New York Giants Centennial Season: Is Under 6 Wins a Safe Bet?

New York Giants Centennial Season

This year, the Giants celebrate their hundredth year.
And if my numbers are correct, that’s about all they’re going to be celebrating

I bought the New York Giants Regular Season Wins Total under 6′.

In my July 24th article, I suggested a few ways to help you decide on a team to play Over or Under for their Regular Season Wins.
One of those ways was getting an inside look at a team by watching HBO’s Hard Knocks.

The team they’re highlighting this year is the New York Giants. In the first episode, Giant’s GM Joe Schoen told me all I needed to know about a Regular Season Wins bet when he said this about quarterback Daniel Jones:

“This is the year for Daniel.” The plan all along was to give him a couple of years. Is this going to be our guy for the next ten years, or are we going to have to pivot and find somebody else?”

I have your answer, Joe.
He wasn’t your guy the year you drafted him.
He wasn’t your guy in his rookie year.
He wasn’t your guy last year.
He’s not your guy this year.

But I’m glad to hear you’re giving him the starting job anyway because it tells me I have a good chance of making money betting on your team to stay Under 6′ wins.

Despite his quote, “This is the year for Daniel,” episode number four of Hard Knocks was all about drafting a QB. It showed the New York coaches and owners in discussions about using their pick, the 6th in the draft, to get a new quarterback. Knowing USC’s Caleb Williams was going to be taken by the Chicago Bears with their number one pick, the Giants brought the next two top QBs into their offices for interviews, LSU’s Jayden Daniels and North Carolina’s Drake Maye.

If they’re willing to use their number one pick on a quarterback, it tells me that Schoen and the Giants have about as much faith in Daniel Jones as I do.

The Giants had the sixth pick, pretty high, but not high enough considering that Philadelphia and New England are picking ahead of them and both are going to take quarterbacks.

This means the top three quarterbacks would be gone unless the Giants moved up.
They didn’t.

The top three picks of the 2024 draft were all QB’s, Williams, Daniels, and Maye. That left three top prospects still on the board when the Giants were up: Michael Pennix from Washington, JJ McCarthy from Michigan, and Bo Nix from Washington.
Any of the three would be an improvement over what they have now.
And with the sixth pick of the 2024 draft, the Giants selected . . . a wide receiver.

I’ve never seen a drafted player look less excited than Malik Nabors when he got the phone call from Schoen. In later scenes he put on a happy face, but what else was he going to do? The moment he got the call from Schoen and realized he was going to the Giants, he dropped his head and covered his eyes. When he looked up again, it looked like he wanted to cry.

Yes, Nabers has a good chance to become one of the elite receivers in the league, but the problem for the Giants is this – who’s going to throw it to him?
They decided to roll the dice and stick with Daniel Jones.
And they’re going to crap out.

Jones has had three serious injuries in the past two years. He’s recuperating from a torn ACL, and there’s no telling how he’ll perform even IF he’s fully recovered.
And even if he does recover he’s still going to be Daniel Jones, he’s still going to be mediocre at best. And mediocre doesn’t cut it when you’re supposed to be one of the 32 best quarterbacks in the country.

The G-Men lost five of their first six games last year, and Jones was at the helm for the first five. His only win came against bottom-dweller Arizona, who finished the season 4-13.

Of their six wins on the season, Daniel Jones only played in one of them.

Looking at their division, Dallas swept them last year 40-0, 49 -17.

They split with Philly but the win came on the last game of the season when Philly was in full free fall, losing five of their last six.

They swept Washington but good luck trying to repeat that this year with Jones at QB. He had nothing to do with either win last year. One had Tyrod Taylor under center and the other had DeVito (Tommy not Danny.)

For out of conference opponents the Giants have to face the AFC North, arguably the league’s toughest division, the only one in the NFL where every team had a winning record. They play at Cleveland and Pittsburgh, and get the Bangles and Ravens at home. (I don’t type my articles; I speak them into the microphone on my computer. It printed Bangles instead of Bengals. Too bad the Giants aren’t playing Susanna Hoffs and the Bangles; at least they’d have a chance to win that one.)
The AFC North games look like 1-3 at best to me – they might beat Pittsburgh.

Also not helping – New York enters the season with eleven new coaches on their staff. That many new coaches will undoubtedly cause a disruption/delay in the learning curve. Replacing eleven coaches is the act of a desperate head coach. Brian Daboll is in his third year. After going 9-7 in 2022, the Giants dropped to an unacceptable 6-11 last season. One of the other tips I gave in my article with suggestions on how to choose a team for a Regular Season Wins Total was look for a coach on the hot seat and play their team Under due to the extra pressure they’ll face. No market brings more pressure than the New York market, and Daboll’s seat is hotter than Beelzebubs.

Then there’s SOS (Strength Of Schedule) to consider – the Giants have the six toughest schedule in the league based on the 2023 winning percentage of their opponents.

Twelve of their seventeen games are against opponents who had a winning record last year.

The three easiest teams on their schedule, are Seattle, Pittsburgh, and Carolina, but two of the three are on the road, the only one they get at home is the Panthers.

With the exception of Nabors, all of New York’s best signings are on defense, but their problems are on offense. And with an ineffective offense unable to move the ball and control the clock, the defense is going to see a lot of playing time and be tired by the 4th quarter. There’s no question the Giants have improved the defense on the front line, but they lost safety Xavier McKinney, and cornerback Adoree Jackson remains unsigned and will likely play elsewhere.

One of the reasons I prefer looking at Unders for season win bets is because injuries are inevitable. If you lose a starter at a key position like QB, RB, or WR, or a top offensive lineman, and you took the Over, your bet is in jeopardy (which by the way, stinks since Alex Trebek left us. Amy Farrah Fowler is okay but Jennings is a pompous D-bag and unwatchable.)

Except in the rarest of circumstances, where a backup steps in does a better job, (Lou Gehrig/Wally Pip) an injury at a key position can only hurt the Over. Normally, when you take an Under, you think that an injury to a QB is a good thing for your bet.
The Giants Under doesn’t fit that usual scenario. I want my quarterback to stay healthy all season long. As long as my quarterback’s name is Daniel Jones.

NYG Un 6′, -145