Day: April 25, 2025

I shouldn’t spend 30 straight minutes worth of blog posts talking about the Giants, but here we are. The truth is that this team means so much to me. Among my earliest and happiest memories are sitting in front of my gammy’s big old TV watching Lawrence Taylor wreck games. I wanted to play football because of the Giants. That desire shaped my childhood and my choices heading into college. The only reason I went to Iowa State was because of that letter from coach that said come play some football. Coach Walden gave me the chance that nobody else did. Yes, I screwed it up, but it still cemented my life path. The Giants are cementing their next decade right now.

This is not a situation where they can tank for a Manning in two years. Having traded back into the first round to grab the kid from Old Miss — another USC -style QB, which is clearly not the way to go overall– They are saying “We are giving this kid time to show he’s the one.” I don’t think he is, personally, but I’m the armchair guy–the basement Troll who hasn’t studied the film enough. My opinion is actual dirt compared to the people who will be coaching him. So… let’s think about those people and what they are thinking:

Dart is a quick release QB designed for systems that stress short to intermediate passing and RPO and Play-Action schemes. This is exactly the stuff that Daboll likes to run. So, he’s making a choice to bring in a system specific guy for his specific kind of system. That means he is sticking to what he does. That formula is safe for him, but it also argues that he is intending to stay and stay in control of the offense. This is fine if those two things align. The only other way this works effectively (and it could) is if they move to a Miami-style system and maintain a core of athletes who can pull this off.

Two problems:

1. The presumed starter cannot pull this off. Winston can. He’s built for it, though he prefers to look for the deep ball. Wilson less so.
2. The line is definitely NOT built for this. They need to invest in quicker linemen and more RBs. We’ll see how that situation shakes out over rounds 3-7… because they shed the round two pick and a 3 over this Dart situation.

Some Thoughts:

1. The memory holes are getting bad. I could not remember Russel Wilson a minute ago…

The Giants are cooked.
They haven’t really locked down anything of value. They didn’t quite blow the draft — they scored a speedy rusher who may end up being good. They did not get a game changing pick and may be defaulting to a strategy of build over the next few years. Hopefully the D is better than it has been and has the right pieces to hold them in games while the offense figures itself out.

Some thoughts:

1. I’m watching the end of the city track meet. The boy didn’t do as good as he wanted but he won some and medaled in others. It’s a growth moment—you cannot just show up and be the guy. Gotta work for it.
   
2. I’m working for a chance to become that novelist I want to be. The story is beginning to take to the reshaping and the chapters are starting to come out faster. This has to go better than last time. This cannot be a miss on my part.
   
3. Part of the struggle is my having so much other stuff on my plate. I need to drop the number of things I am doing. Do less and focus more on what I am doing.
   
4. Helps that the semester is winding down. It means having less to do and more time to focus on the big things.