The New York Giants have made some solid moves in their history, but like every team, there are a few they regret — including these three trades
There were some questionable moves made recently by outgoing New York Giants general manager Dave Gettelman that seemed destined to be a disaster. The biggest example was trading Odell Beckham, Jr. to the Cleveland Browns, but in the end, that move wound up looking better for New York than Cleveland.
However, there were several other trades that took place for this franchise before then that didn’t pan out. Here we look deeper into three of the worst trades the Giants have ever made.
Worst trades in New York Giants history
3. Trading Fran Tarkenton back to the Vikings
Fran Tarkenton is known for his success as a quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings, but some often forget he spent some time with the Giants in between two stints with Minnesota. After playing for the Vikings from 1961 through 1966, Tarkenton was traded to the Giants.
He played well overall, but the team was just 33-36 with him as the starter and never made the playoffs. In desperation to get better, they sent Tarkenton back to the Vikings for a couple of draft picks and quarterback Norm Snead.
New York seemed to be doing fine in this move at first since Snead led them to an 8-5 mark in 1972 but then they managed to win just two more games with him.
As for Tarkenton, he played seven more seasons with Minnesota and they never fared worse than 7-7 while putting up three campaigns with at least 10 wins. It’s safe to say this is one they likely regretted as they let a Hall of Famer go.
2. Sending Jason Pierre-Paul to Tampa Bay
One of the trades Dave Gettelman did make that ended up on this list came in the 2018 season when he gave up on pass rusher Jason Pierre-Paul.
The former 15th overall pick out of South Florida came back from a firework accident that caused part of his hand to be amputated and became a solid pass rusher once again. However, he had 15.5 sacks in 2016 and 2017 which wasn’t the same as when he was putting up double-digits.
Still, he was causing problems for the opposing quarterback even if his numbers weren’t elite. Despite this, Gettelman sent JPP to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for a mere third-round pick.
His reasoning for the trade was that he didn’t believe Pierre-Paul was a fit in their new 3-4 scheme — of course, if a good player doesn’t fit your scheme, you might have a bugger problem but that’s for another day.
Pierre-Paul thrived in Tampa Bay, putting up 58 tackles and 12.5 sacks in his first season with them. Ironically enough, JPP moved to outside linebacker when they moved to a 3-4, and surprisingly enough — since he’s a good player — he did just fine and had 18 sacks in 2019 and 2020 combined.
1. Adding Craig Morton from Dallas
From 1964 through the first half of the 1974 campaign, Craig Morton was a quarterback for the Giants’ rivals, the Dallas Cowboys. He became a starter full-time in 1969 and was 10-2-1 and put together a couple more winning seasons after that.
Morton lost his job to Roger Staubach but had another 10-win campaign in 1972 when the popular starter was injured for the entire season.
From there, Morton went back to holding the clipboard until six games into the 1974 campaign when the Giants sent Dallas two draft picks to land Morton, who they used to replace Norm Snead who was added in their previously mentioned trade of Fran Tarkenton.
The worst part of that trade is that the first pick ended up being the No. 2 overall selection since New York didn’t get any better once Morton arrived.
Dallas then used that pick on Randy White who wound up becoming one of the more popular defensive tackles in the NFL while being named to the Pro Bowl nine times and the All-Pro Team seven times.
As for Morton, he lasted just over two seasons with New York and the team went 8-25 with him under center. Even worse, he completed just 52.1 percent of his passes for 5,734 yards with a 29-to-49 touchdown-to-interception ratio.
There’s not much worse that could happen in a trade than severely strengthening a rival while not improving your own team in the least.