Giants offensive line out to prove NFL-worst assessment wrong: ‘On our shoulders’
NY Post
To celebrate a 20-year anniversary, a new generation of Giants offensive linemen were gifted the same biting criticism that once helped to fuel a transformation.
During a preseason broadcast in 2004, then-ESPN analyst Joe Theismann declared that the Giants — after finishing No. 31 in sacks allowed and No. 28 in rushing yards the season prior — had the NFL’s worst offensive line.
There was no way to know then that newcomers Shaun O’Hara and Chris Snee would become culture-changers, and Theismann’s words would become a multiyear rallying cry for the foundational pieces of two Super Bowl winners.
“We wore that like a badge of honor,” O’Hara recalled years later. “We were not going to let them say that about us.”
The more things change, the more they stay the same: Theismann is retired, but a different authoritative voice — analytics-based Pro Football Focus — ranked the Giants as the NFL’s worst offensive line after the draft and free agency, writing that “even after earning the worst offensive line grade of any team in 2023, the Giants did very little to improve their unit this offseason.”
Right guard Jon Runyan Jr. — whose three-year, $30 million contract was the biggest free-agent outlay aimed at improving the No. 30-ranked scoring offense — disagrees with that assessment.
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