Tecmo’s New York Giants are stacked. As in Sir Mix-a-Lot, Baby Got Back stacked. Offense or defense, backfield or secondary, the Giants lack weakness. The Houston Oilers may have Warren Moon and a three-headed WR monster, but RB Lorenzo White has severe fumblitis. Philly’s fastest skill player is QB Eagles. The Raiders’ playbook limits Bo Jackson. Even the great teams have issues.
…Except the Giants. RB Ottis Anderson is slow-footed but with god-like power and near-perfect ball control. Dave Meggit, Mark Ingram Sr. and Stephen Baker form a lethal skill corps. The DL is solid and Lawrence Taylor is the Tecmo equivalent of Zeus, throwing bolts of lightning to smite mere mortals below. Anything left gets eaten by CB Everson Walls and New York’s impressive secondary.
Picking a bad Giant comes down to splitting hairs. It’s like criticizing Anna Kendrick: there’s certainly flaws to be found, but if you’re that close, there’s probably better things to do.
That said, the Tecmo Giants could be better. Teams like San Francisco, Houston, Philadelphia (hell, even Cleveland) start with a distinct advantage over the New York Football Giants: a top-flight quarterback.
That’s right, the bad player on Tecmo‘s best team is QB1 Phil Simms (I said we were splitting hairs here, remember?).
Tecmogeek.com ranks Simms 8th overall among TSB signal callers. It’s a fair ranking; in TSB’s most crucial QB stat–Pass Control[1]–Simms scores a respectable 63. It’s not Joe Montana’s 81, but its well above the average score of 44.
Unfortunately, Simms had a well-earned reputation for being a statue in the pocket. Drafted from Kentucky’s Morehead State in 1979, by the time TSB rolled around, Simms was an NFL gray-hair. Tecmo rightly scored Simms with 13 Maximum Speed, 2nd worst only to Steve Grogan and a few others. He’s liable to get tripped by the grass growing under his feet.
Tangential to his snail speed, Simms gets a paltry 50 Passing Speed. It’s above the average PS score of 44, but just barely. Remember, Simms is 35 years old in Tecmo Super Bowl; his days of throwing lasers had passed. Think of Tecmo Simms as late-career Greg Maddux: fireballs gone, he made a living on crafty, accurate throws.
Give Phil Simms John Elway’s Max Speed of 25 and the Giants’ playbook opens up. Up his passing speed to Warren Moon’s 69 and his receivers gain an extra step. It’s not that Phil Simms is bad in TSB, it’s just that, surrounded by TNT, he’s a sparkler. He’s a hairs-width from being painfully average on a team of superstars.
You could replace Tecmo Simms with a lesser QB and the Giants wouldn’t lose much. Unlike our “Bo Knows Overrated” column, we’re not just spouting rhetorical hogwash[2]. A few fractured metatarsals prove it.
On December 15, 1990, in what turned out to be a Super Bowl preview against the Buffalo Bills[3], Phil Simms fractured his right foot[4]. Put on season-ending injured reserve, the Giants’ playoff hopes fell squarely to journeyman backup Jeff Hostetler. Helmed by one of TSB‘s absolute worst quarterbacks, one would expect doom and gloom over the Meadowlands.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the Super Bowl. Hostetler didn’t play poorly. He didn’t play “just well enough.” Career backup Jeff Hostetler shone to the point most expected a heated QB battle come training camp[5].
In his 14 starts Phil Simms completed 59.16% of his passes and earned a QB rating of 92.7.
In his 5 starts (2 regular season and 3 playoff games) Jeff Hostetler completed 57.11% of his passes and earned a QB rating of 93.44.
Statisticians will cry foul over Hostetler’s smaller sample size, but he also played against better opponents. Old Hoss absolutely thrashed the Chicago’s powerhouse defense, winning the divisional round 31-3 with a 117 QB rating. It boils down to this: NYG replaced an All-Pro QB with an also-ran and got the exact same results. Numbers don’t lie.
This “Hostetler Effect”[6] is actually hard-coded into TSB. The Giants’ season simulation data has their offense depending heavily on the run. Regardless of QB, TSB almost always puts the Giants atop the NFC East with the conference’s best running attack and worst air game.
For a more tangible representation of how Simms compares to top-flight QBs, simply swap him onto the NFC Pro Bowl roster in place of the backup QB Eagles. Playing the first half with starter Joe Montana and the second with Phil Simms shows how Simms’ lack of mobility and sometimes errant arm can be a pain.
Tecmo Phil Simms isn’t a bad quarterback, he just stands a little shorter than the Giants around him.
NOTES:
[1] I can’t hear “pass control” without hearing Prince sing about controlling something else entirely.
[2] Okay, okay, I admit: I was only trying to kick a hornets’ nest with that one.
[3] A game, many forget, the Bills actually won despite losing Jim Kelly to injury.
[4] Even today, some reports still insist Simms’ injury was not a fracture but a severe sprain. It seems such claims stem from then-coach Bill Parcells’ habit of lying to the media about his players’ injuries.
[5] Hostetler in fact won the QB job the following season and went back and forth with Simms until signing with the Raiders in 1993.
[6] “The Hostetler Effect” sounds like a movie would be written, directed by and starring Ashton Kutcher.
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