So, the lords of football released the 2019 NFL schedule, and the Giants should be kneeling at their largesse.
If you remove the Cowboys and Eagles - whom the Giants have to play every year, anyway - there's only one team to truly fear on their 16-game slate. Granted, it's the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots, but if you take a wide lens to their list of foes, the Giants got a pillow-soft schedule befitting their grotesque record last year. Beyond the Pats and a Week 12 road game against the Bears, the G-Men face a few gridiron patsies on their way back to respectability.
In fact, the Giants play three of the five worst teams from last year, all of whom have a higher draft pick than Big Blue (No. 6) Combined, the three clubs finished 12-36 last season.
In Week 3, Big Blue hits the road to play the Buccaneers, named after a city (Tampa Bay) that doesn't exist, saddled with a QB (Jameis Winston) they don't want, and lacking a new identity. Bruce Arians is more than a capable coach, but he can't turn Tampa Bay around in one year.
In Week 7, they host the Arizona Cardinals, who have the top pick in the NFL Draft. They are so organizationally headless they may give the boot to their first-round QB from 2018 (Josh Rosen) and replace him with a pro baseball player (Kyler Murray) whose leadership skills are being questioned by a few former NFL GMs (such as Charley Casserly and Scot McCloughan).
In Week 10, we stroll down the bowels of MetLife and find Big Blue against Gang Green, which is technically a road game for the Giants, even if we've known for decades that that slice of swamp belongs to the Maras, not the Johnsons.
Thumb through their home schedule, and fans must be frothing (or at least drooling) at the prospect of facing the Bills, Redskins, Vikings, and Cards. After two potentially tough games against the Cowboys and Packers, the Giants face perhaps the worst team in the NFL. In Week 15, they welcome the Miami Dolphins, the Marlins of the NFL, a team with a neophyte at head coach and a career backup as its starting QB. And if you caught the recent pics and quips directed at Ryan Fitzpatrick, you may have noticed he put on a few pounds, his physique more Nutty Professor than Harvard grad. The only magic left in Fitzmagic is at the kids' buffet from all the birthday parties he said he attended (and devoured, evidently).
Their road foes are more formidable, with games against the aforementioned Pats, plus the Lions, Bears, Eagles, and Cowboys. Four out of those five clubs made last year's playoffs. But if you watched the Bears get handled at home by the Eagles in the playoffs, you have to wonder if Mitch Trubisky is the face of the franchise or flavor of the moment.
So. 10 of their 16 opponents were home in January. The aggregate 2018 winning percentage of the teams Big Blue faces in 2019 is .473 - making the Washington Redskins the only club with a softer schedule (.469). In the interest of complete candor, the G-Men are in a logjam with the Pats, Jets, Rams, and Bengals for the second-easiest road to the NFL playoffs (according to the Sporting News).
So, maybe this is some karmic justice for a team fallen on hard times. Maybe the NFL, about to celebrate its 100th birthday, is rewarding a team that's been around for 93 of them. Either way, the Giants should thank the football gods - or their lucky stars - for the constellation of bad teams they face and the consolation prize for being so bad.
Twitter: @JasonKeidel
