Giants Hire Dave Gettleman As Next General Manager
(Source)- The Giants announced today that Dave Gettleman has been selected as the team’s new general manager. Gettleman, a 30-year NFL veteran who spent four seasons as the Carolina Panthers’ general manager and 15 as a personnel executive in the Giants organization, will be just the Giants’ fourth general manager since 1979, following George Young, Ernie Accorsi and Jerry Reese, who held the job for 11 seasons before he was dismissed on Dec. 4.
From 2013-16, Gettleman was the general manager of the Panthers. In his four seasons, Carolina was 40-23-1 and won three consecutive NFC South titles. In 2015, Gettleman was named The Sporting News’ NFL Executive of the Year after the Panthers finished an NFL-best 15-1 record and advanced to Super Bowl 50. He was dismissed by Carolina on July 17.
Gettleman has been a part of seven Super Bowl teams, including three winners. He was with Buffalo in 1990 and 1991; Denver in 1997; the Giants in 2000, 2007 and 2011; and the Panthers in 2015. The Broncos and the 2007 and 2011 Giants won the championship. Gettleman has been associated with 16 playoff teams in his NFL career.
Gettleman, 66, joined the Giants in the spring of 1998 as then-pro personnel director Tim Rooney’s assistant. He was promoted to pro personnel director in the spring of 1999 upon Rooney’s retirement. Gettleman stayed in the position 13 years, traveling constantly to scout the Giants’ upcoming opponents and developing a thorough knowledge of every player in the NFL. In 2012, his final season with the Giants, Gettleman was the team’s senior pro personnel analyst.
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And thus ends one of the least surprising GM searches in NFL history! Once A Giant, Always A Giant really is the truest phrase in all of sports. If you are ever lucky enough to get a job with Big Blue, you will probably have a job there until the day you die (or slick back your goofy haircut like a sports movie villain before voluntarily ending the games started streak of the best QB in franchise history). Portnoy has an itchier firing finger than the Mara and Tisch families.
Instead of going outside of the familiar faces that work/have worked for the franchise, the Giants went back to the well by bringing back Gettleman after he was suddenly fired by the Panthers this summer. This is the same Gettleman that writers were JO’ing over when he was the GM of the 15-1 Panthers team that made the Super Bowl two seasons ago. However stars like Cam Newton, Luke Kuechly, Greg Olsen, Thomas Davis, Josh Norman, and Ryan Kalil were already in Carolina when Gettleman took the job and Riverboat Analytical Ron Rivera was already the coach. But hey, why let facts get in the way of a good hit piece about the Giants during Super Bowl Week?
In fact, the draft picks during Gettleman’s tenure don’t exactly wow you.
And the older players Gettleman let go of in Carolina took some intense pleasure in his firing.
Not quite Cartman licking Scott Tenorman’s tears but definitely some solid grudging. And hiring a guy that Steve Smith seems to have a vendetta against probably puts everyone in the Giants building at risk of getting hit by 89’s shrapnel.
But I’m really not going to get too happy or too upset about the hiring. Do I wish the Giants took their time and interviewed execs in other organizations? Probably. But that’s not how the Giants work. To ask them to do anything else would be asking them not to be the Giants, for better or worse. They like hiring guys that know the organization and preach/practice The Giant Way, which to be fair probably died some point in between Tom Coughlin’s “resignation” and the Josh Brown fiasco.
To be honest, my only question to any GM candidate would be “Can you figure out a way to steal Sean McVay from the Rams?”. The man or woman that gave the best answer would be hired immediately. But since that’s probablyyyyyy not going to happen, we get to react to Gettleman’s moves, which will be huge for the franchise’s immediate and distant future. Who does he hire as coach? How does he handle the Eli Manning situation? Which QB does he try to trick the Browns into taking at number 1 so he can draft his guy at number 2? Right now there are more questions than answers. But the one thing Giants fans do know is that David Alan Gettleman has swagger for dayyyyyys.
The NFC, nay the NFL has been put on notice.
(Please please pleeeeeeease don’t hire Mike Smith).