Most teams, regardless of the sport, have a strong reaction to embarrassing themselves over and over again during the final 11 weeks of a season. They fire coaches, trade players and do everything they can to shake off the stench that accompanies such dreadful performances. The New York Giants aren't most teams.
They didn't do anything too radical. They made an obvious change at defensive coordinator, replacing Bill Sheridan with Perry Fewell, and signed a couple of safeties, but the rest of the team looks exactly the same as the one that soiled itself with regularity last season.
Offensively they have the same personnel that couldn't generate even an average running game at any point during the season. You can blame Brandon Jacobs for that or you can blame an aging offensive line that didn't open enough holes for that, but both pieces are still in place with little superficial reason to believe there's going to be a marked change.
On the other side of the ball, the Giants did a good job of addressing their need at safety but continued to ignore the lack of talent at linebacker as if they still had L.T. and Carl Banks on the roster in their prime. Keith Bulluck, a 33-year-old career outside linebacker coming off a serious knee injury, isn't the solution at middle linebacker, although he might actually upgrade them on the outside if the Giants choose to go that way. That says more about Michael Boley and Clint Sintim than Bulluck, however.
Up front, the Giants still reliant on the dismal attitude and declining play of Osi Umenyiora to get their defensive line back on track. The news that Umenyiora's hip needs surgery doesn't do much to create confidence that there's a turnaround coming from him, although it does set up him up well with an excuse for playing poorly again this season.
Ultimately, the Giants decided to write off 11 weeks of football on a few injuries and chose to assume that everything is going to be fine now that everyone has had a few months to heal up. It would be easy to criticize that direction as delusional but it's actually brave in this day and age to see a team pass on the quick fix in favor of a consistent approach.
Brave's good but winning is better. We'll start finding out how well that choice worked out for the Giants this Sunday.
Sports
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City and is a contributor to FanHouse.com and ProFootballTalk.com in addition to his duties for NBCNewYork.com. You can follow him on Twitter.
