I had a busy weekend but at some point, while checking on Giants training camp, an old Something Awful forum post came to mind. Back in 2011, maybe midseasonish, probably during the Giants 4-game loss streak (I can’t find the original post), a Giants fan user in the SA football Funhouse forum made an instantly infamous bad post. It was a longer post, mostly complaining about whatever recent failure the Giants achieved because sports fans are emotional morons, but the true bit that made it stand out among a sea of the usual gripes was the sentence (paraphrased): “The Giants have had a decade of spectacular failure, outside 2007”.

It was, obviously, immediately mocked and torn to shreds. A single super bowl win in a decade pretty much automatically makes it a successful decade unless you are a Patriots fan. It was a post made in irrational frustration, and even its valid points were kind of iffy. Yeah, the Giants had some silly fuckups in the 2000’s. The Ravens super bowl, the choke against the 49ers, the Eli draft debacle, the embarrassing loss to the Panthers in the playoffs, Tiki Barber’s 2006 drama, Plax shooting himself, the Miracle at the New Meadowlands. But at the same time, the team had stayed competitive through most of those seasons, had a stable QB and coach, and oh yeah, won the super bowl once. The poster originally doubled down and tried to explain the particular angle he was coming from but he got laughed out of the thread. Of course, the Giants would then win a second super bowl a couple of months later, cementing the post as legend to the point where even the original poster was laughing at it.

It’s been over a decade since that post. As we go into the 2022 season, it’s clear that poor poster was merely…ahead of his time. It took 10 years, but it actually happened. The Giants, since winning it all in February of 2012, have been a trainwreck of failure. We’d be looked upon with far more pity and disdain if we hadn’t had those two runs within recent memory. The post-46 years featured the line falling apart and irreparably breaking Eli’s brain, horrific draft whiffs like Ereck Flowers, Tom Coughlin losing his touch and then a power struggle, John Mara going from being considered a decent owner to one of the most despised in the league, a scumbag kicker, Ben Fucking McAdoo, Pat Shurmur, Joe Judge all in a row, DAVID GETTLEMAN, our only star of the decade also being a gigantic drama bomb, JPP BLOWING HIS HAND OFF, our only playoff appearance since the Superbowl being ruined by a boat party, I could just keep going. At least we got a medium pepsi out of the deal. It’s officially been a decade of spectacular failure. OG poster, if by chance you are reading this…you were right. Just not when you made the post.

Anyway, fun bit of trivia: That same poster at some point that season asked if someone could combine a screaming face emoji the forums have (:stonk:) with a New York Giants helmet. I did it, and that resulting photoshop eventually became the logo I’ve used for all my online avatars since. So thanks, that guy.

I started TheDrawPlay a month or two after the season ended. I’m not sure when I actually made the page live, as I was making comics and stuff for the forums well before I collected them all here and kept going. I have no idea when my “10 year anniversary” should actually be, but I realized while making this post that I already passed it. The Giants may have spent a decade being a joke, but so did I, only I was doing it on purpose. Thanks for reading my stupid shit for 10 years.