I usually ignore the annual “dumpster fire” series of posts Jimmy Kempski of the Philly Voice pens, trashing the Philadelphia Eagles’ NFC East opposition. This year, I decided to respond to Kempski’s ‘10 reasons the Giants will be a dumpster fire‘.
Maybe that’s because the Giants have actually been a dumpster fire more often than not since winning the 2011 Super Bowl, and I believe that is going to turn with the hiring of John Harbaugh as head coach.
Kempski’s 10 reasons, and my responses, are below.
1) John Harbaugh is overrated
Harbaugh is 63 years of age, the second-oldest head coach in the NFL, behind only Andy Reid (68). In 18 seasons as the Ravens’ head coach, Harbaugh had an impressive career regular season record of 180-113 (0.614). During his Ravens tenure, Harbaugh only had three losing seasons, one of which was in 2025, when the Ravens went 8-9 during a season in which the rest of the AFC — and particularly the AFC North — was relatively weak.
Harbaugh also had a winning record in the playoffs in Baltimore. He was 13-11 (0.542), a record that was powered by the Ravens’ 4-0 Super Bowl run during the 2012 season, Harbaugh’s lone championship season.
Ultimately, Harbaugh will bring a base competency to the Giants that they did not have with their last three stooge hires of Daboll, Pat Shurmur, and Joe Judge.
Since his Super Bowl win, despite employing a clear-cut, top five-type quarterback in Lamar Jackson for eight seasons and usually having a contending roster otherwise, Harbaugh somehow only won four playoff games in 13 seasons, and never more than one in a season. He was 4-7 in playoff games during that span. There have been 14 teams since 2013 that have won at least that many, and 12 that have won more.
Kempski also offers a Harbaugh-Mike McCarthy comparison:
• Harbaugh: 180-113 (0.614) regular season, 13-11 (0.542) playoffs, 4 playoff wins since winning the Super Bowl in 2012.
• McCarthy: 174-112-2 (0.608) regular season, 11-11 (0.500) playoffs, 5 playoff wins since winning the Super Bowl in 2010.
He adds:
Harbaugh is considered some great coach, and McCarthy a joke, but they’re basically the same guy.
Valentine’s View
Anyone can nitpick the work done by someone who held the same job for 18 years. There will be good and bad decisions. There will be successes and failures. Still, Harbaugh was good enough at his job to last six times longer than NFL head coaches usually do.
Harbaugh was a no-brainer hire for the Giants once the Baltimore Ravens fired him. He was the only coach available who had the resume and respect to make the Giants change their organizational structure to a coach-centric model where the GM is not at the top of the food chain.
The Giants are betting that Harbaugh can finally bring them out of the malaise they have been in for most of the last 15 years.
Kempski is right that Harbaugh raises the floor for the Giants. Yes, it would be nice if Harbaugh leads the Giants to a Super Bowl title. That, though, can’t be the expectation.
If it happens, great. No coach, though, has ever won Super Bowls with two teams. Five — Andy Reid, Bill Parcells, Mike Holmgren, Don Shula, Dick Vermeil — have won with one team and lost with another.
The Giants, though, need to walk before they run. The Giants would love to have the problems Ravens fans complained about with Harbaugh, or the problems Eagles fans complain about. Harbaugh should be able to get the Giants to that kind of relevance.
As for the McCarthy comparison, my take is that McCarthy is a good, accomplished coach. He would have fit what the Giants were looking for if Harbaugh had not been available. Kevin Stefanski also would have been a fit.
Both are quality coaches. The difference, to me, is that Harbaugh seems to have the pedigree and credibility to change an organization. I don’t believe McCarthy or Stefanski could have done that.
Maybe Harbaugh never wins a Super Bowl with the Giants. His job, though, is to put out the dumpster fire that has enveloped the Giants for too long.
2) Joe Schoen is still the GM, lol
Kempski writes:
Schoen’s four-year tenure with the Giants has resulted in a cumulative record of 22-45-1 (0.331), a cumulative point differential of -347, all kinds of swings and misses in the draft and free agency, and an extremely embarrassing season of Hard Knocks. I wouldn’t report to that guy either if I were Harbaugh.
… Schoen is clearly in over his head as a GM. But that doesn’t make Harbaugh a good GM. And in his first season in that role, a lot of what he did was sign a bunch of guys who played for him in Baltimore.
Meanwhile, for some insane reason the Giants signed Schoen to a multi-year extension. How exactly did he earn that? My assumption was that he Waylon Smithers’d himself into that deal.
Good for him! He found a way to keep his title and provide for his family.
Bad for Giants fans who were hoping that the team would hire a real GM, instead of this idiotic setup where the fake GM plays the role of sycophantic assistant to the aging head coach who only knows players he formerly coached.
Valentine’s View
It is fair to criticize — in Kempski’s case, poke fun — at Schoen’s first two drafts. From 2024 forward, not so much. He gets made fun of for the way the Saquon Barkley decision was shown on ‘Hard Knocks’, and for Barkley winning a Super Bowl with the Eagles. For the Giants, though, moving on from Barkley remains, in my view, the correct decision for where the Giants were at the time.
Is Schoen “over his head” as GM? I don’t think so. The way he manipulated the draft board a year ago to get both Abdul Carter and Jaxson Dart, getting the 10th pick in the draft in return for a player who didn’t want to be a Giant any longer, and reading the board correctly to get two players the Giants craved, argues against that. He made the correct move in trading Leonard Williams, getting draft capital, and turning Williams into Brian Burns, an equally outstanding player who is four years younger.
Schoen has had, in my view, an annoying habit of taking negotiations too personally that probably contributed to the Giants losing a couple of players. He never had an experienced hand like Harbaugh with him, nor did he have Dawn Aponte as a buffer.
Yes, the record with Schoen as GM stinks. But there is precedent for a struggling GM getting paired with the right head coach and being successful.
- Les Snead never had a winning season in five years as the Los Angeles Rams’ GM. Then, the Rams hired Sean McVay as head coach. In the nine years since then, the Rams have won a Super Bowl and made the playoffs seven times.
- George Paton had three losing seasons as the Denver Broncos’ GM. Then, the Broncos hired Sean Payton as head coach. Denver made the playoffs in each of the past two seasons.
- Chicago Bears’ fans wanted to run GM Ryan Poles out of town after three losing seasons. The Bears hired Ben Johnson as head coach before the 2025 season, went 11-6, and won a playoff game.
What matters is that Harbaugh and Schoen worked well together this past offseason and believe they can do so going forward. Besides, there is nothing unusual about a setup where the majority of the power rests with the head coach.
3) Matt Nagy stinks
Ewwww. Here is how Nagy’s offenses fared the last six years in either a head coach or offensive coordinator role:
2019 (Bears HC) — Yards (29th) | Points (29th)
2020 (Bears HC) — Yards (26th) | Points (22nd)
2021 (Bears (HC) — Yards (24th) | Points (27th)
2023 (Chiefs OC) — Yards (9th) | Points (15th)
2024 (Chiefs OC) — Yards (16th) | Points (15th)
2025 (Chiefs OC) — Yards (20th) | Points (21st
Dude had Patrick Mahomes and couldn’t finish better than 15th in points in three years! How is he still a coordinator in the NFL?!
Valentine’s View
Nagy doesn’t stink. I’m not going to make the case that he is McVay or Kyle Shanahan, but nothing on his resume suggests he is awful. Let’s look at his work with both the Bears and Chiefs.
Bears
Kempski conveniently didn’t bother to mention the 2018 season, when Nagy guided the Bears to a 12-4 record with Mitchell Trubisky — yes, that Mitchell Trubisky — starting 14 games at quarterback. Chase Daniel started the other two. The Bears were ninth in the league in points scored that season.
In three seasons with Trubisky as his primary quarterback, Nagy never had a losing season. Chicago, in fact, went 25-13 in regular-season games started by Trubisky. No one has come close to getting that sort of performance from Trubisky since. He has, in fact, started just seven games, going 2-5.
Chiefs
Taking any sort of shot at Nagy for offensive failings ignores the fact that Nagy was neither designing the offense nor calling the plays. The offense in Kansas City was head coach Andy Reid’s domain. The personnel issues that led to the Chiefs not being able to maximize the best quarterback in football were on Reid and GM Brett Veach, not Nagy.
Besides, if you are going to criticize Nagy’s work in KC the last three years, where is the credit for 2017? He was the coordinator in Kansas City that year, as well, and the Chiefs were 10th in points and fifth in yards with Alex Smith at quarterback.
4) Jaxson Dart is an injury waiting to happen
Dart was actually evaluated for concussions in five of his first 10 NFL games. And sure enough, he would be officially concussed after a scramble against the Bears.
Upon his return to the field, did Dart learn any lessons about protecting himself?
He did not.
Kempski, of course, dropped the video of Dart getting crushed during the game against the New England Patriots.
Valentine’s View
No Giants fan wants to see Dart continue to take the unnecessary hits he took last season. I firmly believe, though, that some of what happened last season was a Daboll problem as much or more than a Dart problem.
Why?
Dart told me way back in the preseason in Buffalo, after he was tested for a concussion for the first time, that he knew Daboll liked Dart playing as physically as he did — regardless of what Daboll said to the media. Daboll never really discouraged Dart’s recklessness, and it is eventually part of what got him fired.
Harbaugh, Nagy, and quarterbacks coach Brian Callahan have all delivered the “protect your body and stay on the field” message to Dart.
To his credit, Dart has seemed more open to it this year. He seems more cognizant of the reality that not every risk is worth taking, and that he can’t help his team from the sideline or the medical tent. Dart talked this spring about making “mature decisions” with the ball.
“It’s important for the quarterback to make sure how he’s feeling one play that he’s going to feel that same way the next play,” Dart said. “And at the same time, just having the experience last year of sitting out two games, I hadn’t done that in my career. So, I just hated that time of not being out there with my teammates.
“So, obviously, I understand the most important thing is to be out there. So, you just grow and learn from things.”
It is unrealistic to believe Dart will never again take a questionable risk while running. Or that he will never again suffer some type of injury. It is realistic, though, to believe that a young player can learn from experience and adjust accordingly.
5) Malik Nabers can’t run
Kempski used the charity softball game video of Nabers limping to first base.
That does not look like a guy who is playing football anytime soon. The Giants’ subsequent signings of has-beens like Odell Beckham and JuJu Smith-Schuster represent the Giants’ alarm that Nabers won’t be ready for the start of the season.
Valentine’s View
It is true that at the end of May Nabers, coming back from a pair of surgeries to repair a torn ACL and meniscus, could not run well. I would have been happy if he had chosen not to play in the softball game.
The Giants have remained optimistic that Nabers could be ready for Week 1, even if he likely won’t be as dynamic right away as he was pre-injury.
Does it hurt the Giants if Nabers isn’t playing and being productive early in the season? Absolutely. The Giants can’t replace him. Few teams can replace a No. 1 wide receiver as talented as Nabers. The Eagles wouldn’t have a replacement for DeVonta Smith.
The best thing for Nabers — and the Giants — is for Nabers to play when he is fully ready to play.
6) Cam Skattebo: Fun player, limited effectiveness, short shelf life
Kempski calls Skattebo “the most overrated player in the NFC East.”
To begin, he’s the slowest starting running back in the NFL.
Skattebo had one rush of over 20 yards on the season. That was a 24-yard run against Dallas. He is never going to be a player who consistently pops big runs.
But also, although he dishes out punishment as a runner, he also takes a ton of big hits. Asked on NFL Network if he would change his style of running after suffering a season-ending injury last season, Skattebo said, “I’m going to get back [to] running people over.”
Because, well, of course that’s how he’s going to play. He runs a 4.65 and doesn’t really have elusive traits otherwise. He’s a downhill runner who looks for contact. He can’t play any other way, and as such, he’s always going to be at a higher risk for injury at an already very taxing position.
Anyway, we’re talking about a guy here who averaged 4.1 yards per carry, which was good for 34th out of 49 backs with at least 100 carries, and people are talking about him like he’s the second coming of Earl Campbell.
Valentine’s View
I agree with Kempski that Skattebo is overhyped. There is part of me that worries that Skattebo, with his diamond teeth, custom garage floor for his expensive car collection, and the fact that he always seems to be in front of a camera or a microphone, is into being Cam Skattebo and living his best life a little too much. He might think a little too much of his ability, talking about getting 300 carries and 2,000 yards.
That, though, might just be the grumpy old man in me.
Skattebo is slow. He isn’t Earl Campbell. Or Derrick Henry. Or Saquon Barkley. He is, though, a good player. Sure, 4.1 yards per carry is below league average. Guess what? Barkley also averaged 4.1 yards per carry last season. Three carries of 4 yards still lead to a first down.
Regardless of his shortcomings and the reality that his running style might not lead to a long career as a front-line runner, Skattebo is part of the engine that makes the Giants go. He and Dart feed off each other. Skattebo’s physical style fits what Harbaugh is looking for in the run game.
Yes, Skattebo has shortcomings. Yes, I wish he were a little less visible when he isn’t playing football. He is, though, a good player who is important to the Giants’ success.
7) Their always awful run defense will be bad again
The Giants’ run defense stinks every year, and every year they don’t fix it.
- 2021 — Rush yards allowed per game (129.0) | Rank (25th)
- 2022 — Rush yards allowed per game (146.3) | Rank (28th)
- 2023 — Rush yards allowed per game (132.4) | Rank (29th)
- 2024 — Rush yards allowed per game (136.2) | Rank (26th)
- 2025 — Rush yards allowed per game (145.3) | Rank (31st)
This offseason, the Giants’ run defense personnel is even worse than normal, after they traded Dexter Lawrence to the Bengals for the 10th overall pick of the 2026 draft. Lawrence is the best NT in the sport, and in the aftermath of the draft, the Giants signed a bunch of street free agents like DJ Reader, Shelby Harris, and Leki Fotu.
Valentine’s View
Yes, the Giants’ run defense has been awful for years now. And, yes, it is past time for the Giants to get serious about fixing it.
Do I worry that Dexter Lawrence being a Cincinnati Bengal will make fixing it tougher? Yup. The injury to Roy Robertson-Harris, too.
Let’s look at the bright side, though.
Harbaugh made it clear shortly after he was hired that fixing the run defense was a must, and that a quality off-ball linebacker was a necessity. Well, with the signing of Tremaine Edmunds and the drafting of Arvell Reese, the Giants should have two of them.
Kayvon Thibodeaux is a good run defender. Let’s be optimistic that he will play more than 10 games.
The personnel wasn’t fantastic beyond Lawrence last season, but the bigger problem seemed to be defensive coordinator Shane Bowen. The Giants were last in the league in rushing yards allowed per game (157.2) and yards allowed per carry. Under interim coordinator Charlie Bullen, the Giants gave up 110.3 yards per game. Over the last three games of the season, the Giants gave up just 4.0 yards per rushing attempt.
Like last year, the personnel could still be upgraded. I think, though, that the combination of Harbaugh and Wilson has a better chance of figuring out how to adequately play the run than Bowen and Daboll did.
8) These dumbasses only win when it’s time to wreck their draft positioning
With two games remaining in the 2025 season, the then-2-13 Giants were facing the Las Vegas Raiders, who were also 2-13. The Raiders knew the assignment, as they placed Maxx Crosby, Brock Bowers, and Jeremy Chinn on injured reserve in advance of that game. The Giants went all out to win, which they did, 34-10.
And then in Week 18, the Giants beat the Cowboys in a completely meaningless Week 18 game, 34-17.
Two-game winning streak to close the season, WOOHOOOO!
Of course, if they had lost those two games, they’d have had the No. 1 overall pick. They probably wouldn’t have selected Fernando Mendoza, but they’d have had like a half dozen teams — the Raiders, Jets, Cardinals, and Browns, at a minimum — bidding on that pick in a one-quarterback draft. The Giants probably could’ve moved down a couple spots, still landed Arvell Reese, and maybe also an extra 2027 first-round pick. But they’re too stupid.
That’s nothing new. The last three seasons, the Giants are 9-36 Weeks 1-16. They’re 4-2 Weeks 17-18.
Valentine’s View
Giants’ fans might agree with Kempski here. It’s a cheap shot, though, that has nothing to do with what will or won’t happen during the upcoming season.
9) Additional roster holes
Kempski lists wide receiver, running back, interior offensive line, interior defensive line, cornerback, and placekicker as weaknesses.
Valentine’s View
Wide receiver — No, the Giants don’t have a WR1 if Nabers isn’t healthy. They do have a group of veterans who know what they are doing. Also, don’t discount the impact of rookie Malachi Fields and tight end Isaiah Likely.
Running back — The combination og Skattebo and the overlooked Tyrone Tracy is better than Kempski wants to admit.
IOL — Kempski calls John Michael Schmitz a bust. He is actually a mid-tier starting center who has improved each season.
Defensive line — We’ve acknowledged that the collection of players the Giants have is not ideal.
Cornerback — Kempski neglected to mention second-round pick Colton Hood, a player the Giants believe should have been selected in Round 1.
Placekicker — We’ll see if Zvada is the answer. What we know for sure is that Harbaugh, a stickler for quality special teams, won’t be shy about addressing the position if he has to.
10) One owner is cheap; another is a pathetic sex creep
To begin, John Mara is cheap. Always has been, always will be.
For as bad of an owner as Mara is, at least he’s not as bad as his partner, Steve Tisch, who was set up with various women by Jeffrey Epstein, at a time when Epstein was already a registered sex offender.
Valentine’s View
When it comes to Tisch, we know it bothers many Giants’ fans — maybe most — that Tisch is still Chairman of the Board. The reaction to seeing him in the room during the draft wasn’t pleasant.
In calling Mara cheap, I’m shocked Kempski did not make a medium Pepsi joke.
Yes, Forbes values the Giants at $10.1 billion, third-most among NFL teams. The Mara family, though, does not have the outside financial resources of many prominent sports franchise owners. The Gianrs are the Mara family business, not a toy they acquired with assets garnered from other businesses. That’s one reason the Tisch family now owns 45% of the team, and why the Koch family was recently added as a minority owner without decision-making authority.
The Giants spent $189.672 million in free agency this offseason, sixth-most in the league. The $100.68 million in cash they guaranteed players at signing was also the sixth-most. They went out of their comfort zone to give John Harbaugh a five-year, $100 million contract. Those don’t sound like things cheap franchises do.
In response to concerns raised by players in the annual NFLPA survey, the Giants are undertaking renovations of their facility. That is another big expense.
I know the MetLife Stadium turf can be brought into this discussion. I still believe, though, that when the Giants and Jets are convinced they can install and maintain a quality grass field, they will do so.
Fans can justifiably complain about some of the leadership decisions ownership has made, but if you know Mara, you know how much he wants to win and cares about the fanbase.
Besides, isn’t it kind of classless to be taking shots at a man who has cancer and is fighting for his life?
