Q&A with Giants GM Jerry Reese

The Giants are 6-2 at the midway point of the 2011 season and all of the chaos and tumult of the offseason seems like a distant memory. As the team prepares for a grueling second half of the season that will determine whether or not the year is a success, general manager Jerry Reese sat with Newsday for a Q&A earlier this week.

Q: This was a crazy preseason and offseason that was all crammed into one with the lockout. Have things settled down a little bit?

A: It's always busy here because things change every week with injuries and we have the college season going on so we try to sneak out and see some college players. There's always business for me to do this time of the year. But I kind of liked the beginning of the season when everything was condensed. You didn't have a lot of time for a lot of posturing with agents and that kind of stuff. It was all condensed. Things had to happen pretty quickly. I kind of liked that because if you have a couple of months you have to do a lot of posturing with agents in respect to free agents so things had to happen quickly.

Q: Your quarterback is playing great. This is the Eli Manning you expected to see this year?

A: Eli has been a good quarterback for a long time. The thing about it is, the guy threw for 4,000 yards and 30 touchdowns last year but the turnovers, the interceptions were really unusual for him to have that many. I've said this before, I felt he was trying to do too much. I think he realized he was trying to do too much. He had a banged up offensive line, banged up receiver corps, and you're just trying to bail the offensive line out too many times and get rid of the ball and put the ball in harm's way. Unfortunately he came up with several interceptions that he wishes he could take back. But he's one of those guys who can self-correct. He and I talked about it, a sack is a good play sometimes. Just live for another day, for the next down, or punt the ball and we'll have a good chance to win if we cut down on turnovers.

Q: How do you balance that? How do you say 'don't be too aggressive, but still be aggressive'?

A: He's a smart guy. It's not like he should go out there and play scared. You never go out there and play scared. You always go out there and sling it. But it's different from going out there and trying to fit it in a tight window, it's different than making those left0handed throws or some of those things where he put the ball in harm's way trying to get rid of the ball. Those kinds of things. He's more careful with the ball in respect to those kinds of throws but he definitely going to go out there and sling it. He's not afraid to let it go.

Q: So no more left-handed throws?

A: I hope not. I hope not.

Q: You obviously took some heat during the preseason when Kevin (Boss) and Steve (Smith) left. Do you feel a little vindicated about that now that you are 6-2 and those two guys in particular haven't been having impact seasons?

A: No, not at all. Taking heat is part of this job. It's a job where you have to make some decisions and you have to make those decisions in the now. You can't wait until Week 8 and say 'He was right' or 'He was wrong.' I had to make the decisions right now. And it's not always my decision. We sit down as a staff. We don't just make this stuff up. We say 'This is what we'll do' and 'This is what we won't do' and 'This is who we're going after.' We have lots of meetings about personnel and which direction we want to go in, what the scenarios are if this happens or that happens. We meet a lot about our plan. We had a gameplan after the lockout was over and we stuck to our plan. Right now we're in good position but it's a heck of a long way to go.

Q: When Kevin left, a lot of people thought you'd bring in a veteran tight end. Even the coaching staff has said they've been surprised what they're getting from Jake Ballard. Was that something you were strongly considering?

A: We thought Ballard would be the big blocking tight end who has the big body and could develop into the big blocker, but again, (scout) Steve Devine's report, when you look at his report, he said the guy doesn't get many opportunities as a receiver but when he does he really has soft hands, surprisingly soft hands for such a big man. We thought he;d be the blocker and we thought Travis (Beckum) would be the receiving tight end and then Travis goes out and he has hamstring issues. He still hasn't found a niche in the offense but I think he will. We thought Bear (Pascoe) would be what Bear is, he does some tight end stuff, some fullback, some H-back stuff. So we thought we could get by with a tight end by committee, get that done. We did look to see if there is a veteran tight end out there, but we felt like guys had an opportunity to step up and we liked the guys we had in-house. We did bring a couple of veteran-type journeymen in and things didn't work out. But Jake has made the best of his opportunity.

Q: It seemed like things got a little personal with you and Osi this offseason and during the preseason. Do you think it did and what is your relationship like now?

A: I don't think anything is personal when it comes to contracts and things in the offseason. It's never personal for me. Osi can speak for himself, but we had really good conversations and I don't think it was personal for him either. The offseason stuff is in the offseason and there's really nothing for me to talk about until the next offseason. We got things ironed out and Osi is playing terrific right now and I hope he continues to play great.

Q: Was it difficult that he had his testimony (an affidavit in which he said Reese promised him he'd get a new contract or be traded), and then you're in the middle of a lockout so you can't call him up and say 'Come on in, let's talk about this'?

A: I really don't want to talk about that That's not an issue for us right now. We're in the middle of the season, we're looking forward to playing the 49ers, so to talk about that, that stuff is behind us right now. I'm not going to make any comments about that because it doesn't help anything at all. It's inappropriate to even talk about that at this point.

Q: Your other defensive end, Justin Tuck, in 2009 he played through a shoulder injury but said he found it was difficult for him to be a leader when he was injured. He's obviously been banged up this first half of the year. Have you seen that affect his leadership on this team?

A: Justin is one of those guys, he's not a big talker. He likes to let his play do the talking for him and he probably feels like: 'I really can't carry my weight like I normally would because I have this neck thing and the groin, I'm really not myself. So you really can't see the real me, which is how I lead by example.' He's probably talking about that when he says he hasn't been able to lead the way he wants to lead. It's because he hasn't been able to play the way he wants to play. But he's doing a good job being a leader for us, a terrific leader for us.

Q: You're one of the few guys who has seen what your first two draft picks are capable of from when you were scouting them. Neither of them has taken a snap so far this year. Is that promising? Troubling? What do you make of them?

A: It's unfortunate, but injuries happen. Marvin gets a pectoral tear that ended his season right away and Prince breaks his foot in his second day of practice right away out of the gate. So it's disappointing and unfortunate that neither one of them have been on the field for us so far. Prince looks like he has a chance to be back in the near future. We don't want to hurry him back too soon and have a setback but hopefully he'll be a bonus for us going down the stretch in the latter part of the season and be able to give us some support back there in the secondary.

Q: You have two players who had season-ending injuries, Terrell Thomas and Jonathan Goff, who have contracts that are up at the end of this year. Do we look at how you handled Mathias Kiwanuka and Steve Smith (who were free agents coming off season-ending injuries last year) and say that's the Giants' blueprint for that situation?

A: No. There's no blueprint for anything. It's another thing that's inappropriate to talk about at this point. We're right in the middle of the season. We'll address those things during the offseason. Those are offseason issues and right now it really doesn't make sense for anybody to make any comments on those things.

Q: I know you were rankled at the idea that you guaranteed a playoff berth in the preseason, but you were certainly confident that you would make the playoffs.

A: Sure. And I'm still confident of that. I said I believe that we'll make the plays this time and give ourselves a chance to be in the playoffs and I still believe that. I still believe we'll get in the playoffs and have a chance to make a run. I'm not going to back off of that. But it got spun as a guarantee. I never said guarantee. Spin it however you want to spin it. But I do believe in our football team.

Q: Do you look at what the Packers did last year with their injury situation and say: That could be us, we could have that storyline this year?

A: You never use injuries as an excuse. We'll let somebody else do that. The next guy up has to be ready to play. Everybody we bring in here, everybody gets paid, everybody has a job to do, and it's the next man up. Our coordinators have done a really good job saying 'This is this guy's skill set, so maybe we can't run some of that same offense or the same defense with this new guy.' They've done a good job adjusting to what the personnel has been. Coach Coughlin and his staff have done a good job adjusting to the personnel that we have. The next man up is our mantra. We really feel for the players who have been injured so far this season, but you can never use that as an excuse in pro sports.