How Injuries Have Set Back New York Giants in Recent Years

Whoever said injuries are a pain wasn’t kidding.

No one knows this better than the New York Giants, a team that has led the league in injured players in each of the last two seasons.

While injuries aren’t an excuse for how a team performs, when injuries hit key players and there is no depth behind those players, that’s when the performance tends to drop off. In some cases, when an injured player comes back, he’s never quite the same as he was prior to getting hurt, which creates another problem when there is no depth or Plan B.

Sometimes a team gets lucky and the transition between the key player and his eventual replacement is brief. Other times, the transition can sometimes take years.

So let’s take a look at some key injuries the Giants have suffered under head coach Tom Coughlin and trace the attempts made at trying to replace the lost talent.  

Middle Linebacker: Antonio Pierce

Chris O'Meara/Associated Press

Linebacker Antonio Pierce came into the NFL with very little fanfare, signing as an undrafted free agent with Washington in 2001.

Motivated after being snubbed by teams in the draft, Pierce famously kept a list of the 30 linebackers drafted ahead of him and one in which he would cross off the names of each linebacker he managed to outlast.

When Pierce signed as an unrestricted free agent with the Giants in 2005, he would go on to anchor the all-important “defensive quarterback” position for Big Blue.

Pierce played 69 games over a five-year career with the team, a career that saw the Giants defense finish as a top-five unit between 2007 and 2008, and famously helped coral New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady in Super Bowl XLII in a game the Giants—according to prognosticators—had no business being in, let alone winning.

After the 2009 season, the then 31-year-old Pierce, a 2006 Pro Bowl linebacker, would be forced into early retirement with a neck injury.

Since he left, the team’s attempts to replace him with a stalwart has resembled a revolving door.

The Giants hoped that Jonathan Goff, a fifth-round draft pick chosen in 2008, might be the heir to Pierce. For a time, Goff looked the part, starting 20 of 37 games for the Giants in 2009 and 2010 until a knee injury derailed his career and put him on injured reserve for the entire 2011 season, his last in the NFL.

After Goff, the plethora of Giants’ middle linebackers since 2011 have included names such as Chase Blackburn, Dan Connor, Mark Herzlich, Jon Beason, Jameel McClain, Uani ‘Unga and Jasper Brinkley.

In Beason, whom the Giants acquired in a trade with Carolina for a seventh-round pick when he was 28-years-old, New York hoped that the three-time Pro Bowler might have finally put his injury history behind him.

That has not been the case. Despite a blue-collar work mentality, a football IQ that is off the charts and a natural leadership quality that was respected enough by his teammates to vote him as a team captain twice despite ongoing injuries at the time, Beason’s body has continued to betray him.

After giving the Giants 13 games in 2013 following his acquisition, he was unable to give the Giants more than five games in each of the last two seasons.

Brinkley, who is an underrated but solid player, appears to be set to finish out the rest of the year in the role. Beyond that, though, it’s anyone’s guess as to what the Giants are going to do at the position.

It’s ironic. The Giants have shown little hesitation to draft a franchise quarterback, even engaging in a blockbuster trade such as what they did to acquire Eli Manning. Yet when it comes to the quarterback on the other side of the ball, other than Goff, they’ve tried to go for the instant fix.

Will this coming offseason be different? Only time will tell. 

Tight End: Jeremy Shockey

Bill Kostroun/Associated Press

When the Giants drafted tight end Jeremy Shockey with the 14th overall pick in 2002, they were supposed to be set at tight end for the next decade.

For a while they were, as Shockey came out of the chute with 894 yards on 74 catches in his rookie season, all career-highs.

His injury issues started out small but ultimately began to pile up. Then, when a head coaching change was made—Tom Coughlin replaced Jim Fassel in 2004, for whom Shockey played under in the first two years of his career—suddenly Shockey had to include more blocking as part of his job.

He did well with that and continued to be a target in the passing game, receiving more than 100 pass targets three times in his career (2002, 2005 and 2006). 

After coming close to matching his career-high reception and yardage total as a rookie in 2005 when he caught 65 balls for 891 yards and seven touchdowns, things started to go downhill for Shockey, who never made it through a 16-game season as a pro.

In 2007, Shockey’s Giants career would end when he suffered a broken leg late in the season. That offseason, things really went sour with the team who went on to trade him to the New Orleans Saints after a bumpy six-year stay with the Giants.

Since then, the Giants have had a revolving door at tight end. They drafted Kevin Boss in the fifth round of the 2007 to be the heir to Shockey’s throne, but concussion issues dogged Boss throughout his career, including is short stints in Oakland and Kansas City.

Boss was replaced by Jake Ballard, an undrafted free agent who showed promise, until a devastating knee injury in Super Bowl XLVI greased the wheels for his career to end prematurely.

He was followed by a then-relatively unknown Martellus Bennett, who in managing to stay healthy gave Giants fans hope that their problems at tight end were finally solved.

Unfortunately, the Chicago Bears gave Bennett an offer that the Giants couldn’t match, and so Big Blue would go on to settle for short stints by Brandon Myers and Bear Pascoe.

Larry Donnell, another undrafted free agent, has been trying to remove any thoughts of going in another direction from the front office’s mind ever since last year.

It’s been a roller coaster ride for Donnell as he needs to find a way to be consistent.

He’ll almost certainly get another chance to erase any doubts about his long-term prospects as the starter next season, as he’ll be a restricted free agent. However, in terms of impact, Donnell has a long way to go before he comes close to having the impact that Shockey did when he first joined the Giants. 

Safety: Kenny Phillips

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Safety Kenny Phillips, the Giants’ first-round draft pick in 2008, was supposed to be a staple of New York’s defensive backfield for years.

Unfortunately, a knee injury suffered in his second season put him on the fast path to obscurity. He underwent microfracture surgery and while he tried to come back stronger and just as fast as ever, he was never quite the same player.

He ultimately left New York after the 2012 season and tried to resurrect his career with the New Orleans Saints, for whom he played three games as a starter, all coming this year.

Still, the thought of a healthy Phillips alongside of Antrel Rolle—who came to the Giants via free agency in 2010—would have probably given the Giants a strong and young safety tandem for several years.

Instead, the Giants’ long list of safeties included Stevie Brown, who showed promise as a ball hawk until an ACL injury robbed him of his speed; Will Hill, the uber-talented young safety who couldn’t stay out of trouble during his stint with the Giants; veteran Deon Grant, who was on the back-end of his career; and Quintin Demps.

Hopefully the continued development of Landon Collins and the emergence of one of the young safeties—Nat Berhe, Mykkele Thompson or Bennett Jackson—will come to fruition next year. 

Slot Receiver: Victor Cruz

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When Steve Smith, the Giants’ second-round draft pick in 2007, spurned New York for the Eagles, it stung. However, the emergence of Victor Cruz in 2011 pretty much softened that loss.

Cruz would go on to post 1,000-yard seasons in 2011 and 2012, just barely missing a third season with 1,000 receiving yards the following year. A deep threat and a dangerous slot receiver, it all came crashing down for Cruz in 2014 on Lincoln Financial Field against the Philadelphia Eagles, when Cruz suffered a torn patellar tendon.

He worked his way back into shape and despite general manager Jerry Reese’s constant concern about counting on Cruz, there was the Salsa King passing his training camp physical and well on his way to his anticipated return.

Unfortunately, his path was derailed due to a calf injury that at first was classified as dehydration. Cruz would eventually try to return in Week 4 of the season, but he couldn’t’ make it through a full practice and was back on the shelf.

This week Cruz will inch a little closer toward his anticipated return. However, during his absence, the Giants have struggled in finding a slot receiver with Cruz’s skill set.

They tried Preston Parker and Dwayne Harris at that spot, and while Harris has been decent, he’s not in the same ballpark as pre-injury Cruz.

At the outside receiver, the Giants have had to count on the inconsistent Rueben Randle, who this year has battled knee tendinitis and a hamstring strain.

Thankfully for the Giants, Odell Beckham Jr. has been able to carry the load on his shoulder most of the time. Still, when one thinks of how dangerous the Giants receiving corps might actually be with three solid and consistent receivers on the end of Eli Manning’s passes, it’s scary.

Center: Shaun O'Hara

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In 2004, the Giants signed unheralded offensive lineman Shaun O’Hara, who had made it as an undrafted free agent out of Rutgers with the Cleveland Browns, to become franchise quarterback Eli Manning’s wingman through the first years of his career.

O’Hara turned out to be much more than a wingman—he became a pretty good center for the Giants and one who was voted to three straight Pro Bowls along the way, including in 2010, his final season in the NFL and one in which he battled a foot injury.

Once O’Hara—who would later retire as a Giant—moved on, the team tried to replace him with David Baas, a free agent offensive lineman for whom they had high expectations. Baas, unfortunately, had numerous physical issues that kept him from fulfilling expectations.

In three seasons with the Giants, he played in 16 games only once. While he did anchor the Super Bowl XLVI offensive line, he never looked like he would be the long-term solution.

When Baas was cut after the 2013 season—he’s since been out of football after having ongoing issues with his neck—the Giants turned to J.D. Walton to play the position, this despite having drafted Weston Richburg in the second round that same season.

The intent was to use Walton’s experience at the position to help settle the offense down as it went through a major transition to the West Coast system.

In retrospect, the Giants might have been better off letting Richburg get his feet wet at the position right out of the gate so that he could have grown at his natural position in this new offense right from the start. 

Patricia Traina covers the Giants for Inside Football, the Journal Inquirer and Sports Xchange. All quotes and information were obtained first-hand unless otherwise sourced. Advanced statistics courtesy of Pro Football Focus.

Follow me on Twitter @Patricia_Traina.