It might seem like the rest of the NFL is copying the Seahawks’ defensive blueprint this offseason, but Perry Fewell thinks the Seahawks are just copying the Giants.
Specifically, the 2007 and 2011 editions of the Big Blue defense that — like their Seattle counterpart this past February — paved the way for a Super Bowl victory.
“When I look at Seattle, I thought that the back end and the front end [of the defense] were pretty good,” Fewell said Thursday after the Giants wrapped up their three-day mandatory mini-camp. “I thought they looked like the New York Giants in ’07 [and] ’11.”
Fewell, who wasn’t even with the Giants in 2007 (he was the Bills’ defensive coordinator that season), then doubled down on his eye-opening claim.
“I thought they were a carbon copy of the New York Giants,” Fewell said. “I just think that they had good personnel and played good football and executed at a high level.”
Fewell didn’t elaborate, but he apparently was referring to the combination of a stiff pass rush and playmaking secondary that led the way for the Giants in each of those two championship seasons.
That’s because Big Blue certainly didn’t have the big cornerbacks and ridiculously physical safeties who keyed Seattle’s suffocating Lombardi Trophy run last season.
Even if the comparison didn’t entirely hold up to scrutiny, it was a clear sign the confident, borderline-brash side of Fewell’s personality is back.
That version of Fewell had all but disappeared during a brutal 2012 season, when the Giants slumped to 31st in the NFL in total defense — a big reason why they missed the playoffs a year after winning the Super Bowl and why Fewell heard calls for his job.
But while the Giants again missed out on the postseason last year, it wasn’t because of Fewell’s defense. That unit improved dramatically in 2013, finishing eighth in total yards and providing the only bright spots in a 7-9 finish that forced his counterpart on offense, Kevin Gilbride, into retirement.
Another top-10 finish on defense this year would be an achievement, though, considering Fewell’s reward during the offseason was general manager Jerry Reese’s decision to let two of the Giants’ top defensive linemen — Justin Tuck and Linval Joseph — depart in free agency and cut troubled-but-talented safety Will Hill.
Fewell also could be without the heart of his defense for a big chunk of the season, after middle linebacker Jon Beason, who was a revelation after joining the Giants in Week 5 last year, recently suffered a fracture and a ligament tear in his foot.
Beason opted not to have surgery, and team doctors say he could be back in time for the start of the regular season, but Fewell knows there are no certainties when it comes to injuries.
Even so, the Giants added some versatile veterans in the secondary in former Bronco Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, ex-Seahawk Walter Thurmond and former Chief Quintin Demps, and they also have playmaking safety Stevie Brown back from knee surgery.
“I don’t see why there has to be any drop-off from last year,” safety Antrel Rolle said. “We’ve still got the talent to be one of the best defenses in the league.”
That might explain why Fewell was smiling and upbeat Thursday instead of appearing the least bit concerned about running an overhauled unit that will need many young, unproven players to prove themselves quickly in 2014 if the Giants hope to end their playoff drought.
Fewell calls them “tools in his tool box,” and he’s eager to see what they can do.
“I definitely think those tools allow us to do a lot more different things than we have done in the past,” he said. “We will definitely find out in the fall camp.
“I was very excited about what we were able to install [during the offseason workouts], some of the things we were able to do, the information they retained and executed at a high level. So yeah, it will be fun. I think it will be a lot of fun.”