There's a terrific Q&A with Kevin Gilbride posted over at Giants.com.
Gilbride, the new offensive coordinator, is pretty open in his assessment of the various question marks surrounding the Giants offense this season.
Here are a couple of snippets.
On Eli Manning
"The thing that's difficult is that we've put a lot of stuff in. You spend the whole off-season seeing what you did, seeing what areas you did well in, what areas are voids in your offense that you'd like to experiment with so we do some new things. We've got some guys that maybe haven't been here the whole time, their reactions aren't always what they are supposed to be just yet. When we get that resolved, then we'll see if he can make the step that we all want. It's not like we don't see glimpses of it, because we do. We see performances that are as good as anybody's. We just need to see the consistency."
On Brandon Jacobs
"I think he's a special guy. There are a lot of big guys, but he is exceptionally big and strong and physical and I think he is going to wear people down. My concern is whether he can stay healthy, because even though he is administering a lot of the hits, he is taking them, too. Tiki was special with his improvisation ability. I don't know that Brandon will have that. But he is a physical guy and I think if he can stay healthy, after a period of time in every game, he is going to start wearing people down and hopefully that will pay off for us."
On the biggest question marks
"Obviously, the left tackle position is a big one. I think when you look at when we lost Luke (Petitgout) and we lost (wide receiver) Amani (Toomer) last season and then all the sudden we went from one of the best offenses in the league to one that's in the middle of the pack, which is something you'd like to avoid. Then you add on that you lost an outstanding football player in Tiki (Barber, who retired), so the challenges are obvious - just finding the personnel, seeing who can do what, seeing if some of those young receivers can come up, what can they do, what do they do that we can count on in the crunch time. Then I think certainly the running back position, seeing who can do what."
Personally, I am looking forward to seeing what Gilbride and the Giants offense can do in the post-Tiki Era.
Your thoughts?