Giants fans can't wait for next season, but it's a different story for current players
Atlanta Falcons cornerback Mike Hughes breaks up a pass intended for Giants wide receiver Malik Nabers in the second half of an NFL game in Atlanta on Sunday. Credit: AP/John Bazemore
From an outside perspective, this Giants season can’t end quickly enough.
The top of any Giants fan’s football wish list this holiday week probably is to just get on with it already. Fast-forward to the end of the regular season and start the inevitable rebuilding in whatever shape or form it takes. Decide on the fate of the coach and general manager. Find the new quarterbacks in free agency or the draft. Trim the decaying branches on the roster and add new blood.
At this point, the only thing the Giants really offer is a look ahead. Very far ahead. It’s why the biggest news to come out of Sunday’s 34-7 loss in Atlanta had nothing to do with the actual game or how they played but the way it related to the team’s draft position.
With the Giants owning a 10-game losing streak and a 2-13 record, we’ve been stuck in this limbo of meaninglessness for more than a month now. And still there are two more weeks of regular-season action.
As offensive tackle Evan Neal said of the remaining schedule: “It’s tough to have a losing season like this, but you still have to go out and play. That’s inevitable.”
Sigh.
If it were possible to go to sleep tonight and wake up for Day 1 of the draft in April or the start of training camp in July 2025, the dawns of the sure-to-be-new-look Giants, who wouldn’t want that?
Well, the Giants don’t. At least the ones who are part of the process. It’s because football people don’t think like civilians.
For them, their timelines and rhythms are broken into segments that move from phase to phase at predetermined points, not when they would like them to. So they don’t rush their offseason training to get to training camp, they don’t skip ahead to the end of camp and roster cutdowns, they don’t peek down the calendar to see what opponents are coming their way and they don’t go into offseason mode before the regular season (or, for the lucky few, the playoff run) is over.
Each part of it is a precious necessity to be focused on and built upon, and the regular-season contests are the most prized parts of that undertaking.
“The offseason is so long, training is rough, it’s hot in the summer, so that’s where I take my mind,” wide receiver Darius Slayton said of not wanting to blow past these last two games. “You fight your [butt] off for 17 opportunities. I never try to look forward to the end of it because I won’t be able to play football at some point . . . Regardless of your predicament, we have two more opportunities to go out here and play the game we love. You gotta take advantage of them.”
Added rookie receiver Malik Nabers: “I look forward to playing every game.”
This coming Sunday might be Slayton’s final home game as a Giant — he will be a free agent in the offseason — but barring some awful misfortune, he will be in the NFL again next season. And Nabers is one of the few Giants who figure to have a prominent role in whatever path the Giants take these next few years.
There are plenty of players on the team now, though, who can’t say any of that with a degree of certainty. For that bunch, these coming two weeks could be the last they spend playing organized football. They grew up dreaming of playing in the NFL, and regardless of how they arrived with the Giants, they get a chance to live that aspiration for just a few more days, a few more plays, before the door potentially closes on them for good.
“At this point in the year, where you’re at, you’re obviously not going to the playoffs, but all of us have pride in here,” quarterback Drew Lock said. “All of us have a job to do. This is our job. You know, it doesn’t matter what the record is. Gotta come in and work, try to keep getting better and come out here and perform. It’s our job. Keep doing it no matter what.”
That goes for the coaches, too.
“You focus on the next game,” Brian Daboll said. “You put everything you got into it, just like you do each and every week, and you focus on the task at hand.”
Change is always occurring in the NFL, never more than when seasons end, and especially when seasons end in utter disappointment like this one. This roster doesn’t need tweaking and minor adjustments, it probably needs dynamite for a thorough enough job of making room for the attempts at improvement that are about to come.
Soon enough, then, the players and coaches who have been together in some cases for years, in some cases for months, and in many cases since the spring when the offseason program first got rolling, will say goodbye for good.
This 100th version of a Giants team will have completed its journey from start to merciful finish.
So for another 14 or so days, we’ll allow the Giants to tend to the finality of their 2024 season . . . even while the rest of us already are hip-deep in thinking about 2025 and beyond.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
