Happy 10 Years, Sorta
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.
*rocket-pop salute* Here’s to the next 10.
Damn it really has been a decade. I started reading this page in middle school and now I’m about to graduate college… Time flies, huh?
Congrats man. Keep up the great work.
Man, a lot of my favorite creators are celebrating 10 year anniversaries. You, Markiplier, Game Grumps, Jacksepticeye…
Congrats, and hopefully you’ll keep making great content for much longer.
Thank you so much for everything you’ve done this last decade. My days are always a little brighter when a new cartoon is posted.
Congrats, Dave! (Even if you are a dirty Giants fan.)
Your content has been great man. I don’t remember exactly when I started, but it was somewhere in the first 20-30 comics. I remember when it was 4 comics a week, and it was on the alternate days from the other webcomic I follow (Ctrl Alt Delete).
I’ve had many laugh out loud moments from your work over the years. Always look forward to it, always bummed when you’re taking a (understandably needed) break. Please keep it going!
I may be a bit of a newer fan but I’ve very much enjoyed your work. I hope you’re able to continue drawing these comics for a long, long time. Here’s to 10 more years!
Happy Anniversary! May you have many more successful years. Lord knows, the NFL is providing you with stuff to draw about.
Great stuff today, Dave. Heck, a great decade of stuff from you, but today is a particularly great example of a lot of the things that you do well as a cartoonist and as a creator of jokes and visual gags.
Congrats and thank you for the 10 years. I’m a more recent convert (2-3 years), but I plan to read the whole backcatalog someday!
On the Giants note, I see both sides of that poster’s opinion. I agree that a Super Bowl win washes away almost all sins for the decade, but I’m not quite all the way to saying it forgives everything. And Eli/Coughlin/Giants present one of the most interesting cases to test that. Outside of those 2 championship seasons, they don’t have a single playoff win, and I believe it’s only 3 appearances. Sure the Lions/Browns/Texans type teams out there would kill for that still. But would other fan bases (especially if it was only 1 Super Bowl, like when the original post was made)? I don’t know. A lot of my other sports fandom is for less successful teams who I’ve never seen win it all, or only once, and I do treasure those championship memories… but I hate those other years of dysfunction. Some days I’d rather having a decade of being solid with some success but no ring.
Sports make us all weird. There aren’t many other contexts where 1 good year mixed in with 9+ surrounding terrible years would equal a generally positive feeling. Try applying that to a job, or to a marriage, and I doubt you’d have even remotely positive feelings at the end, regardless of the good year. But somehow it CAN work with one championship.
Championships are kinda weird in the way they make everything else meaningless. I don’t get any joy from the fact the Patriots had a perfect season because they failed to won a championship. Yet in all other respects that was a great season. Doesn’t matter, didn’t win a championship
Agreed. Nothing really worse than losing a superbowl because of how hard it is to get there.
Started reading this a few years back when your picks of the week comics were featured on Uproxx. Have been here ever since. One of my favorite sites.
Also, I’m a Redskins/Team/ Commanders fan, so here’s to Year 31 of our Spectacular Failure!
Mara’s one of the most despised men in the league? I’m not saying he’s a saint, but I don’t hear him mentioned with Snyder, Haslam, and Ross.
Don’t forget good ol’ Jerry Jones!
Mara may not have the sheer quantity of transgressions than Snyder does or the one incredibly evil act like the Haslams, but he does have a few notable marks on his record that other owners don’t have, from almost singlehandedly bringing the taunting rule into existence to the whole Josh Brown debacle.
Also it’s hilarious to think that not one, not two, but THREE of the NFL’s most famous evil owners call the NFCE home: Snyder, Jones, and Mara. May the Chaos Lair never cease to entertain us.
You are the only one doing this work, and it is needed and amazing. Thank YOU for 10 years
This is the only thread i remember from Something Awful: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2243176
We could also talk about the 3 years between their two SuperBowl wins in which they failed to win a single playoff game and only even made it to the playoffs 1 of the 3 years. To my knowledge this is the only time this has ever happened to a team between two SuperBowl winning seasons.
Then follow that up with a decade of no playoff wins and 9 years with no playoffs at all.
In fact even in the 6 years pervious to the 2007 miracle the Giants won no playoff games.
If you look at the last 20 years of the giants and omit 2007 and 2011 it’s pretty goddamn miserable looking, and the more and more those two seasons look like absolute flukes.
The Football Gods came to John Mara, Tom Coughlin, and Eli in turn, proclaiming: “Behold, we bringest thou an offer. Thy fields shall lie fallow for nigh upon twenty seasons, thy livestock stricken with disease, thy wells contaminated with plague, and but for a medium pepsi, thy fans provided with nothing to see them through the coming darkness but poor leadership after poor leadership. But. Twice shall thou vanquish Satan himself upon the field of football, and stand atop the mountain alone to bask in thy victories. Dost thou accept?”
And knowing what I know now, and if it was me given that offer, I would jump up and down screaming “YEEEESSSS!” It was f-ing worth the sacrifice. To see Tom Brady, the husk of a human being that he is, lying upon the turf, racked with tears, knowing his main rival’s LITTLE BROTHER defeated him twice and killed the chance of an undefeated season, haunting him for the rest of his days? HAHAHAHAHA! Oh yes, ABSOLUTELY WORTH IT.
Congrats Dave! It’s been awesome
Congrats!
Im sure Jets Fans also feel your pain
congrats mang
My favorite Giants memory from the last 10 years (and this is actually my favorite cuz I’m a Pats fan and astoundingly petty) was when Tom Coughlin called a time out to decide whether to challenge a play, challenged it, and lost the challenge. How you keep your job when you’re that bad at it I could not say, but he stuck around as coach for another 2 years after.
Because he had 2 super bowls
Congrats Dave!
All of my girlfriends football knowledge comes from me trying to explain the background before I show her a comic of yours, and after 10 years, I am proud to report that she can correctly name FIVE players/coaches: “That guy who blew his hand off, the rich guy on the rocket, Walrus Man, Kermit the Frog, and Gronk”
Your comics always provide the kind of little mid-day pick-me-up that makes a bad day bearable and a good day even better. Thanks for the last 10 years of improved days!
I found this site because a blog stole one of your draft day pictures. I thought the drawing style was neat so I reverse image searched it and ended up here. All these years later and I’m still here along with a huge fan community. Dave must be doing something right.
Thanks for the funny Dave, and here’s to many more years!
Here’s hoping the Giants’ streak of one title a decade continues but it won’t be easy, that’s for certain. If it does continues, maybe they’ll become the first SB winners with a losing record in the regular season.