State of the Giants

The State of the Giants

When I want to spend three hours yelling at the person on the screen phrases like, “Don’t go there. Don’t try to do that. There’s a much better option. Think about this,” I pay my ten bucks and watch some twenty-something year old actress play a high-schooler in a horror movie. Enjoyable as that sometimes may be, I don’t want to try to replicate that experience by watching a Giants game. Ever. The Giants’ abysmal game day coaching has crippled the team all season. Let’s recap the highlights of each game.

Week 1: Beat Washington start to essentially over, Failures on 3^rd Down, Jacobs struggles, Defense Elite, Haynesworth neutralized

Week 2: Squeaked by Dallas, Phillips lost for year, Cowboys gain 251 rushing yards, Giants win turnover battle 4-0

Week 3: Dominated Tampa Bay in Shutout, 7 Tampa Bay punts (1 INT), Bradshaw leads team rushing in half Jacobs’s carries

Week 4: Manhandled Kansas City, Manning injured, Steve Smith carries load, 5 Giants record sacks

Week 5: Essentially shut out Oakland, Bradshaw shines, defense strips Russell three times, Outgained Oakland by 359 yards

Week 6: Flopped against New Orleans, Brees nearly perfect, Rushing game forgotten, defense looks abysmal... and now Week 7.

Tom Coughlin does an incredible job getting the team ready every week for the game. He’s also very shrewd with his use of challenges. Besides that, as many Giants fans thought for so long, he really is a bad in-game coach. The Giants have been outcoached two weeks in a row. The Cardinals did not outplay the Giants on defense, rather they capitalized on a shockingly terrible Giants game plan. I’ve been critical of the play-calling all year. It is absolutely terrible. Let’s look at a few mistakes.

Through the first seven games of last season, with Plaxico Burress, the Giants averaged exactly 20 first downs per game on offense while allowing just over 13 per game on defense. They’d racked up 81 first downs through the air and 59 on the ground. Comparably, this year the Giants are again averaging exactly twenty first downs a game on offense; only this year, 89 first downs have been accumulated by passing plays with only 51 being picked up by running plays… and this is after losing our big play wide receiver. After an offseason in which the team’s biggest move was to shore up the defensive front against the run, the Giants have surrendered roughly 30% more first downs on the ground. For two games in a row, the Giants made no effort to establish the running game. Opposing defenses knows on which plays to expect pass and as Cris Collinsworth alertly deciphered through the use of the word “Omaha,” as much as when the ball is being snapped. The Giants haven’t utilized the screen nearly enough either.

This year, the Giants should succeeding through the running game and using Eli Manning’s arm to keep the defense honest. They don’t have the personnel to run this pass-heavy of an offense. In the three games I believe the Giants were outplayed, the Dallas game and the two losses, the Giants accumulated 14 first downs rushing. They totaled 37 in the other four. The passing numbers were much more consistent. The Giants win games by wearing their opponents down by running and running and running until the other team is forced to leave receivers open downfield.

Just like they did in the New Orleans game, the Giants took over on their first possession and ran the ball only after breaking a series of passes with the first incompletion of the game. Manning even passed to Madison Hedgecock before the Giants looked at their best early weapons: Steve Smith, Kevin Boss, and the 1-2 punch rushing attack featuring Brandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw. Jacobs ran for 42 yards on 4 carries when the Giants gave him the ball on 1^st and 10 but for some reason was used as the short yardage back, a role with which he’s never been truly comfortable. Facing a 2^nd and 2, the Giants tried a passing play and then a deep passing play before punting the ball away. Facing 4^th and 1 on Arizona’s 2 down by 10, the Giants elected to kick a field goal rather than going for the points. That was the situation to involve Boss or Hedgecock; worst case scenario, the defense has a 98 yard field to protect and a situation where a safety is more likely than a Cardinals score. No resilience + no guts = no glory.

Last night, nobody could step up and make key plays consistently. Manning threw deep for Hixon on the second possession and was intercepted when Hixon couldn’t make a play over Cardinals defense back Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie. Manningham dropped several key passes and, as Collinsworth pointed out, minimized Eli’s window by cutting to the sidelines on what should’ve been a touchdown. Smith failed to sell a flagrant pass interference in the fourth quarter. The Giants really could’ve used Sinorice Moss, and why the hell haven’t we given our one big bodied receiver, Ramses Barden, a chance to dress yet?

The Cardinals did not outplay the Giants last night. We picked up at least one first down on each of our first four possessions and came out of them with a 7-0 lead. After the defense made a key stop and put us in position to go up by two possessions, Gilbride dialed up consecutive running plays to Bradshaw which set up a 3^rd and 2- the perfect situation for another Bradshaw run. Last year, Ward or Bradshaw would have run it and picked up the first down; this year? Manning loses eleven yards on a sack. Both teams went three and out on the next possessions as well with the Giants brilliantly using Jacobs only on a delayed outside run to the left on 2^nd down which lost another four yards.

The Cardinals figured out the snap count and ultimately had such a good jump on the line that the Giants' offensive line were jumping early. The Giants never used this against them with a screen to Boss. The failure to keep Arizona on their heels put too much pressure on Eli Manning. Eli isn't Peyton. He's a great passer, but he remains behind the learning curve. The Giants succeed with Eli throwing to take advantage of the defense expecting something else. The play action didn't even have that.

To a longtime Giants fan who has grown accustomed to this inept offensive scheme, this is expected. The Giants are one of the few teams in football whose quarterback can wear a proverbial sign on his helmet that lights up “RUSH” or “PASS” based on the way he approaches the line of scrimmage. If someone whose experience is limited to two years of competitive football at the sub-High School level can anticipate what’s coming, so can the lackluster Arizona Cardinals defense. Now I’m not saying we need to run the Wildcat, but a little bit of deception couldn’t hurt us. These problems went by unnoticed against lesser teams, but they were still problems. Look at the Giants’ abysmal third and short conversion percentages from Week 1. Look back to Week 2 where the Giants needed a last second field goal to beat the Cowboys despite winning the turnover battle 4-0. We need to design a better game plan for these type of games which features Jacobs. I love the idea of using Bradshaw early and Jacobs late, but that doesn’t work if we abandon our rushing game in the first quarter, as we did in the game against New Orleans.

I give the defense a lot of credit for their performance last night. After six possessions, the defense had forced more three-and-outs and turnovers than the four first downs they’d surrendered. No, the loss isn’t on them.

The coaching staff has no resilience in their game plan. This is one of the reasons why I believe Jeremy Shockey was RIGHT to try to leave the Giants: they forget to play to the strengths of the personnel. Again. This game is a wakeup call that the Giants are simply not good enough to keep expecting to win on Eli Manning’s arm. We weren’t a passing team with Plaxico, so why try to become one now?

If there’s any consolation that can be taken from the last two games, here it is. The Giants are learning of their mistakes now, not in the Divisional round of the playoffs. These back-to-back losses set up a must-win next week against a divisional rival who will be coming off a short week of rest. It’s worth mentioning that in last year’s zero win playoff campaign, the Giants had defeated the four teams who ultimately made it to the AFC and NFC Championships. The Super Bowl winning campaign from the year before featured revenge wins over Dallas, Green Bay, and New England- three teams that beat Big Blue in the regular season.

There is no doubt that the Giants remain among the class of the NFL; they clearly have the talent on both sides of the ball to compete with any team in the league. It’s just time to get back to our style of football. I could never have imagined I'd be right with the crowd engulfing the team with boos a mere two weeks after dominating the Oakland Raiders in every part of the game. Something has to change. Now.