Mike Lombardi on when your team is bad

[LennG]

PLEASE stop blaming the owner because we suck on the field. Mara may have his faults but on game day, we go out and embarrass ourselves every week in and out. Matra can't throw the ball more than 5 yards, Mara can't block the defenders, Mara can't keep teams from scoring at will.
While I also am not a fan of his meddling, he sure is the least of our deficiencies.

[MightyGiants]

I dont know that Mike Brown is considered the worst owner notwithstanding his cheapness. Up until pretty recently, there was this guy in Washington who was pretty bad.  The Bengals have drafted well lately which would suggest somebody knows what they're doing.  You can look around the league and find teams that clearly dont know what they're doing witj owners content to cash their checks.  Not sure where Mara fits in given his propensity to spend but where has that gotten us.  I just might prefer Mike Brown to John Mara, not saying much

The Bengals have been a pretty good team in terms of drafting despite spending the least (by a significant margin) on scouting.   This used to puzzle me, but then I learned the Bengals supplement their scouting with their coaching staff.   I figure that's how the team does well despite fewer scouting resources.  It's a good thing to get the coaches involved in player acquisition.

[DaveBrown74]

There are multiple problems with the Giants that have contributed to us being this bad for this long, but the number one reason, by far, is the talent we're putting on the field. It all goes back to that. I think we have done a woefully poor job drafting and developing young players, and it has gone on for a while.

Yes, there are other things. For sure. We're dreadful at keeping our players healthy, and we absolutely have made a number of highly questionable coaching/coordinator hires. But ultimately I think we had way too many years of having terrible scouts and front office people, and that has resulted in us having among the worst rosters in the league year-in/year-out.

[nb587]

PLEASE stop blaming the owner because we suck on the field. Mara may have his faults but on game day, we go out and embarrass ourselves every week in and out. Matra can't throw the ball more than 5 yards, Mara can't block the defenders, Mara can't keep teams from scoring at will.
While I also am not a fan of his meddling, he sure is the least of our deficiencies.

The one constant on the Giants in Mara going back years.  But, stating the obvious, somebody hired Gettleman and Judge and others who selected or coached the players we all are complaining about.  I'm reasonably happy with Schoen & Daboll )  and am hoping that Mara has learned to stay away from football decisions. There are many on this board who believe he is still too involved in personnel decisions.  I'm not in that camp but it's mostly hoping.  If Mara is dictating decisions like the Jones contract, it's hopeless

[AZGiantFan]

The one constant on the Giants in Mara going back years.  But, stating the obvious, somebody hired Gettleman and Judge and others who selected or coached the players we all are complaining about.  I'm reasonably happy with Schoen & Daboll )  and am hoping that Mara has learned to stay away from football decisions. There are many on this board who believe he is still too involved in personnel decisions.  I'm not in that camp but it's mostly hoping.  If Mara is dictating decisions like the Jones contract, it's hopeless

No, those things just spontaneously happened.  Mara is the founder of the feast and the feast tastes lousy. 

[sooners56]

Atrocious drafting is the number 1 reason the Giants are bad and have been bad for years. Scouting department/GM and/or whomever makes the personnel decisions is the reason, imo.  Just look at the recent drafts.

[Dgoodmantrublu]

The current scouting department has had one draft. Everyone was turned over before last draft.

[kartanoman]

But that is searching for the effect while ignoring the cause.  Another possibility, is it a ten or more year history of disproportionate injuries?  I also think it is a little self-serving, even passive aggressive for Lombardi to limit the scrutiny to things that he, as an executive, wasn't included.  Those players didn't just materialize, someone picked them.  Same for the coaches.  And really, scheme is just a corolary to coaching.

<B>It's like asking, why is a widget company having problems, is it the employees, is it the assembly line, is it the employee benefits package.</B>

If the individual asking the question is a performance consultant, the last thing they'll assist whether this or that is the root cause. The first thing they will do is ask questions in order to define and describe the problem.

Next, they will attempt to find the root cause through exploration of the problem statement through a series of factors or attributes related to the problem.

I've discussed using an Ishikawa, or Fishbone Diagram, to depict this causal relationship.

The Giants have multiple direct causes contributing to their lack of success this season. Many have been identified here already. Analysis on some of these causes might yield long-term trends which may support the case for being the root cause.

This is where Schoen and Daboll's analytics team can add value to the Giants' organization and define Key Performance Parameters (KPP) which tie in measures requiring performance improvement plans. But the key is ensuring you have corre tly identified the root cause of your performance inhibitors.

Peace!

[londonblue]

Football is a complementary game between O, D and ST. If any one of these is weak it diminishes the others. This year we have both a terrible O (driven by a historically bad OL and QB poor play & injuries) and a below par ST unit (injuries, roster gaps, coaching). Our D is adequate (flaws and strengths) but gets exposed at times by bad field position and too much time out there.

ST should be a relatively simple fix through ugh coaching and targeted FA additions. The OL is proving more problematic as a mix of injuries, wasted draft picks (Neal, Ezeudu) and coaching are all issues. Finding a QB is a dice-throw in the draft. We cannot go into next year with the at best inconsistent and injury prone Jones as the #1 QB and we cannot have Taylor as QB2. De Vito? Let us see if he can earn a 'solid back-up' tag down the stretch.

It feels like a minimum two year fix but both last year and this year have been surprising in markedly different ways so perhaps next year will surprise me as well.