Giants Hail Mary lands Russell Wilson at QB

The Giants, who have turned into what the Knicks were for such a long time before Leon Rose took them over, have their veteran quarterback now. Joe Schoen — the outgoing general manager or not — had already swung for the fences with Matthew Stafford before Stafford came to his senses and stayed right where he was with the Rams. Then Schoen signed Jameis Winston before signing Russell Wilson, whose best days are behind him the way the Giants’ best days are behind them, just not nearly as far.

If you want to know how far the Giants have fallen since their last Super Bowl, one that feels more like 113 years ago than just 13, just know that the signing of the 36-year-old Wilson, whom the Steelers didn’t want the way the Broncos didn’t want him before the Steelers didn’t, know this:

He is a tremendous upgrade over the quarterbacking we have seen for the last couple of years. That’s the good news, at a time when Giants fans will take any. Here’s more good news, if you want to call it that:
Wilson really does make them a much better bad football team.

Have the Giants had success with veteran quarterbacks imported from somewhere else in their history? They sure have. Y.A. Tittle was a year younger than Wilson is right now back in the 1960s when he showed up in New York from San Francisco. And these were his records as a starter in his first three seasons here:

8-1-1.

12-2.

11-2.

For those three seasons and for real, Tittle was as great a quarterback as the Giants have ever had, throwing a total of 86 touchdown passes before everything fell apart for them — sound familiar? — and it was as if the whole team ended up on its knees and bloodied the way Tittle was in that sad, iconic photograph from the Giants-Steelers game from September of 1964. Tittle’s record was 1-8-2 that year, the last of his career.

After all the success the Giants had known in the ’50s and ’60s, back when they were the most glamorous team in town, they became as bad a team and as dreary a team as the Giants have become over the past two seasons; when these Giants have become another bad Giants team knocked down and bloodied.

Then Fran Tarkenton got here at the age of 27 from the Vikings and made the Giants at least fun to watch again, even if his record across five seasons was just 33-36, before things bottomed out again for the Giants and fans first flew planes over the stadium, over Giants Stadium in those days, saying that 15 years of lousy football was enough.

Now they are where they are and Wilson is where he is, with Winston behind him. And if the Giants think that either Cam Ward or Shedeur Sanders has the game to light a fire under the team and their fan base the way Jayden Daniels just did for the Commanders, they’re sure not acting that way. Probably because they’re clearly not sure about either one of them.

Is Wilson, at this point in his career and despite the way things bottomed out for him and for the Steelers last season, a better option than 41-year-old Aaron Rodgers would have been? There’s a fair conversation to be had about that, because as anxious as the new regime for the Jets was to thank Rodgers for his service before showing him the door, Rodgers had a better season at quarterback for the 5-12 Jets than Wilson did with the 10-7 Steelers, even after he came in as hot as he did after replacing Justin Fields.

But in so many ways, and even though he does give the Giants a better chance next season, Wilson’s best days are in the past the way Rodgers’ are and the way the Giants are the past, at least for now. You look back on all the losing since the second Giants-Patriots Super Bowl in Indianapolis — and giving them their due for somehow making the playoffs twice over that period and even winning a playoff game against the Vikings — and think that they never properly replaced Tom Coughlin as coach and still have not replaced Eli Manning at quarterback.

And if you can find even seven wins with the schedule they’re looking at next season, please show me where you think they are. The only chance the Giants might have to get out of last place in the NFC East is that the Cowboys might be treading water as furiously as they are.

The Jets are at least new, with a new general manager and a new coach and a new, young quarterback in Fields. The Giants are not. Jets fans have a right to be at least cautiously optimistic about next season just because they have a perfect right to look at all the fourth quarters the Jets were in last season before losing most of those games, more often than not when Rodgers didn’t make the kinds of plays he was brought here to make. It’s a low bar, of course, but they were a far more entertaining bad team than the Giants were, even with what turned out to be overrated talent on both sides of the ball.

Now, if they’re not going to take a quarterback with the third pick in the draft (even if Shedeur is still available at that point), the only chance for Schoen to save his job is to draft an impact player like Abdul Carter or even Two-Way Travis Hunter, and wait until the second round to go looking for a quarterback. But if they really aren’t sure about Shedeur, then they can’t take him even if they do get the chance. It always goes back to something Ernie Accorsi, who made the draft day trade for Eli, said: You don’t just have to be bad enough to land one of those picks when looking for your next franchise quarterback, you can’t be wrong when you do.

The Giants ultimately were wrong about Daniel Jones, even if they weren’t nearly as wrong as the Jets were with Zach Wilson, who main job in football now seems to be posing on Instagram.

“We’re going to build this thing the right way. I’m not going to do a Hail Mary for self-preservation,” Schoen said not long ago.

But that is exactly what he tried to do with Stafford before it wasn’t just Stafford coming to his senses after he wanted to get paid, it was the Rams as well. Now Schoen decides that his best option is Russell Wilson, five years removed from when he threw 40 touchdown passes for the Seahawks. You wonder if Winston even gets through the door if Schoen had known that Wilson would become his best option.

That’s where Schoen is, and that’s where the Giants are. He’s trying to turn around a battleship the way Leon Rose did. He’s just done little so far to indicate he has the vision to do that. Or the time.

TIGER WANTS ATTENTION AND PRIVACY, YANKS LACK REAL LEADOFF GUY & PITINO HAD A BAD ENDING …

At least the SEC is good at basketball.

Oh, come on, we kid because we love.

Kinda.

So Tiger Woods posts all those photographs of him with his new girlfriend and then asks for privacy?

How does that work, exactly?

Wow, how could the NBA abandon a crackerjack idea like that cheesy tournament they had replacing an actual All-Star Game.

There’s nothing more fun than judgments made about the baseball season after the first game of 162.

The Knicks came into the weekend with the fifth-best record in the league, still not that far from having the fourth-best.

And even with their ugly record against the best teams in the league, they still have a chance to reclaim their own story when the playoffs start.

And see if they can be as good as they thought they were going to be after adding Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges to the team that lit up the Garden last season.

Or if their fans will come away from this season wondering if they were better off with Isaiah Hartenstein and Donte DiVincenzo.

I like Austin Wells a lot as a ballplayer, but the reason he’s the Yankee leadoff man is because the Yankees still don’t have a leadoff man.

The Red Sox are legit again.

And a real threat to the Yankees in the AL East.

RJ Luis Jr. had the worst shooting game of his life at the worst possible time for St. John’s, about that there is no question.

Still: It’s not even in dispute that the Big East Player of the Year still deserved better than sitting out the rest of his season after Rick Pitino pulled him.

So they both had a really bad ending to what was such a wonderful season.

By the way?

Some of these big college basketball games still can be decided by the best player in the gym, and that’s exactly what happened on Thursday night with Texas Tech’s Darrion Williams after he brought his team all the way back against Arkansas.

The Yankees needed someone exactly like Jazz Chisolm Jr. to bring some life to the party.

I love these spats between athletes and the media, don’t you?

It’s like high school, just with more followers.

Is this another darkness retreat for Aaron Rodgers, or just a retreat from pro football?

I know Kevin Willard is being treated like one of the hot guys of the moment in college hoops, but this is the same Kevin Willard who’s been to the Sweet 16 exactly one time, correct?

It really was kind of fun having Coach Cal be back in play, even if his team didn’t make it to the Elite Eight.

I’m like everybody else, I’ve sent a lot of texts in my life I wanted back.

Just never one involving a missile strike.