Kevin Gilbride is retired now, so he can say and voice whatever feeling he chooses now.
The former Giants offensive coordinator told the SiriusXM NFL radio that Eli Manning didn’t have a chance this year behind that Giants inept o-line.
“It just made it impossible for our quarterback to function,” Gilbride said Tuesday night on SiriusXM NFL radio. “”[Eli Manning is] a guy where if you give him enough time, he’s always going to be throwing the ball to the right person. He’s going to know what you’re doing defensively. He’s going to see through your disguises. He’s going to be an accurate passer. But he’s not a scrambler, and you’ve got to give him some help. And if you give him some help he’s proven that he can win a championship for you.”
The comments were Gilbrides first since announcing his retirement. Gilbride fired shots at the Giants offensive line and a receivers group that perform as expected.
“I think philosophically we modified substantially what we normally do,” he said. “We’ve been kind of a dynamic, explosive throw the ball down the field, let your guys go do a lot of vertical read stretch principles and we had abandoned those. You can’t do it because your quarterback would be on his back while waiting for those things to happen. You became much more conservative, much more three-step oriented, which was good for a while but then people, they’re smart on that side of the ball and they identified fairly quickly what your weakness are and realize what your adjustments have been and they take those things away. When we had to expand what we wanted to do, that’s when our shortcomings manifested themselves.’’
”Victor Cruz still played very well on the inside for us, but it became readily apparent to defenses we weren’t playing as well on the outside with the outside receiver positions,” he said. “You tried to throw some three-step fades and fade-stops, of course they’re sitting on those things. If the Giants can get the wide out position straightened out, the outside receiver, not the inside because between Victor Cruz and the emergence of Jerrel Jernigan at the end that will help.’’
Gilbride didn’t mention Hakeem Nicks at all, which is telling in itself.