New York Giants: Ereck Flowers nightmare continues

New York Giants offensive tackle Ereck Flowers looked like he didn’t belong in the NFL in the team’s loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Optimistic New York Giants fans who aren’t ready to show offensive tackle Ereck Flowers the door following his performance against the Jacksonville Jaguars in the regular season opener, a 20-15 loss for Big Blue, have an excuse.

Those fans may point to the fact that the Jags have one of the best defenses in the NFL and also that Flowers cannot possibly play worse than he did in Week 1. The Monday after the first Sunday of the season is notorious for overreactions, but that doesn’t mean the hot takes voiced and typed about Flowers aren’t accurate.

New head coach Pat Shurmur moving Flowers from left tackle to the right side of the line was a necessary evil if the Giants were going to keep the 24-year old on the roster and in the lineup. The 2015 first-round pick failed his new coach in spectacular fashion, beginning with a pair of penalties on two of the first three plays of the afternoon.

That series wasn’t a one-off. Granted, Flowers was responsible for a solid block that helped rookie running back Saquon Barkley sprint for a 68-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter, but that one ordinary play didn’t overshadow all of Flowers’ whiffs and poor technique. Every defensive coordinator who schemes against the Giants will look to exploit Flowers after Sunday’s contest. It was that bad.

Most worrisome is that there is no one thing Flowers can do to improve. Footwork, alone, isn’t the problem. The Giants don’t need to bolster his work ethic. A vote of confidence won’t save his career. He is what he is four seasons into his career, and what he is, unfortunately for player and for club, is a bad football player.

Cutting Flowers ahead of the team’s Week 2 showdown versus the Dallas Cowboys isn’t the answer, as it doesn’t address the hole on the offensive line. The Giants need bodies, and Flowers’ contract, specifically the dead money attached to it, makes releasing him a bad business move. Shurmur doesn’t have to play Flowers, though, and the coach needs to consider every option after reviewing the tape.

Flowers did all of the work asked of him during the offseason and the summer to earn Shurmur’s support. None of that mattered on Sunday. Other than the fact that he was playing on the opposite side of the line, Flowers appeared to be the same product from the 2017 campaign, one many fans believed should have been his last with the Giants.

Quarterback Eli Manning, the greatest signal-caller in franchise history, turns 38 years old next January. Realistically, this could be his final season with the Giants. Now he and his teammates are 0-1, largely because his offensive line failed him and was directly responsible for the pick-six that, in the end, cost New York a victory against an excellent opponent.

The two-time Super Bowl MVP deserves better than having Flowers in front of him. No, Chad Wheeler probably won’t be the team’s long-term tackle past 2018. There are real reasons individuals such as Austin Pasztor are available in the middle of September. The Giants aren’t finding a Pro Bowler deep on the team’s roster or via free agency. That doesn’t mean settling on Flowers is the right call.

Organizations hate to give up on first-round picks when those players don’t make those decisions easy. Nobody blamed the Cleveland Browns for moving on from Justin Gilbert or Johnny Manziel. Breshad Perriman literally couldn’t make the cut for the Baltimore Ravens. Give Flowers and the Giants credit for trying to make this work. Sometimes, it’s just not meant to be.

It is incomprehensible that there is nobody available, signed or unsigned, who could give the Giants at least a “C” grade at right tackle. Flowers can’t do that with any consistency. Starting him against the Cowboys and blindly hoping he will evolve into a reliable lineman is a risk not worth taking during the twilight of Manning’s Hall of Fame career.

The Giants have tried everything to make Flowers worth a spot in the lineup. The team now needs to hand him a seat on the bench for the foreseeable future.