You want to turn Dave Gettleman into a piñata? Fine. Get in line.
He will forever be remembered as the Giants general manager whotraded away the franchise’s most talented wide receiver ever for peanuts just a few months after giving him a massive contract extension. Odell Beckham Jr. is now a Cleveland Brown, which means -- hey, give the guy credit for something -- Gettleman finally found a way to match this “generational talent” with a rising young quarterback.
No, it wasn’t Sam Darnold, the passer that the Giants could have picked No. 2 overall in the NFL Draft last spring if this team had a smart plan for rebuilding. Beckham will be catching bombs from Baker Mayfield in Cleveland for the prime of his career, and what, exactly, did the Giants get in return?
They got the No. 17 overall pick in the first round, a solid but unspectacular safety in Jabrill Peppers and the last pick in the third round next spring. Once upon a time, Giants fans flooded the phone lines at WFAN convinced that Beckham would bring in a franchise-chasing haul with multiple first-round picks, and maybe then, Giants fans could have felt could about this transaction.
But this?
Forget stealing a top-five pick. Gettleman couldn’t even get the Browns to give up their best third-round pick. This is an absolute disgraceful fleecing, one made even more glaring when you consider that the Giants will have to eat $16 million in cap space this season from the contract that Gettleman gave Beckham just this summer. You know, back when the Giants were still a win-now team.
Remember: Gettleman is the one who tried to convince this fan base that the Giants could make one more Super Bowl run withquarterback Eli Manning. He is the one who stormed into East Rutherford and started handing out fat contracts to supplement a roster that was begging for a complete tear down.
Now, this team will spend $23 million on a 38-year-old starting quarterback next season with what is mostly an XFL-quality roster. Now, this team is waving goodbye to home-grown stars like Beckham and safety Landon Collins while getting little in return. Maybe that will produce the 2-14 season necessary to get the No. 1 pick in the quarterback-heavy 2020 draft.
But if you can see a coherent plan through the blizzard of contradictory moves, well, congratulations. You are qualified to own an NFL team!
That’s the biggest takeaway from this entire mess with Beckham. The buck doesn’t stop at Gettleman. This goes above his pay grade. This is on co-owner John Mara, once on the short list of the best owners in the NFL who has allowed his team to become a league-wide embarrassment.
That was the word Mara used multiple times, on Dec. 4, 2017, when he announced that he was firing general manager Jerry Reese and head coach Ben McAdoo as the Giants imploded during their worst season in years. He was making an almost unprecedented leadership change before the end of the season because, he said, he had seen enough.
“We know how frustrated our fans are," Mara said that day. "They expect more from us and we expect more from ourselves. Our focus now is on developing and improving our football team so that our fans can enjoy the winning team they expect and deserve.”
After Giants trade Odell Beckham, Eli Manning’s days should be numbered | Will he get cut before Monday? Decide he’s seen enough?
Will the New York Giants send 38-year-old Eli Manning out the door with Landon Collins, Olivier Vernon and Odell Beckham?
To think: The Giants are a bigger joke now than they are then. They have less hope for a quick recovery now than they did then. They are still married to a fading quarterback, still living the lie that Manning will rekindle some of his Super Bowl MVP magic, only now they’re doing it without the complementary star that could support him.
Other than running back Saquon Barkley, how many of the current Giants are keepers? How many players on this roster would you pay to see next season? How many do you think will still be around when this team finally digs itself out the hole Gettleman is digging and competes again?
Five? Six? You’re being generous. Beckham, for his well-chronicled warts, was one of the few reasons to go watch this team, and now he’ll bring his 390 career receptions, 44 touchdowns and 14-yard-per-catch average to a young Cleveland team with a bright future.
Gettleman kept on insisting that he would never “give up on talent," but not he’s got a Giants team bereft. Beckham’s on-field brilliance always out weighed his distractions, and to think this franchise is better off without him is to ignore a mountain of evidence about the direction the NFL is headed.
“We obviously want him to be a Giant for a long time," Mara said in late July, barely seven months before he approved the trade to ship him to Cleveland.
The Giants are already playing for the first pick in the 2020 draft just a few months after their GM promised he didn’t have the patience to rebuild. Once, they were the model in the NFL, a perennial contender with four Lombardi Trophies to show for their patient approach.
Now, they are a rudderless franchise, and the man that should be held most accountable is not the one who traded his franchise’s best wide receiver ever on Tuesday night.
Some day, Dave Gettleman likely will pay for that mistake with his job. But what are the consequences for the guy who tossed him the keys to his franchise?
What about John Mara?
Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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