There are many local and national so-called journalists that spew out fluff pieces on the teams they get access to. Most of the articles and reports we read are just, in essence, team marketing feeds. Go to any coach press conference, GM press conference and the majority of all player interviews, and they are 99% of the time filled with clichés and meaningless information. Sometimes, you feel for these beat reporters as they never get a meaningful answer to their questions and even if they ask a meaningful question, it never will be answered in an honest way. Answers are always shaped with clichés, which means the organization controls the information and media content.
Then there are very lazy reporters who continually spew out unimaginative, super-fluff positive spin on the team or player and never look deeper than the now. Steve Serby is the poster boy of this category of reporters. His latest piece on Eli Apple is emblematic of his lazy and unimaginative reporting. Yes, we have all read the multiple reports, interviews, benching, fines and his most recent suspension. Of course, he is an extremely immature young player that likely has more problems than we know of. The compounding of events with Apple has finally come to a head with the likely outcome being his exit from the team for good.
The key aspect Serby glaringly failed to address is the organizational dysfunction of the Giants as a whole. It is easy to pin the issues on the player, but it is quite evident that the leadership, or lack thereof, failed to address their immature young player as far back as last season. The biggest sign of the lack of leadership within the organization is letting the Collins – Apple feud spiral out of control. How is it possible that their spat was not addressed behind closed doors last week before Collins recently called him a cancer? We doubt that they sat him down after his first locker room episode when he almost left the facility and laid out the implications of the revoking of his contract. All rookie contracts have a clause that states the team’s right to revoke the contract if a player has incidents that are detrimental to the team. Clearly, this is not only on the player.
We have discussed here on NYGunderground the lack of leadership in addressing the transgressions of OBJ. The organization failed to address his behavior as far back as the TC reign. He was was enabled to the point where he became a distraction.
When in Giants history have you seen multiple players suspended for conduct with coaches in one season? The suspensions of DRC, Jenkins and Apple point to a bigger cultural problem within the organization. Again, the failure of leadership.
Recently, you have players like JPP calling out fans. He expects the “real” fans to show up this Sunday. A player that calls out the fans never wins. You always lose when calling out fans, period.
Overall, we are witnessing a major decay of a franchise that is rudderless. It is not just this season but has been in the making as far back as TC. The biggest issue the new GM MUST address immediately is the culture of the organization. The absence of accountability and leadership has led to the Apples of the team and they will never attain success if it isn’t changed. This is yet another example of why we believe ownership must look outside of its immediate bubble.
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