This season was a familiar story for the Giants. They started at 6-2 and still missed the playoffs at 10-6 after a late season collapse. Last year they started 5-0 and finished 8-8. In 2008 they started 11-1 and finished 12-4 and didn’t win a playoff game. In 2006 they started 6-2 before finishing 8-8 and not winning a playoff game. In 2004 they started 5-2 and finished 6-10. Even in their Super Bowl winning yeear, they started 6-2 and finished 10-6 before, obviously, rebounding. The only year they haven’t had a second half swoon since Tom Coughlin took over in 2004 was 2005.

There have been Giants players questioning Tom Coughlin’s leadership publicly and I do agree that Coach Coughlin has has overstayed his welcome. He did win a Super Bowl which is probably the main reason he’s still got a job, but they’d be better off with a better coach. He’s not very popular in the locker room and his teams can never close out seasons. He’s had 5 huge collapses in 7 years (from Super Bowl contender to not winning a playoff game) and only won playoff games in one year.

This year’s second half swoon had to hurt more than most. They sat at 9-5, tied with the Eagles for 1^st in the division, leading the Eagles 31-10 with 8 minutes left, in position to take control of the division. However, they let it slip away and the Eagles miraculously won 38-31 on a last second punt return by DeSean Jackson. They next week, still in control of their destiny to make the playoffs, they came out flat against the Packers, giving up 500+ yards of offense and turning the ball over 6 times in a 45-17 loss.

They won the next week against Washington (and even that wasn’t pretty), but the Packers had already taken control of their destiny and with a win over Chicago took that 6^th seed. A closer look at all their second half games show that these struggles were not limited to those 3 games. At 6-2 through 8 games, with talks of another Super Bowl run surrounding this team, they lost back to back games against Dallas and Philadelphia, before barely eeking out a victory over Jacksonville the next week, in a game that the Jags dominated for 2 and a half quarters before taking their foot off the gas. They then beat the Redskins and Vikings, by scores of 31-7 and 21-3, before collapsing in those last 3 games.

The cause of their second half swoon, turnovers and big plays allowed, which always seems to be the cause. Their 42 turnovers led the league. They were even struggling with turnovers before they started swooning, but it just got worse and at worse times. Even in their two “dominant” wins over Washington and Minnesota, Eli Manning threw more picks than touchdowns. Eli led the league with 25 picks this year.

Overall, they didn’t play badly, minus the turnovers. For the first half of the season, they ranked top 10 in passing offense, rushing offense, passing defense, and rushing defense. They finished ranked 8^th in passing offense, 7^th in rushing offense, 13^th in passing defense, and 13^th in rushing defense. All of this made it very hard for me to come up with needs for this team, other than maybe some glue so they don’t cough up the ball so much, and of course a new coach.