FanNation - The Republic of Sport

Well the New York Giants brass and Head Coach Tom Coughlin, have come together to make three rather large roster moves. They decision to cut Laver Arrington, Luke Petitgout, and Carlos Emmons come as a shock to some, but a nice reality for those with more vision than what "could have been." The Giants organization seemingly made these moves all on the merit of injuries, as each one of these players couldn't stay on the field the entire season to propel the Giants into the upper echelon of teams in the NFL. Each player has had their difficulty this year, and with Petitgout's broken leg, rehab was a hard stretch, especially since cutting him saved around $3.4 million dollars. This opens a bit up for the Giants because David Diehl can move over to that spot, and start Rich Seubert in the guard spot. This means that Shaun O’Hara must be overjoyed because he is almost guaranteed to be rejoining the Giants next year. In other news on the offensive line, Bob Whitfield has decided to retire after a 15 year NFL career, culminated by two costly 15 yard HEADBUTTING penalties last season. Good riddance, Bob! His retirement, coupled with Tiki's retirement brings the overall cap room to around $20 million. Carlos Emmons was cut, and that was easy to see coming because he couldn't stay healthy long enough on the field to complete a 16 game season as a Giant. Lavar's was a bit more controversial, but I had no problem in seeing him go. Sure, he has uncanny athletic ability, but Giants fans only saw that in one game this season...the game in which he was also injured with a torn Achilles tendon. That is not enough to keep him around, especially with all of his health question marks. So since there was only a net savings of $1.1 million after the 3 cuts, it is obvious that these cuts were due to the unwillingness to pay guys money that can't stay on the field and perform. Looking around in free agency, there are a lot of guys out there, and I look for the Giants to try and snag two of the top guys...perhaps a linebacker and a corner. In the draft, however, don't forget that the CB out of Texas, Aaron Ross, looks good and might drop down to where the Giants can scoop him up. U of Texas grooms their corners very nice and it would be great to see a Texas guy out their playing his butt off. I am not 100% sold on Asante Samuel or Nate Clements because I do not know their asking price, but once that comes more apparent, rest assured that I will have an opinion. In other news...Wade Phillips has been named the new Head Coach in Dallas. His son is the QB coach at Baylor. 'Nuff said. Look for the Cowboys to regress a bit on the offensive side, and remain about the same on defense, if not a bit regressed. The Cowgirls defense was porous at best on 1st and 2nd downs this season, and I expect that to be better, but not good enough overall to project them deep in the playoffs. There will be too many good teams competing after free agency starts on March 2nd and the draft begins to light up. The NFC should become big winners due to their overall poor performance last season. Draft spots are in their hands and FA's may go flocking because there is a lot of money on the side of the NFL (more than $20 million). San Francisco and Arizona each have a considerable amount of money to spend under the cap (totaling around $79 million) so look for them to be big spenders and go for it all. The Giants are going to look for a RB, CB (maybe 2), WR, OL, DT, LB. Not in that order, but those are the needs.