New York Giants News from a Die Hard Giants Fan: 10/20/09

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Michael Matthews Trade Update

According to Jay Glazer, the New York Giants will not be receiving any draft pick compensation for their trade with the Patriots earlier this season, sending Michael Matthews to the Pats. The conditions of the trade were not met so the Giants will not be receiving an additional 2011 draft pick.

Giants vs. Saints Recap

Labels: Alex Lewin Articles

By Alex Lewin - InReeseWeTrust.com 10/20/09

Embarrassing, pitiful, disgraceful, appalling, deplorable any negative adjective you can possibly use would adequately describe Sunday afternoon's Giants Saints game. I think Drew Brees has just hit a receiver for a 40 yard pass as I write this. The Giants came into the game as a team many thought, including I, was the number 1 team in the league. They punished their opponents into submission, they made zero mistakes, and despite the teams they played being JV type teams, I still thought they would show the NFL how good they really are and beat a solid Saints team. Not only did they not show up, they took a beating that they were giving out the past couple of weeks. To say this game was competitive was comparable to saying Dave Brown had a Hall of Fame caliber career with the Giants. Words do not describe the disgust I feel for watching this game. For me to waste my time for hours watching this defense get shredded up and down the field made me want the Giants to write an apology memo to all their fans. Now, if you think I am writing this team off, your mistaken, because I am not at all saying that. BUT, I think this team got badly exposed, and hopefully it does not come back and haunt them down the road. Here is the rundown of the game.

Quarterbacks:

Its unfair to criticize Eli for this game for a couple of reasons. For one, the Giants trailed from the get go, and to score on every possession is unrealistic….well unless you’re the Saints vs. the Giants supposed number one defense. The Saints scored on practically every possession, for the opposing quarterback he knows that he has to score EVERY SINGLE TIME and you just can’t play your game like that. The game plan was thrown out the window once it was 20-3 with 12 minutes left in the 1^st half and no sign that the Giants defense could stop the Saints. I still have the most faith I have ever had in Eli leading this team. If the Giants defense didn’t look like the Little Giants, then I am sure Eli would have looked better because he was doing a lot of good things in the first half against the Saints defense. The one thing I will say is that Eli missed some good opportunities to puts some points on the board On the first drive Eli threw what I thought was a very solid thrown ball to Dominik Hixon which was broken up by Greer. Nothing you can do about that, but he was moving the ball well on that drive. On the second drive, after Hixon’s great return, Eli missed a WIDE open Steve Smith down the middle which would have made the game 14-10. That was a killer because instead they only managed a Laurence Tynes field goal and then the Saints score again and it was 20-3. At 34-17 with nine minutes left in the third quarter, Eli again missed an opportunity to score a TD and threw a terrible interception to Greer. Yes, his arm got hit, and Bradshaw missed a block, but you can’t throw the ball up for grabs like that. That is something Mark Sanchez would do, not a 6^th year pro like Eli Manning. The numbers weren’t great 14/31 178 1 TD 1 INT, but again, I am not going to kill him for this loss like some in the media.

On the other hand, Drew Brees might be the second best quarterback in the league behind Peyton. That performance made me realize how good he is, and how there is no doubt in my mind he wins a ring one of these years. He NEVER missed his target, every ball was a spiral and on the mark. Check out some of these numbers, 23/30 369 4 TDS (Could have had about 6 or 7 if they did not let up at the end) no picks and it resulted in a 156.8 rating. If you’re wondering, a perfect rating is 158.3, so not too bad. In the first half alone, Brees had almost 300 yards passing. Seriously, are we playing Madden here because it literally was like watching a machine play he was that efficient.

Running Backs:

It’s a shame this was a blowout because this was the game Jacobs was really going to break out. You could tell too, he had a 14 yard run, an 8 yard run, a 10 yard run, and if they did not eliminate the run, and being down 20-3 you almost had to, he would have gone way over 100 for the game. He was JUST waiting to have that big break out run and he was going to get it, because the Saints run D is simply not very good, and holes were opening up left and right. Watch for Jacobs to bounce back BIG TIME against the Cardinals Sunday night. If he doesn’t go over 100 yards I will be very, very surprised. Bradshaw in my opinion played his worst game overall wise. Yes, he did have a nice 10 yard TD run, but it was his blocking that caused problems, especially the one play that Eli threw his interception on. I also counted a number of other plays in which he failed to pick up his blocker and Eli had to rush the throw.

The Saints run game was only effective because they were so dangerous through the air and the Giants of course could not play both. I don’t think Reggie Bush or Pierre Thomas are that good, but I do think they can be VERY effective because teams gear up for the pass, and then they just slip through the middle and run for 10 yards. Reggie Bush is becoming more a bust by the day. The guy is not a running back, he is a slip back, a Darren Sproles type back. If you’re a GM and you’re going to use the 2^nd pick of the draft on a guy who is an explosive returner and a good slip back that you can run screens with, then you’re not going to be around for long.

Wide Receivers:

Again, you can’t take the stats in this game for the Giants that seriously because they were getting blown out, but Hakeem Nicks is really showing that he could be a potential number 1 receiver down the road. He has AMAZING hands, faster than I and most other people thought, and he can get open. That play against the Chiefs showed me how good this guy could be. Yes, Nicks put up most of his numbers in garbage time, but for a rookie, it is important to play well even in those garbage situation to get your confidence going. Mario Manningham made a great catch to take away a potential interception from Giants killer Darren Sharper, and scored. He has great instincts, but I don’t always know his head is always in the game. The missed ball to Steve Smith was huge, and even Smith dropped a pass so you knew things just were not going to work out in this game.

Marcus Colston, Lance Moore, Robert Meachem, and for the first half our old friend Jeremy Shockey KILLED the Giants. Colston looks like an upper echelon receiver, and Moore and Meachem were just wide open half the time. But Colston is the real deal. He went up and brought some balls back in, he DESTROYED C.C Brown over the top and even beat Corey Webster a bunch of times. He, simply put, embarrassed our secondary. As for Shockey, we all knew he was going to act like a clown, dance around, and do everything that made us used to love him, against us. Now I finally realize why everyone absolutely DESPISED Jeremy Shockey if you were not a Giants fan. The guy makes an ass out of himself. Who do you think you are Jeremy Shockey, your football’s equivalent to Bobby Abreu, every big spot you are in you drop the ball….and I mean that literally NFC Wild Card game vs the 49ers. Does that ring a bell Jeremy. Yeah, he had his moments, the game before the wild card game vs the Eagles he was huge, and in 2005, but he was very disappointing overall as a Giant and the only time we won a Super Bowl with him was when he was in the press box drinking a few, well a bunch, of cocktails.

Offensive Line:

Not one of the best games from this group. The killer play that stands out is Eli’s fumble at the end of the half. The game changed from that point, and it could be attributed to Dave Diehl. I love Diehl, he is the most durable Giant I have ever seen in my time as a fan, never complains, does his job, loves his job, loves playing for the Giants, and has been very solid as our left tackle, but he messed up big time on that play. He has to read the corner blitz and at least chip the guy, or at the worst hold him, have them call a penalty and we go into the half down 10 with the ball coming our ways. He CANNOT let Harper get in there and sack Eli. The rest of the game they actually played ok, O’Hara’s holding call at the end of the game that negated a touchdown was a mystery, but other than that they were average. Obviously the big story was Kareem McKenzie’s injury. Looks like the update was a groin problem, and you can obviously get updated on the injury here on this website.

The Saints line surprised me in a lot of ways. I thought the Giants were going to come in and bull rush this line and the exact opposite happened. Which leads me into….

Defensive Line:

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED???!!! Seriously, where was the pass rush? What happened to the dominating duo of Justin Tuck and Osi Umenyiora? WHAT WENT WRONG?? Well, here is what happened, and people don’t want to admit this, but I will, Osi Umenyiora has not been the same since coming back from knee surgery. He simply has not. Yes, they were at times doubling him, but that only happened about 3-5 times, the rest of the time he was one on one and could not do ANYTHING. Nothing. Don’t let the bad teams fool you, Osi has played flat out horrible this year despite the first game, and this really came to proof in that Dallas game in which Tuck got hurt and had to leave. Since Osi has played absolutely putrid, the Saints could double Justin Tuck, which they did, and most teams did last year as well as Kiwi was having some major problems, and of course if your doubled unless your Reggie White, you’re going to get shut down. That is exactly what happened. Drew Brees could have finished “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” and still have enough time to find a wide open Marcus Colston before he would have gotten hit by this line Sunday. Fred Robbins and Barry Coefield combined for three offside penalties while two of them Brees was not even trying to get them to come offside’s. Pretty pathetic performance by what was supposed to be the number one defensive line in football. The only positive moment was the 4^th and goal stand. That was impressive but it turned out to be for naught.

The Saints line played ok, nothing special. They got after Eli a few times, but nothing made me say, “wow the Saints have a good d-line.” Bottom line is the game was won because of the Saints passing game, and lost because of the Giants defense.

Linebackers:

This one was not pretty. How many times could you count Pierce, Clark, and Blackburn getting burned by either Shockey or Meachem, or Moore over the middle? This is the type of game the Giants could have used Michael Boley, he could have covered Shockey, instead, Danny Clark who is about as slow as Patrick Ewing, could not even come close to covering him. They even had to put Terrell Thomas on Shockey, in which Shockey caught an 18 yard pass over him. The linebacking core is a HUGE problem right now, and will remain that way until Boley gets back after the bye week. This of course could be neutralized by a good pass rush, but Sunday that simply did not happen. I feel AP makes a better D-Coordinator than a middle linebacker at this point, as he is too fat, and too slow to cover bigger faster tight ends and get after the run. Running Chase Blackburn out there is just a joke, the guy is a good energy, hustle guy who you love to have on your team but by no means do you want him starting at outside linebacker.

I was actually not at all impressed with the Saints linebackers, they could not stop the run when we ran the ball, and outside of Scott Shandle’s fumble return, they really did not do much. It was like they were wearing an invisible cloak on D, as Walt Frazier would like to say.

Secondary:

Worst performance I have seen out of them in a long time. Period. This was as bad as it gets. Guys were wide open, guys were getting beat, guys were falling down. You name it, it happened. So instead of recapping the million things that went wrong, where do we go from here? I think you look at the film and completely change up your coverage. In Cover 2 situations, change it up to Cover 3. In blitzing packages, fake it and come back to a Cover 2. All I know is that the Cardinals are coming in with an offense that could be just as good as the Saints, and they need to fix this secondary and fix it fast. If that means taking C.C Brown out, then so be it, because C.C Brown played about as bad a safety could play in a football game. He had as many blown coverage’s as tackles, which was a lot considering he had12 tackles on the game, which were all resulted on blown coverage’s.

It’s funny because I wrote previewing this game that Darren Sharper was going to have an INT, and he almost had two. If not for a bad late hit call, and Manningham taking away the ball from him, he would have had 2 INT and one more pick 6 vs Eli. Pretty insane stuff going on with the Giants and Darren Sharper. I would almost want to trade for the guy at the end of the year to just ensure that he doesn’t have a chance to play against Eli. The Saints secondary was solid overall, Greer played a heck of a game, and Roman Harper had that huge forced fumble and two sacks on the day.

Special Teams:

The only bright spot in this game was Dominik Hixon. He played absolutely fantastic, and the Giants finally have a threat returning kicks and punts, something they did not have in Sinorice “I am 100% getting cut at the end of the year” Moss.

Coaching:

Awful by everyone involved. The game plan was atrocious, the prep for the game was even worse, and there were ZERO adjustments made at the half. As bad an overall coaching job as you can have. Conversely, Sean Payton had one of the best offensive game plans a coach could come up with. The first four drives were all touchdowns, and the fifth was a goal line stand in at the half yard line. They punted only once when the game really mattered.

Overall:

Where do you go from here? The Cardinals are coming in, despite being 3-2 they have a very prolific passing game, not to mention they were 40 seconds away from winning Super Bowl 43 last year. This won’t be easy, but if the Giants win, then you can throw out this Saints game as it was just an ill-prepared game, one awful game out of 16. BUT, if they lose, then there will be a lot of second guessing on how good this team really is. The schedule doesn’t get any easier, with games at Philly, vs the Chargers, and Falcons looming. Still, Giants fans, don’t panic, remember, this happened last year with the blowout loss to the Browns, all the Giants did was rattle off 7 wins in a row after that loss.