Is it okay to start panicking yet!!
There seems to be one constant about the Giants. They always seem to find a way to make things interesting (to wit difficult) for themselves. After rolling to a dominating 5-0 start that had folks around the NFL whispering Super Bowl, the Giants crashed to a second straight defeat Sunday with a disappointing 24-17 home loss to Arizona. What makes the whole business so confounding is that while it was the defense that got steamrolled in New Orleans two weeks, Sunday’s loss to the Cardinals falls largely at the feet of an offense that sputtered most of the evening, that is when it wasn’t stuck in neutral period. Indeed, it appeared at times that Arizona had to playing 12 or even thirteen men on defense as they consistently rushed a full blitz package, had every Giants’ receiver covered like a blanket, yet still seemed to have a safety or two who popped up to double the team the intended receiver on just about every play.
QB Eli Manning had a particularly frustrating game versus the Cardinals. In fact, it was the second straight sub-par outing for Manning who saw his completion percentage dip below the 60% mark for the season, while his interception doubled as he threw three picks on the night. To be fair, two of those picks came on outstanding, athletic plays by Arizona DBs who made great catches, while the third was a tipped ball. Still, it appeared that Eli was doing a lot of heaving and hoping against the Cardinals. Manning also wasn’t his usual sharp self audibling at the line of scrimmage as he apparently checked the Giants out of either running plays or short, high percentage routes on more than one third and short yardage situation and went long instead hoping to take advantage of possible mismatches that really just didn’t appear to be there. Manning was also guilty of letting the play clock run out on a couple of occasions, both of which turned third and shorts into third and long, neither of which the Giants converted.
Manning, though, was the only culprit on a night when the offense collectively looked like it missed the wakeup call from the pre-game nap. LG Rich Seubert and C Shaun O’Hara, for example, had their share of troubles accounting for the up-the-middle pass rush. Indeed, Cardinals’ DT Alan Branch, a nominal back-up who had never had a sack in his three-year NFL career, sacked Manning twice on Sunday on straight bull rushes up the gut on that side. Meanwhile, the Giants’ young receiver corps couldn’t get open. WR Steve Smith and T Kevin Boss, though, made terrific catches in heavy traffic that got the Giants out of really lousy field position as the Giants made a game of it late. On the other hand, WR Mario Manningham had a huge drop inside the Cardinals’ five-yard line that likely cost the Giants a TD and made their ultimately unsuccessful late rally all that much more difficult.
There were a couple of other positives on offense Sunday against the Cardinals. In particular, RB Brandon Jacobs was running a whole lot more like the Brandon Jacobs of old as he averaged 5.8 yards per carry in the process running over a number of Arizona defenders. The only problem was that Jacobs, who carried the ball only 13 times, didn’t get enough touches to really impact the game. What hurt even more was that Ahmad Bradshaw, who had twelve carries, was not at all effective as the Giants rotated backs on every series. It may be that Bradshaw’s sore foot finally came into play as Bradshaw has not been at practice this week and instead has been down in North Carolina having a specialist looking at the injury. Meanwhile, OT Will Beatty, who started at RT for Kareem McKenzie, also held up reasonably well. Again, Beatty showed good feet and excellent athleticism, but clearly needs a year of off-season weight training to get stronger.
Meanwhile, the Giants defense looked nothing like the unit that was shredded the previous week and probably deserved a better fate on Sunday night. Indeed, the Giants held the Cardinals to just 15 first downs and allowed only 3 of 14 third down conversions as Arizona QB Kurt Warner completed only 20 of 36 passes (56%). Warner was under pressure most of the night from a much improved Giants’ pass rush led by Mathias Kiwanuka who had a sack and a bunch of other QB hurries. What was awfully frustrating, though, was that while the Giants had bodies flying all around Warner all night long, they only had a couple of sacks and weren’t able to force any big turnovers as the game progressed.
The Giants’ coverage units were also much better than in New Orleans as the Giants went to a lot of man schemes. For some inexplicable reason, though, the Giants opted to go with the old ‘soft-shoe’ zone on the Cardinals opening drive of the second half and Warner was able to find Larry Fitzgerald running wide open in space for 27 and 26-yard gains that was about all Arizona needed on its only long scoring drive of the night. Most of the night, though, the Giants cover guys led by CBs Corey Webster and Terrell Thomas were all over the Arizona receivers.
We almost lost our lunch, though, on a couple of plays when the Giants lined up undrafted rookie free agent corner Bruce Johnson on Fitzgerald, just maybe the most dangerous receiver in the game today, if not the best player period. Granted, Johnson was supposed to get help over the top from safety C.C. Brown, but it never came and Johnson got eaten up. We understand why coaches want to mix things up every once in awhile, but it's hard not to figure that both Warner and Fitzgerald’s eyes absolutely lit up when they saw they had a match-up working against the Johnson-Brown duo!
One wonders if coaches working 13-14 hours a day isn’t always a good thing as they can sometimes outsmart themselves! Bottom line is that if the Giants are comfortable moving guys like Webster and Thomas around - and they are - then why #23 wouldn’t take the other team’s top receiver, #24 their #2 guy and so on just about every play just seems to be a no-brainer. What’s the old baseball adage: if they can’t hit your fastball why would you ever even think about throwing a curve!
What it all means… Even though the Giants are 5-2 and still lead the NFC East by a half game over Dallas and Philadelphia, things have suddenly gotten very nervy for the Giants as they start a stretch of 6 games in which they play teams with a collective 69% winning percentage starting with the Eagles on Sunday. At least for now, the Giants can probably forget about home-field advantage if they do make the playoffs as they have lost to two of the other three conference divisional leaders, and play the third - Minnesota - on the road later in the season. All that should bring the Giants’ focus back to the division race which could end up being a three-way struggle right to the end. It also puts tremendous import on divisional games with the Eagles and Cowboys.
So is it time to panic? The simple answer is probably not, although we are always worried because football is a game played with a pointy ball that takes a lot of crazy bounces. Sports in general are also a lot about streaks and slumps and here’s hoping the Giants are just in a bit of a mid-season swoon. Certainly, in his history, Eli Manning has been prone to stretches where he looks like he’s never been on a football field before at times, but has almost always been able to right the ship.
Its not hard to figure, though, that over the next 11 weeks or so, the Giants’ offense is going to see the kind of pressure that they got from the Cardinals defense from just about every time they step on the field the rest of the way. So far, the Giants have attempted to beat the pressure by keeping in maximum protection while seldom sending out more than three receivers. In the past, that worked, in large part, because they had a guy in Plaxico Burress with the size to beat even a good double team.
With Plaxico cooling his heels in the pokey, though, the whole nature of the Giants’ receiver corps has changed dramatically. While they don’t necessarily have that one guy who can consistently beat the double team - although Steve Smith is a decent facsimile - the strength of the unit is its depth as the Giants have four wideouts who can start in the league, as well as at least one (Boss) and maybe two (Beckum) TEs that can get open and catch the ball.
As such, count us among the growing legion that would like to see the Giants offense evolve into something of a more up-tempo (or any tempo at all at least based on what we saw against the Cardinals) approach. In fact, if it were up to us, if opposing teams insisted on bringing 6-7 guys on every play as the Cardinals did, and the Eagles are almost assuredly going to do on Sunday, we’d put Eli in a shotgun, spread the field with four receivers and run sprint draws for ’balance.’
The bottom line is that the NFL is all about match-ups and we just don’t think there are that many teams in the league that can put a 4th corner on the field that can cover a Domenik Hixon - or a 3rd one that can handle a Hakeem Nicks - and it's those guys that you attack. Indeed, one of the frustrating aspects of the Carolina game was that one didn’t need any fingers at all to count the number of times that the Giants went after Arizona’s #3 CB, who for the record, is former Giant Ralph Brown who we can guarantee is not going to the NFL Hall-of-Fame.
We aren’t going to hold our breath on seeing any major adjustments any time soon however. Offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride has taken a lot of heat from the media and the internet based peanut gallery over the past couple of weeks, but the bottom line is that this is Tom Coughlin’s offense and we haven’t seen much evidence during his 5 and a half year tenure with the Giants that he is going to change up much on offense.
And in the end, no matter how productive the Giants’ offense is the rest of the season, how far the team goes this year is still likely to be largely determined by the kind of pressure exerted by the defense. And while there were some encouraging signs on Sunday, the bottom line is that the Giants will need a lot more productivity in that area from the likes of Justin Tuck and Osi Umenyiora, who so far have combined for only 6.5 sacks between them, about what one would hope to have from each at this point. It also hasn’t helped that the 3-man DT rotation has a measly one sack between them, while the LBs have 2.5.
Help may be on the way however. LB Michael Boley should be back after the bye in two weeks, while there are some encouraging signs that DT Chris Canty could also be back after the week off. There are even reports that CB Aaron Ross has started to do a little work and could be back sooner rather than later, although no one is holding their breath on his return at least at this time.
On to Philly … If the Giants pass rush is going to continue to get better in a hurry then there may be no better place than start than Philadelphia this Sunday as the Eagles have really struggled to protect QB Donovan McNabb. Indeed, McNabb has already been sacked 12 times in just four games working behind a very patch work offensive line. Osi Umenyiora, for example, will be working this week against backup Eagles RT Winston Justice whom he scorched for 6 sacks in a single game two years ago. Just how much, if any pressure Umenyiora gets against Justice this week could be a pretty good indicator of how far he has come back and/or still has to go after missing all of the 2008 season with a knee injury.
With his line leaking like a sieve, it has also been a tough go for Eagles’ QB Donovan McNabb who has completed just 52% of his pass attempts the past couple of weeks (although that’s still better than Eli Manning who was actually under 50% in the same period.) In fact, one of the Philly papers this week is describing one of Sunday’s starting QBs as ‘we've seen lulls before. We've also seen him throw it in the dirt and overthrow guys by miles’ and they weren’t talking about anyone wearing #10.
Indeed, other than a couple of big plays on Monday night against Washington, including one on an end-around play, the Eagles offense has really sputtered the past couple of weeks. And it won’t hurt that Eagles’ RB Michael Westbrook likely won’t play after he was forced out of Monday night’s game with a concussion That will leave the Eagles’ running game in the hands of rookie LeSean McCoy, who‘s been better as a receiver out of the backfield to date where he has 13 catches rather than as an every down runner where he has averaged only 3.6 yards per carry.
The guy the Giants have to shut down to be successful on Sunday, though, is second-year WR DeSean Jackson who has emerged as one of the NFL’s most dangerous big-play threats. Jackson is averaging over 20 yards per reception so far this fall with three TD catches. It also appears that like the Giants’ Hakeem Nicks, WR Jeremy Maclin, the Eagles’ #1 pick at the 2009 draft is starting to emerge as a quality complimentary target who can also get deep. Meanwhile, TE Brent Celek has emerged as a decent short-yardage option who leads the team with 33 receptions.
This is the Eagles’ though and that means pressure D even though long-time defensive coordinator Jimmy Johnson is no longer around. Indeed, the Eagles already have 21 sacks through just 6 games including 6.5 (there’s that number again) by DE Trent Cole who will be working primarily against Giants’ LT David Diehl. And what the pressure has done for the Eagles (and was supposed to have done for the Giants) is force mistakes from other teams. The Eagles lead the NFC in creating turnovers with 18 including 12 interceptions. CBs Asante Samuel and Sheldon Brown have been especially opportunistic with 4 and 3 picks respectively.
Looking down the road… It's not necessarily a great weekend of college football coming up, but those that plan to while away the hours until 1 PM ET Sunday with some college fare might want to check Kansas FS Darrell Stuckey (#25, 6-0, 205), a solid mid-to-late second round secondary prospect when the Jayhawks play at pass-happy Texas Tech in a 3:30 PM ET ABC regional game. Keep the clicker handy as there are a couple of good junior DTs to check out cross the dial at that time when Miami plays at Wake Forest in another ABC regional game, while Florida plays Georgia in their annual shootout in Jacksonville. Miami’s Allen Bailey (#57, 6-3, 290), for example, is starting to get some attention as a possible late first rounder, while Florida junior Lawrence Marsh (#90, 6-4, 305) is an emerging second round candidate. Also keep an eye on Wake DT Boo Robinson (#96, 6-2, 325), a big, run-stuffing mid-round prospect, as well as CB Brandon Ghee (#17, 5-11, 185) one of the better senior cover corners in college football, while Georgia also has a fine pair of veteran DTs in Geno Atkins (#56, 6-1, 290) and Jeff Owens (#95, 6-2, 300) and junior FS Reshad Jones (#9, 6-1, 205) is also a good one.
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