Three Proven Philosophies the Giants Should Copy from the 49ers' Super Bowl Roster Rebuild

A year ago, the 49ers had a worse record than the Giants, yet here they are, getting ready to play in the Super Bowl Sunday while the Giants are sitting at home. Here is a look at jsut some of the things the 49ers did to get themselves back to being competitive that the Giants an easily implement in their own rebuild.

Regardless of what happens Sunday, the story of the San Francisco 49ers' rise from the bottom of the barrel to a Super Bowl contender is one of the best stories of the 2019 sports calendar year.

This is a team that since last posting a winning record (12-4) in 2013, had seen its stock drop like a rock, bottoming out at 2-14 in 2016 and then, after a brief spike upward at 6-10 in 2017, dropping to 4-12 in 2018, one game worse than the Giants 5-12 mark of that same season.

But while the Giants descended even further in 2019, losing one more game than they did from a year ago, the 49ers enjoyed an amazing ride to a 13-3 record that included an 8-0 start and the second-best won-loss record (behind Baltimore) in the NFL.

With the NFL being a copycat league, here are three lessons that the Giants, who are still trying to climb out from the bottom of the pile, can take from the 49ers as they too look to get back to postseason prominence.

Build Internally

Despite having an estimated $60 million of salary-cap space, the Giants must continue to build their talent base through the draft.

According to the 49ers, Super Bowl press release, 28 of their 53 players on their Super Bowl roster (52.8%) are draft picks. The longest-tenured of whom is offensive lineman Joe Staley. And seven of those draft picks are first-rounders.

“We didn’t make every right decision,” said 49ers CEO Jed York. “We didn’t make every right draft pick or every right trade or sign the right free agents all the time, but it’s the culmination of it. We’re trying to build the right team, and you have to have a long-term vision.”

In three seasons, 49ers general manager John Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan build a roster that includes 46 new faces (out of 53) that fit the team's long-term vision, proving that a quick turnaround can be achieved if there is a plan in place.

Giants general manager Dave Gettleman has said before that the way to build a roster is via the draft.

Coming in, however, the Giants' poor draft history left the cupboard so bare that the rebuild was likely going to take a little longer than usual to happen. Still, Gettleman at least appears to have the team headed in the right direction in this regard.

As of the end of the 2019 season, the Giants had 16 draft picks on their roster (30.1%), the longest-tenured being receiver Sterling Shepard, who was their second-round pick in 2016. And of those picks, just four first-rounders--the three they selected in 2019 and running back Saquon Barkley, chosen in 2018, remain.

Those numbers need to continue to rise if the Giants hope to make progress as a team.

But unlike the 49ers, Gettleman is starting over with a new head coach, making it interesting to see if the players that Gettleman and Pat Shurmur identified as being part of the long-term strategy for rebuilding the team are going to be keepers in Judge's eyes.

Adapt to the Unexpected

One of the most overblown and inaccurate philosophies that some coaches would like people to believe is that if there is an injury to a key starter, the next man up can step right into the lineup and do what that injured player is capable of doing and at the same level.

This has never been the case. Humans play the game, and no two humans are identical; as such, to expect, for example, Wayne Gallman to run like Saquon Barkley is just not fair to either player.

The good coaches look to fit the scheme around players' talents rather than the other way around. New Giants head coach Joe Judge, in his introductory press conference, spoke about wanting to know what a player does best, not how a player can fit a scheme that's in place. Those are the coaches who generally find success rather than those who live and die by their schemes.

The Giants of late haven't done this as much as they need to. Having a system is fine--every team needs a core philosophy. What separates the good coaches from the rest of the pack is their ability to adapt to the unexpected--and that also goes for players who earn game snaps in practice time.

Yes, there are some things a team can't overcome--the 49ers couldn't quite overcome losing quarterback Jimmy Garrapolo to injury in 2018, which is a big reason why they fell as they did.

In looking at the team's current construction, every player has a specific and unique role. Every player is well-schooled in the fundamentals, another prominent buzz word Judge stressed in his introductory press conference, and every one of those players has put himself in a position for Super Bowl immortality.

Emphasize the Running Game

The Giants will forever draw criticism for making running back Saquon Barkley the No. 2 overall pick in the 2018 draft. But look no further than what the 49ers have done to jumpstart their offense as justification for having a strong running game.

The 49ers' offense is built around their running game. As SI.com's Robert Klemko noted, the 49ers are "the first team in a decade—and one of just five since 1990—to eclipse 300 rushing attempts over the first eight games of a season."

In Barkley, the Giants have a young, dynamic talent that's just begging to carry the rock 20 or more times per game. He has, instead, averaged 16.48 carries per game and has, at times, disappeared from the game plan, not by choice by because the coaching staff has had other ideas about how to run the offense.

Speaking of Barkley, last season, 110 of his 216 rushing attempts were inside the guards, with 57 of those attempts up the middle behind an offensive line that struggled to get a push up the middle.

According to Sharp Football Stats, the Giants used 11 personnel (one back, three receivers) on 58% of their rushing attempts last year.

The 49ers, who finished with the league's second-best ground game, used that same formation on just 21% of their rushing attempts. A staple of their running game was 21 personnel (two backs, one tight end), used for the majority (35%) of their rushing attacks. From that formation, they averaged a robust 5.7 yards-per-carry average.

And in a somewhat shocking statistic, according to the Elias Sports Bureau (via ESPN), in games where the score difference was a touchdown or less late in the fourth quarter, Barkley received just seven rushing attempts with the game on the line.

Using players is part one of the equation; using them correctly is the second and probably most important part of all, and is something in which the Giants need to do a much better job if they want to replicate the 49ers success.