fourth and short plays usually decide a game more than people may think.

The Giants will look to build on this momentum as they travel to Green Bay for the Divisional Playoff matchup on Sunday at 4:30 pm. The Packers’ quest for an undefeated season was put on the line when the Giants put up a great fight against them late in the season. The Giants and Packers offenses were both moving the ball effectively, as the game was tied at 35 with under a minute to go. In shootouts like those, it is all about who has the ball last and Aaron Rodgers and the Packers had just enough time to get down into field goal range. Mason Crosby booted the field goal through for the game-winning score, but the game was so close that it could have gone either way. Regardless, it makes for a very interesting playoff matchup.

What to watch for:

• I think the Giants defensive line could make all the difference in this game, as they are finally much healthier now than they were before. New York is not afraid to put their four defensive ends on the line — Umenyiora, Tuck, Pierre-Paul, and Kiwanuka. This fierce combination has caused disruption every single time they have put them on the line this season, I don’t know why they don’t just use them exclusively.

• The Giants offense needs to make sure they don’t fall behind the powerful Packers offense. If they can run the ball effectively and spread the ball around in the air, they should be able to wear out the Packers defense enough so that they can get some scores without too much difficulty. Most importantly, they need to limit turnovers.

• The Giants core that remains from the ’07 Super Bowl squad need to continue to step up and play the way they did in that playoff run, because time is running out. They won’t be together forever and they have a prime opportunity to repeat their success if they can put together a few more wins.

I decided to make some picks for this weekend’s games, which you can see below:

Bengals at Texans

My pick: Bengals

This should be an exciting one, and it certainly fits the “Wild Card” label with two rookie quarterbacks at the helm. It could be a wild one, but in the end I have to go with the Bengals in this matchup. I attended the Bengals/Texans game last month in Cincinnati, and the Bengals definitely played like the better team. They had a lead until the very end when Texans backup quarterback T.J. Yates drove his offense down the field to score the game-winning touchdown at the very last second.

If the Texans had currently injured quarterback Matt Schaub starting, I would probably be choosing the Texans here — but T.J. Yates has only started a few games while Matt Dalton has been starting since the beginning of the season. The key for the Bengals will be to shut down both the Texans running game and the tight ends (particularly Owen Daniels) in the passing game.

This kind of work ethic will almost always be followed by success, as long as the individual continues to work hard without waving the white flag.

Bengals Assistant Head Coach Paul Alexander possesses this kind of work ethic.

This is his story.

These days, 18-year veteran Bengals coach Paul Alexander studies film during the week in his enormous, classroom-sized office next door to head coach Marvin Lewis at Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati. On the weekends, he patrols the sidelines during Bengals games. In a way, this was always his plan — but in a way, it wasn’t.

——

Paul Alexander was only in sixth grade when he knew he wanted to be a football coach. He was a sports fan since day one, idolizing stars such as Pete Rose and OJ Simpson during his childhood. He was a die-hard Buffalo Bills fan, to the point where growing up in Western New York, he said, meant that one’s allegiance to the Bills came before family.

To begin paving the road to his anticipated coaching career, the foundation of Alexander’s success was formed in his college days at Cortland State. His mother was a guidance counselor, and she advised him that Cortland was one of the top schools to attend if he wanted to learn how to coach. He took her advice and went to Cortland, where he majored in Physical Education and played on the offensive line for the football team.

“I learned about sport science and I took coaching classes,” said Alexander. “Also, our football team wasn’t very good, which was a positive in a sense because I was able to learn from reasons why we were not playing well.”

Using his time in college wisely, he did everything he possibly could to educate himself about the game of football. In addition to taking classes on coaching, he would attend Bengals practices a few times a year and study the technique of the players and coaches. At this point in time, he said he saw himself coaching high school football or college football in the future.

——

Perseverance

By graduation day in spring of 1982, things changed a bit. Alexander decided he wanted to coach Division I college football. He spent spent hours, days, and weeks applying to coaching jobs all over the United States. Things didn’t exactly go his way in the beginning, as he watched almost all of his job applications return with rejections.

“I applied to just about every Division I college in the country,” he said. “I sent over 108 applications and I received over 100 rejections. I had a few follow up letters and then I’d just get another rejection.”

Still, Alexander didn’t slow down. He remained firm in his pursuit of a coaching gig in Division I. In the meantime, he applied and was accepted as a graduate student at Penn State, where he hoped to somehow get his foot in the door of the football program as a graduate assistant despite a job offer that would bring him back to his hometown.

“It was the spring of my first year there and I got a call from my high school principal,” said Alexander. “She wanted me to come back and teach biology.”

Considering the hours of work he put into his goal of becoming a college football coach, Alexander wasn’t about to accept a job to go back to high school. He didn’t seem to care that he was rejected at over a hundred schools – he was going to keep trying.

“Let me give Coach [Joe] Paterno one more call,” he told his high school principal.

With this, Alexander called Paterno’s secretary and identified himself as simply Paul Alexander. To Alexander’s complete surprise, the secretary acted as if Paterno had been expecting him all along. She told Alexander that Paterno was waiting for him to call him at home as soon as possible, so she gave him coach Paterno’s home phone number.

“I called Paterno at home and caught him off guard a bit,” Alexander recalled. “He kind of told me that I wasn’t permitted to call him at home and hung up on me.”

Feeling confused and discouraged, Alexander soon learned that the secretary had confused him with the captain of the football team, Roger Alexander, who Paterno was waiting to hear from. Regardless, the next day Alexander received a phone call from a Penn State coach telling him that they still would consider bringing him in and they asked him to come in for an interview.

“Obviously Paterno felt bad,” said Alexander. “So I went down and they put me in a room with projectors and film, and they instructed me to break down the film.”

This was exactly what Alexander hoped for and this was his moment to shine. He learned how to break down film in his coaching class and through his experience as a player at Cortland.  In the end, they were impressed and he was hired.

“I had my own little corner office where I broke film down and helped other coaches,” said Alexander. “I had no life other than that projector.”

——

The job at Penn State opened more doors for Alexander as he hoped to continue moving up the totem pole. He wanted to remain in Division I football, so he was back to the drawing board. He again turned down a job offer, this time the job was to be a Division II offensive coordinator. He was back to the application process, sending out applications to Michigan, UCLA, and other schools to remain as a graduate assistant as he preferred to stay in Division I. After getting called in for an interview at Michigan, the aspiring young coach immediately got in his car and drove to Michigan.

“It took all of about thirty seconds of meeting coach (Bo) Schembechler to realize that I would be a coach at Michigan,” he said.

Alexander remained at Michigan for two years before making his way to Central Michigan, where he landed his first job as a position coach when he was assigned to coach the offensive line. It was while he was at Central Michigan in 1991 when he received a very unexpected phone call.

——

Technological advantage

“I got a call from Jets head coach Bruce Coslet asking me if I wanted to coach,” said Alexander. “At first I thought this couldn’t be Bruce Coslet. Why would he call me?”

It turned out that the NFL was in the process of updating their technology at the time by phasing in computers, and they were specifically looking for a tight ends coach who had experience using computers. Then-Jets defensive coach Greg Robinson remembered that Alexander had interviewed for the graduate assistant position at UCLA some years before, and informed the Jets that Alexander was familiar with computer technology.

“They interviewed eight other people, and somehow I got the job.” He explained. “They started the interview by asking me about the inside zone, the outside zone and the counter play. After close to two hours, I had covered the inside zone and they told me I didn’t even need to finish covering the rest of them. I was hired.”

Alexander spent two seasons with the Jets before the team fired most of the coaching staff in 1994 — including coach Coslet — after the team watched their playoff hopes evaporate following a late-season collapse.

——

Cincinnati days

Photo Credit: NFL.com

“After we got fired in New York, Coslet came here to the Bengals as the offensive coordinator,” said Alexander, who was hired along with Coslet and has remained with the organization ever since.

One year after the Bengals hired Alexander as the tight ends coach, veteran offensive line coach Jim McNally left the organization. Alexander then made the switch from tight ends coach to offensive line coach in 1995, and in 2003, was promoted to Assistant Head Coach.

It should be noted that Alexander’s so far 18-year tenure with Cincinnati ranks as the fourth longest tenured coaching career in franchise history. The average tenure for a coach in the NFL is only a couple years, so Alexander has been extremely thankful that he has lasted as long as he has with the organization.

“I have no idea [how I have lasted this long],” he said. “I just work hard and I’ve been unbelievably blessed. My children have been able to live in the same house all along.”

——

Offensive Line: “The Ultimate Sacrifice in Sports”

Fans love to watch the quarterback make the throw on the run or see the running back dive over a pile of defensive players for a touchdown. Fans love to watch wide receivers make the big catch for a first down. These are the players that are making a difference on fantasy teams week in and week out. What the fans don’t always notice are the offensive linemen making the blocks that allow these plays to happen, and coach Alexander knows from coaching this position for decades that it is one of the most important positions in the game.

“Playing offensive line is the ultimate sacrifice in sports,” he says. “There is no glory, the only glory you get is through other people’s accomplishments.”

He mentioned that the position has changed over the years, particularly with how referees call penalties. He said an offensive lineman used to be able to take a defensive player and put them on their back.

“You can’t do that anymore,” he said. “They will call holding. They call anything that is even close to holding. I think in many ways it has led to more passive line of scrimmage, and I don’t like it to tell you the truth.”

He said he doesn’t even know how to advise his players not to hold anymore because the penalty is such a toss-up. There could be holding on any play, it just matters whether the referee notices it.

As the offensive line coach, Alexander also works with the team on preventing false start penalties. He helps train the quarterback on how to use his voice at the line of scrimmage, teaching him how to speak in short, crisp syllables in tones that carry.

“A number of false starts are just a lack of concentration,” he said. “But a lot of times they happen because you can’t hear. In a loud stadium, a lineman can hear a quarterback’s cadence one moment, and then it gets lost in the crowd the next.”

—— 

Maintaining sanity

Two decades coaching in the NFL will take its toll on any coach. In order to keep everything fresh, people need to find balance in their lives and Alexander has found that in the unlikely source of the piano.

A few years ago, his daughter helped him get back into music by playing the piano. He had an interest in it when he was a child and he minored in music when he was at Cortland, but his time in the NFL had sidetracked him. Since he has began playing the piano again, it has become a significant part of his life outside of football.

“To let off steam, he plays the piano for hours,” said his wife, Kathy. “At this point, if he doesn’t play then the kids say they can’t sleep without him playing the piano. It drives me nuts because I like to watch TV,” she joked.

Kathy also said Alexander has a special ability to leave everything at work, regardless of team performance or whether he is sad, happy, or angry after a day of work.

“He doesn’t bring anything home with him,” she said. “He’s not home much, maybe 20 minutes before the kids go to sleep. But when he comes home, he is just dad.”

Alexander has about a 30 minute drive home from work after the game, and Kathy says he is able to use that alone time to listen to the radio, make last minute phone calls, and finish everything up so he doesn’t need to bring it home.

 ——

 Outlook

 The Bengals are in the playoff race this season and their offense is loaded with young talent. Rookie quarterback Andy Dalton and rookie wide receiver A.J. Green are having two of the best seasons among rookies in the league this year, and the team looks forward to the development of their young stars in the future.

“This season has been surprising, really,” said Alexander. “They have exceeded expectations unbelievably. It has been a fun year, it really has.”

Coach Alexander signed a three-year deal last year to keep him in the organization for at least a few more years. Two decades with the same NFL team is an impressive feat that wouldn’t have been possible without his dedication to coaching dating back to his younger days. While many coaches play in the NFL and easily find a coaching job after their playing days, Alexander had to climb the ladder the hard way.

“Believe it or not, very few NFL coaches plan to be coaches,” he said.

Alexander didn’t just plan to be a coach. He knew he would be a coach.

That’s the difference.

——

**As part of a Sport Publications class assignment, I traveled to Cincinnati to complete this story. This story is scheduled to appear on the Ithaca College Sport Management and Media department blog**

The 2011 Giants are now down to one of those backs in Brandon Jacobs, while Ahmad Bradshaw recovers from an injury and a pair of little-known speedy backs try to fill the gaps. The 2011 Giants rank 31st in the league in rushing, after finishing sixth in the league last year. Additionally, the offensive line has been totally shaken up, as we’ve seen Ivy League Cornell grad Kevin Boothe handle many snaps at center and elsewhere on the offensive line while pro bowler Shaun O’Hara is no longer with the team. Boothe was a backup on the ’07 squad and has struggled at times this season, especially with easy things like snapping the ball.

Another problem is Giants offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride. I find myself back and forth with praise and disappointment with Gilbride, but this season I’ve been seriously wondering what he is doing. Throughout his tenure as OC of the Giants, I’ve seen him call his fair share of ridiculous shotgun draws at the weirdest times in the game. This year is no different and Gilbride continues to drill this shotgun draw into the ground. It simply doesn’t work, it never has, and I have no clue why he keeps doing it.

The Giants desperately need a healthy Bradshaw to offset the power back in Jacobs. The Giants had been known to be a team that knows how to mix it up at the running back position, keeping defenses on their toes or off guard. Lately, this hasn’t been the case with the absence of Bradshaw as the Giants have dropped two straight after starting the season with a commanding 6-2 record.

The Giants, who are tied with Dallas for the NFC East division lead, have one of the toughest schedules remaining this season as they have to face New Orleans and Green Bay in the next couple weeks — and they haven’t even faced Dallas yet. In order to win the division, they will need to win some difficult games, and especially the games within the division.

Rex Ryan isn't smiling now

Some people fall into controversial hot waters. Rex Ryan dives into controversial hot waters.

I have always believed that the Jets head coach is far too loud of a coach to last in New York, which also happens to be known as the media capital of the world. Time and time again, Ryan has gone out of his way to put himself in the middle of the most controversial situations possible. He has almost never backed up anything he has said and he finds a way to make a fool out of himself every single week. He definitely won’t last long in New York once the Jets begin struggling, because when the dominoes start falling, you know they never stop.

• I’ve lost count how many times he’s guaranteed something that never did happen. Has anyone realized how quickly this gets old? The worst part is that he declared his team eliminated from the playoffs two years ago, only to see them come back and make the playoffs. When a coach says his team is done, he should get no credit for anything that they win after he says that. And when you keep failing to achieve what you guaranteed, the whole point of guaranteeing is diminished. You basically only get one chance to guarantee something, and if you fail then it becomes pointless to bother with anymore. His teams have come close to the Super Bowl the last two seasons, but in the end they went home with nothing. No division title, no conference title, and obviously no Super Bowl title. On paper, they were just a wild card team two consecutive seasons.

Despite becoming the first sophomore to win the Heisman Trophy and winning two National Championships with Florida, experts did not (and still do not) have very much faith in Tebow’s abilities to succeed at the NFL level. Renowned NFL draft expert Mel Kiper, Jr. expected Tebow to be drafted in the third round of the NFL draft. Some experts even expected him to sink in the draft even further, citing his throwing motion as a reason for why they believed he would fail at the next level.

When he finished his career at Florida, Tebow worked tirelessly to prepare for the NFL draft. Having already been established as one of the most popular NFL prospects in years despite the low expectations, Tebow was featured on ESPN as they followed his workout routine in the time leading up to the draft.

Fast forward to the day of the draft, Tebow was drafted in the first round by the Denver Broncos — proving Kiper, Jr. and many others wrong. In his 2010 rookie campaign in Denver, he contributed in any way he was asked and saw some action at random times, similar to how he was used his freshman year in college when Florida State won it all. He made three starts last season and even had a big game against a divisional opponent, quietly making his case to be considered as a potentially decent NFL quarterback someday.

In 2011, Tebow was behind starting quarterback Kyle Orton at the beginning of the season, and he also had to compete with Brady Quinn for the backup spot. By week 5, Orton had been struggling and new coach John Fox decided it was time to make a change. Fox made the bold decision to bench Orton late in the game in favor of Tebow, who ended up throwing for a touchdown and rushing for another in the 29-21 loss to the San Diego Chargers. Tebow’s performance prompted chants of “Tebow! Tebow! Tebow!” from the Denver fans, even in losing fashion.

A few days later, coach Fox took his support for Tebow one step further by officially naming him the starting quarterback. Without a doubt, it is a shocking turn of events considering Tebow was written off before he even graduated from college.

I find it really surprising to see so many people dismiss Tebow’s abilities. Tom Brady and Kurt Warner are quarterbacks that were totally irrelevant prior to their days in the NFL, and both have Super Bowl MVP trophies. With this in mind, common sense would say that the general public would have high expectations for someone like Tebow, who was obviously much more relevant as he entered the NFL and had a much better resume to show for with his national titles and Heisman Trophy.

With this, let’s look at some of those arguments against Tebow.

1.Greg Doyel at CBS Sports  tried arguing that Tebow was only successful in college because he fit into then-coach Urban Meyer’s offensive system. Nice try. The funny thing is that Tebow has now worked his way up the ranks to becoming a starting quarterback in the NFL, so if Tebow is compatible with another team at a higher level then obviously Doyel was wrong.

2. ESPN NFL analyst Merril Hoge (who predicted that Kellen Clemens was the best quarterback of his draft class and that Percy Harvin would be the biggest draft bust of 2009) has always hated Tebow with a passion. Hoge probably didn’t expect Tebow to be drafted, so when Tebow made a few appearances in the 2010 season, Hoge blew a gasket.

After watching three (yes, only three) of Tebow’s games from last year, Hoge concluded that Tebow’s performances were “embarrassing” and went on to criticize Tebow’s throwing motion.

What is he talking about? If anything, Tebow’s inaccurate throws last year were no different than any other raw rookie quarterback trying to get a feel for the NFL. Let’s not forget that Peyton Manning broke the record for interceptions his rookie year and now he will go down as one of the best quarterbacks ever to play the game.

I find it ridiculous that Hoge or anybody else would bother to criticize Tebow’s throwing motion. I don’t see how an unusual throwing motion could be a bad thing if a quarterback can still get the job done. Many experts thought that Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers’ odd throwing motion would prevent him from succeeding in the NFL. Meanwhile, Rivers has had a solid NFL career with three pro bowl selections and has led his team to several division titles and playoff appearances.

Off the Field

Tim Tebow does not help himself at all with his activity off the field. Tebow’s  strong religious and political views have painted a very controversial picture of him in the minds of sports fans around the country and he runs the risk of damaging his reputation. He should have kept his views to himself in order to avoid negative publicity — but instead he used Super Bowl commercials as a platform to spread his views to millions of viewers around the world. His Super Bowl commercial with homophobic group “Focus on the Family” resulted in Tebow losing endorsement deals.

While I don’t agree with Tebow’s political stances in the slightest, I personally look beyond his off-the-field activity and focus on his performance on the field for the Denver Broncos. And while I am not exactly a fan of Tebow, I think the critics are way in over their head and should realize that Tebow isn’t nearly as bad as they think. I would like to see Tebow succeed just to prove them wrong — notice the title of this piece has me intentionally mentioning that Tebow has become what nobody thought he would be: an NFL quarterback.

Merril Hoge and the rest of his critics will be watching closely next weekend when Tebow’s Broncos take on the Miami Dolphins, and I’m sure they will be hoping for the worst.

I’m hoping for the best.

The Mets, long since eliminated from playoff contention, are embarking on a six-game home stand that will conclude their season full of back-page tabloids regarding the club’s financial hardships, underachieving and overpaid stars, and of course the potential final season of having Jose Reyes.

Reyes has a deep history with the organization, the only team he has been with — dating back to his young days in the Dominican Republic in 1999. Eddy Toledo, a scout for the Mets at the time, pressured the team to sign the 16-year-old Reyes after an impressive tryout. Omar Minaya was the head of International Scouting for the Mets at the time and convinced upper management to take a look at him despite his small frame, and Reyes was offered a $22,000 bonus. The team was so impressed that they had him skip the usual process of sending Dominican players to the Dominican Academy to assimilate them and prepare them for the transition to American culture. The team just sent him straight to the minor leagues.

Reyes made an immediate impact though, blowing through Rookie League ball, Single-A, and Double-A, leading the minors in several categories. In Reyes’ first game in Double-A, he had five hits and four RBI. Reyes ended up winning Double-A All-Star honors and was named the Most Valuable Player of the MLB Futures Game in 2002.

The Mets were preparing for Reyes to be their future shortstop, and signed veteran Rey Ordonez to a one-year contract in 2002 to pace Reyes and give him some time to prepare. Reyes was called up a day before his 20th birthday and impressed everyone from the beginning. He had a multi-hit game in his debut and hit a grand slam later that week.

It wasn’t too long after that Reyes became the every day starter for the Mets, becoming a key part of their lineup and infield for years to come. He led the Majors in triples three out of four seasons, and led the National League in stolen bases three years in a row. A four-time NL All-Star, it is not surprising that Reyes also holds the Mets record for runs scored, stolen bases, and triples.

Reyes became a fan-favorite in a hurry. Reyes would be caught on camera with a huge smile on his face and an energetic attitude, regardless of how poorly the team was playing. Reyes became known for taking time out of his pre-game stretching to sign autographs for fans and he earned the respect of the fans early on. He entertained the Shea (and now CitiField) faithful with his Professor Reyes Spanish Academy series on the JumboTron during games, as he would teach fans a new Spanish Word and react to how well they could or couldn’t say the word. He proved to be an essential piece of the organization, from being a fan favorite to his performance on the field.

As it comes full circle, the free-agent-to-be Reyes is still at the top of his game at the age of 28, despite a history of injuries. Whether he leaves or not, he will go down as one of the best players to ever put on a Mets uniform. After having an exceptional season at the plate, Reyes is currently tied with Braun for the National League batting title with a .329 average with just two series remaining in the 2011 season. Braun’s Milwaukee Brewers, who have already wrapped up the NL Central Division Title, are concluding their season with a home stand against the Marlins and Pirates.

Reyes and the Mets hope to end their season on a high note as the star shortstop fights for his first batting title. At least for the CitiField faithful, there is something to cheer about — they just hope it won’t be the last time they cheer for Jose in a Mets uniform.

But is this really all that bad? The Eagles are being hyped up with Miami Heat-esque expectations after acquiring Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and Nnamdi Asomugha, among others. I didn’t realize the Eagles’ really needed these guys until the other day when I played with them in Madden and got torched defensively. Seriously though, coming off a division title last season the expectations should be high for the Eagles.

The Giants, on the other hand, are coming off a decent 10-6 season, narrowly missing the playoffs. While their division rival has bought everyone on the free-agent market, the Giants haven’t made many moves to improve. While the New York media are quick to point out what the Giants haven’t done, I think its important to realize what kind of organization the Giants are. General manager Jerry Reese isn’t known for his big-name free agent acquisitions. Besides Antrel Rolle, Reese hasn’t exactly made a splash in free-agency and he is rather known for his ability to build a team from the roots via the NFL draft. In his first season as GM for Big Blue in 2007, every single player he drafted played in the postseason for the Giants and many of them played an important role in the improbable 17-14 victory in the Super Bowl that handed the New England Patriots their first loss of the season.

Reese has dug deep to create the necessary depth on his team to prepare for players that decide to leave via free agency. When Tiki Barber retired, Reese drafted Ahmad Bradshaw and the Bradshaw-Jacobs tandem wore down defenses just like Barber and Ron Dayne’s “thunder and lightning” combination did in the 2000 Super Bowl run. Reese also turned heads when he drafted Kevin Boss, who would eventually replace Jeremy Shockey at tight end when most people doubted that Shockey could be replaced anytime soon.

At this point, Giants fans should be trusting Reese’s ability to fill holes when they least expect it. Time after time, Reese has proved to fans that older, expensive players can be replaced by younger and cheaper talent. This system’s success has been reflected in the team’s record. After all, the Giants haven’t had a losing season since 2004.