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PFT's Preseason Power Ranking for the Giants Revealed

A new head coach and an underachieving defense doesn't have the popular pro football site feeling particularly good about the Giants ahead of preseason.

While there is optimism around East Rutherford ahead of the start of the Joe Judge era that the rookie head coach will get a Giants team that has won just 12 games over the last three seasons back on track, one major media outlet isn’t feeling it.

That would be Pro Football Talk, who came out with their annual preseason power rankings. PFT has the Giants 29 out of 32 teams, with the justification as follows:

Second-year starting quarterback, first-year head coach, offensive coordinator who was just fired as a head coach, defense that lacks significant punch, offensive line that remains a work in progress. Maybe it all finds a way to work. Maybe it doesn’t. (And, yes, someone has to be No. 29.)

Power rankings tend to be one of those things that some people look forward to, and while I always find them interesting, I rarely agree with the logic supporting the rankings.

The same holds here. And not just because the Giants have a second-year quarterback (who other than for the ball security issues and being limited mostly to single reads, had one of the best seasons by a Giants rookie quarterback in franchise history).

And certainly not because of having a first-year head coach (hey, even the greatest NFL head coaches in history had to start somewhere, so it’s probably unfair to put that as a strike against Judge until we see what kind of program he is going to run.

Still, let’s be fair. The last two times the Giants changed coaching staffs, there was optimism only to have everything come crashing down around the team. So carrying over the concerns from last year make a semblance of sense.

But the past is in the past. It would be, for example, silly to assume that because a team made it to the playoffs last year that they’re a shoo-in again this year, even though logic and the odds would argue otherwise.

Every year, every team is different, yes, including those teams who have had a minimal turnover to the core of their roster.

But here’s the good news. Every team has had some turnover in the off-season—heck in the NFC East alone two other teams have new coaching staffs, both of whom were fired by their previous clubs.

And every team is facing its own set of challenges, which is why you line up and play the game (assuming COVID-19 allows for that this fall) to see where things truly stand.

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