NFL New York Giants

New York Giants Deserved At Least One Pro Bowl Selection

Fresh Videos

By @Bigwoolf5

New York Giants, Odell Beckham Jr., Eli Manning

Robert Deutsch-USA Today Sports

The Pro Bowl teams were announced on Tuesday evening and the original rosters didn’t have a single player from the New York Giants on it. Odell Beckham Jr. is a first alternate and Jason Pierre-Paul is a fourth alternate, so they will likely have a representative at the actual game; but the Giants deserved to have at least one player selected to the original team.

Yes, the Giants only have six wins, and yes, they are going to miss the playoffs, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that some of their players are having tremendous years. Before the teams were announced it seemed as though the Giants had four legitimate candidates for Pro Bowl selection in Beckham Jr., Pierre-Paul, Johnathan Hankins and Eli Manning. While four would have been over the top for a team that has looked as bad as the Giants have at points this season, zero is unfair.

The best candidate without a doubt is Beckham Jr., who will likely play in the game after players inevitably bow out. Beckham Jr. is the clear front-runner in the rookie of the year race and has taken the league by storm since missing the first four games of the season with a hamstring injury. Calvin Johnson made the roster, and Beckham Jr. has better numbers than Megatron across the board — and by a significant margin too.

The way the teams are selected is by one-third player vote, one-third coaches vote and one-third fan vote. Yes, Megatron is very popular among fans, but he has not been himself this year. It is a surprise to see that the coaches and the players thought Johnson was more deserving than Beckham.

The other three Giants mentioned earlier can all be argued obviously, but the best argument for them comes from Pro Football Focus and advanced metrics. Pierre-Paul has 10.5 sacks this season, which is good enough for 11th best in the league and is tied for the league lead in tackles by a defensive lineman. Furthermore, Pierre-Paul is rated by Pro Football Focus as the best defensive end against the run and rated as the second-best defensive end overall this season. Sounds like a Pro Bowler to me.

For defensive tackles it is sometimes hard to decipher who is having a good enough year to warrant Pro Bowl selection, and because of that they usually give it to guys with the biggest reputation. Hankins though, has the stats. He has 7.5 sacks this season which is fifth among defensive tackles, and Pro Football Focus ranks him as a top-five defensive tackle this season. Again, sounds like a Pro Bowler.

Manning is an interesting case because his name has never even been brought up in the Pro Bowl discussion, but it probably should have been. Manning ranks in the top 10 in both passing yards and passing touchdowns while keeping his turnovers low. Manning also ranks sixth in the NFL in total QBR. Six quarterbacks were selected for the Pro Bowl roster — the top five in QBR and Andrew Luck. Manning’s total QBR this season is significantly better than Luck’s, but Luck is second in the league in passing yards and passing touchdowns so his inclusion makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is that Manning isn’t even in the conversation or an alternate for the Pro Bowl.

Pro Football Focus and QBR are by no means perfect measures of a player’s performance, but at this moment they are the best measurements available. The numbers show that the Giants should have realistically had three Pro Bowlers this season, and while one or maybe two of them may end up playing in the game, the team as a whole should feel like they got snubbed.

Share Tweet
Trending Now on