An interesting perspective of the Giants and Jets philosophy and how it impacts draft prospects

from
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/walkthrough/2012/walkthrough-jets-giants-axis

05 Apr 2012

Walkthrough: The Jets-Giants Axis by Mike Tanier

Where does your team lie along the Jets-Giants Axis?

On the left are the Jets: bold, daring, reckless, brilliantly disorganized, arrogant, sloppy by design. Any team that thumbs its nose at convention more than the Jets -– the Buddy Ryan Eagles, perhaps, or the Jerry Glanville Falcons -– lies off the current spectrum of visible football. They are infrajets.

On the right are the Giants: buttoned down, conservative, implacable, disciplined, infuriatingly slow-and-steady. To the right of the Giants, in the ultraviolet range, are the Vince Lombardi Packers and some Jesuit prep academies.

You can line the other 30 NFL teams up at various points on the Jets-Giants axis. The Lions lie somewhere on the Jets side. The Steelers stand right next to the Giants, just a hair to the left. Some teams are hard to place right now, because of major coaching and personnel changes. Who knows where the Buccaneers now rank? There is probably a team smack dab in the origin, one that has created a precise blend of low- and high-risk personnel strategies, on-field tactics, and media relations policies. That team is also probably boring, like an over-blended mass market whiskey. It’s probably the Cardinals or somebody.

When evaluating prospects for the draft, it’s important to keep the Jets-Giants Axis in mind. I did so in an Alshon Jeffery scouting report for Yahoo!'s Shutdown Corner. Jeffery is a very talented receiver with great pure catching skills, but he gained weight and lost focus last year when South Carolina grew tired of giving their quarterback a breathalyzer before taking the field and switched to a power running offense. Jeffery pulled it together just enough to make a handful of big catches in the Capital One Bowl, then got into a donnybrook with Alfonzo Dennard and was ejected in the third quarter. He has since lost anywhere from 20 to 40 pounds, gotten his 40-time up, and looks like a great prospect as a possession receiver.

Take that resume and project it onto the Jets. Pass the lasagna, Alshon! Can you see a kid like Jeffery losing focus while blocking for Wildcat plays, learning bad habits from the in-house malcontents, and generally not developing while Rex Ryan does stand-up routines and Tony Sparano tinkers with unbalanced lines?

Now, put him on the Giants. One pound overweight is a fine. Two pounds is a severe talking-to. Three, and Ramses Barden is running your routes, no matter where you were drafted. Also, your role in the offense is well-defined, your expectations explicitly stated. Headcase receivers are tolerated to a degree, as Plaxico Burress can attest, but there are limits and parameters, and Plax had some pretty darn good years with the Giants.

The basic theory at work is that prospects who need more direction and discipline need to play for teams closer to the Giants side of the axis. Who would fare better on the Jets side? Disciplined players who could use some tie-loosening, or super-talented types who bristle and atrophy inside the box. The kinds of kids who thrive in Montessori schools, or young men who would perform great feats at Internet startups with pool tables in the middle of the production floor. Dont’a Hightower is going to be a fine linebacker anywhere, and with a Giants-type team he would play within the system and aid the cause. For a Jets team, he could become a holy terror. Chris Rainey would drive Tom Coughlin completely insane with his laid-back smart-aleckiness, and he wouldn’t be a great fit in a conservative offense. Put him in a sandbox environment, and he could gain 1,400 yards from scrimmage. He could also implode, or get forgotten as everyone lurches to the next paradigm, but that’s the nature of the Jets axis.

This is all an oversimplification, of course, but it is still useful for discussion purposes. The fact that the two endpoints of the axis share a stadium and a region adds a touch of irony. The Jets and Giants remind us that football teams can be as different from one another as any other pair of corporate entities, and just as Fortune 500 companies must attract employees who match their corporate culture, teams must be realistic about which players fit their system, not just strategically but as people.

Traditionalists will point out that the Giants have won two Super Bowls by adhering to their side of the axis. Further, football is such a team sport, and the salary cap such a harsh mistress, that teams are always wise to take the conservative path. I said something similar in Walkthrough a few weeks ago. On the other hand, the Jets have had some deep playoff runs doing things their way, the conservative approach has led a lot of teams into a .500 vanilla mush, and the Eli Manning trade was the kind of daring move that can make investors a little nervous. More importantly, those of us who advocate a slow-and-steady approach are often iconoclasts and risk-takers in our own lives. I would last three days working for Tom Coughlin. Trust me. I went to Catholic school. You probably excel in an unstructured environment, though some of your co-workers may not.

But then, what’s good for me or you might not be good for Alshon Jeffery.

So where does your team rank on the Jets-Giants Axis? And more importantly, where do you rank?

I found this interesting.

Naturally it doesn't mean the Giants won't look at players with "issues" as can be attested with guys like Shockey, Burress, Bradshaw, Manningham, Austin etc.

But we do have a certain culture and have definate expectations.

Big_Pete wrote:I found this interesting.

Naturally it doesn't mean the Giants won't look at players with "issues" as can be attested with guys like Shockey, Burress, Bradshaw, Manningham, Austin etc.

But we do have a certain culture and have definate expectations.

The giants are FAR more careful with college players with "baggage." even the players with baggage that they took, they spent a lot of time talking to those players and worked with them after drafting them. But for every Bradshaw and Manningham where its worked out, there are Shockeys and Burress' where the feared result became the actual result. Shockey became such a nightmare int eh huddle that he slowed Eli's growth into the great QB that he is today. Burress, well we know what happend to him. So I think the Giants' approach is reasonable, but not mistake proof. But I like the results of 2 SBs in the last 5 years.