Last night's game against the Cardinals left me quite upset. Prior to the past two years the Giants were one of the most frustrating teams to root for. They would start off well, then collapse, they'd talk trash and not back it up, they had a head coach that was a stickler for details, yet they seemed to be one of the most penalized, undisciplined teams, and alot of their players seemed unhappy and unlikeable. During the 2007 season, things seemed to change, but what caused that change exactly?
Most people could safely assume that the loss of Steve Spagnuolo would hurt the Giants defense, but I'm wondering if it may run deeper than that. In regards to Bill Sheridan, I don't think that he's a bad coordinator but he seems to be someone that is only as good as his personnel, and I know it's early but you can already tell that he's vastly inferior to Spagnuolo. Spags always seemed to maximize the production of whoever he had out there; Despite the Giants pass rush tailing off at the end of last season, in the final 5 games it was obvious that the Giants OFFENSE did not play up to the level of their banged up defense in any of those games. I would actually like to tally up the number of three and outs that the offense had in those final 5 games. Consistent three and outs by an offense are demoralizing for any defense. Last nights game was the first time this year in which the defense outperformed the offense, which is also a big cause for concern.
Lastly, regarding Spags being a better coach than Sheridan (maybe not head coach... could he get fired and come back?), his biggest advantage over Bill I think was his relationship with his players. I remember Tuck talking about how worried he was when Spagnuolo flirted with the Redskins job, and how Spags fired up attitude made it easy for players to wake up at 7 am for practice and get excited about football. Meanwhile Sheridan seems like a MUCH colder, more boring personality (which must be brutal when your head coach is Tom Coughlin). Having fun playing for Spags helped balance out the serious, Psycho-Discipline Coughlin requires. This season is starting to frighteningly resemble the pre-Spags, pre-superbowl, mistake-prone, tiki-led, fragile-psyche Giants that we hoped were a thing of the past.
