Dan Salomone: Football is a true meritocracy. What gets you here doesn’t necessarily keep you here. That was the edict from John Harbaugh on Day 1, and Sunday’s roster deadline was the culmination of his first seven months as head coach of the New York Football Giants.
“Jerry Rosburg used to say, ‘No royalty,'” Harbaugh said earlier this month after a training camp practice in West Virginia, quoting the longtime coach who was part of the Ravens’ Super Bowl XLVII staff. “That’s the way it works in sports. It is good. The best player is the player that plays the best. The best team is the team that plays the best. They prove it on the field. That’s what merit is all about.”
With no signs of slowing down, the Giants kept churning the roster and looking back at the hard evidence. Did he put it on tape?
“That’s a big thing from Harbs,” assistant general manager Brandon Brown said heading into the important roster weekend. “Hey, we’re saying he can do it, let’s see it. Did he put it on tape? Was it in the joint practice with Miami? Was it in a preseason game? Let’s see it.”
The answers to those questions were revealed through practice rotations and ultimately the initial 53-man roster announcement.
“You’ve got to have daily deposits,” Brown said. “And it’s really taking to the instruction and then highlighting the execution and knowing which guys have done it and then continuing to raise the floor in the room or earn a spot in the room. And just being objective, which guys are going to have the best opportunity to make an impact for us on game day, whether it’s active, whether it’s being on practice squad, and knowing that this is going to be the guy that we’re going to go to battle with at the start of the season.”