Love Ed Valentine

There's no shortage of fan-turned-pundit blogs about the NY Giants, but Ed Valentine has always stood head and shoulders above the rest with his high football IQ, and knowledge of complex NFL specific issues like roster composition with a hard annual salary cap. What I always liked about Ed was his ability to deliver on point, often critical, analyses of the state of various Giants teams over the years and leave his natural fan bias out of the equation. I trust Ed's information and analysis over better known team pundits like Ralph Vecchiano, Paul Dottino and Art Stapleton. Despite being the best, Ed was bypassed when Sports Media Companies like SNY, MSG, YES, Bleacher Report, SI, and others began buying up these formerly independent fan blogs mostly due to his honesty about team and his refusal to be corporate funded cheerleader paid to pump out feel-good Giants stories to maximize site traffic. However, in recent years it seems Ed has drastically scaled back his game week posts to the point where he may even go two or three days between entries. His recent written work consists of mostly Mailbag type posts where he answers questions fans submit via Twitter or Email. The questions are rather amateur and not requiring much analysis or thought at all. What's missing is Ed's in depth game week analysis on various issues facing the team at any given time and that is where he often offers insight you don't hear from the lesser quality pundits. He has engaged more in the podcast part of BBV but not enough enough make up for his drop in written work. If I had one issue with this podcast and why I didn't give 5 stars it has to be the inclusion of the far too frequent fantasy football shows that have come under BBV's umbrella. It also seems shoddy and almost amateur-like to have the same host for both the league-wide NFL wrapup show and the fantasy football show. Anyone who has played fantasy football while also possessing a high acumen of the X's & O's of the game itself knows the two are not compatible with one another whatsoever. Some of the best football minds are just horrible in fantasy football because success in the latter has very little relation to the games where the stats are accumulated. There's a reason why so many math nerds have become highly successful fantasy football players despite never playing a single down a day in their lives or even bothering to watch football as a fan their entire pre-fantasy lives. It is what it is though. Bottom line is that it's good to hear Ed on the shows but his biggest impact is on the writing end and I'd like to see him delegate more of the podcast aspect of BBV to others and return to what made him successful all those years ago.

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