Loading ...When New York Giants defensive end Justin Tuck called the 24–20 comeback victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars "a tale of two halves," he wasn't lying. After a first half that featured the Jags offense pushing the Giants defense up and down the field, and an offense that couldn't find the endzone, the Giants came out fired up in the second half, scoring 18 points and holding the Jaguars to only a field goal.
Let's take a look at the morning after storylines:
Justin Tuck tells the defense to Man Up
The early credit for the demonstrative defensive turnaround at halftime goes to a rousing speech by Justin Tuck. Osi Umenyiora got the party started by telling his teammates to quit moaning and man up, but Tuck ripped into his boys about letting the Jags make themselves comfortable in Big Blue's own house.
"A halftime speech for the ages," in the words of the always quotable Barry Cofield (who had a pretty darned good game himself). "I was teary–eyed running back on the field."
Fairly or not, Tuck's been ragged on for his failure to become an emotional leader ever since Michael Strahan and Antonio Pierce left the team. After his own teammates credit his leadership with getting their head back in the game, we'll give him his due credit this week, although Tim Smith of the NY Daily News says it was the Giants' actions, not words, that did the trick.
Playoff Positioning
The first half of the game was familiar: Giants team looking lackadaisical and undisciplined, giving away another game in a season that was starting to feel lost. By the end of the game, the Giants had proven they could stop the rolling snowball, win with a banged up unit, and were in the playoff hunt for good.
Ralph Vacchiano of the Daily News put it perfectly:
"And boy, did the Giants ever need [that win]. A third straight loss would have dropped them to the fringe of the playoff race. Instead, the 15th fourth–quarter comeback of Manning's career put them back in a tie for the final NFC wild card. They then moved into a first–place tie in the NFC East when the Bears beat the Eagles."
To be sure, this was no crowning moment, and the Giants earned nothing but the right to continue playing meaningful games down the stretch. But they did afford themselves that opportunity, and just might have mustered up enough confidence to make some noise in the season's final five games.
Running Game Smells Good
We're going to take two tracks here, the first being the left side of the offensive line, featuring bottom–of–the–barrel options Kevin Boothe and William Beatty.
Despite the duo's presence in the starting lineup keeping Giants fans sleepless leading up to the game, the left side of the line was pretty darn good. Beatty quietly had a solid day protecting Eli Manning's blind side, but he and Boothe really did some great work in the running game. There were more than a few wide open holes for Giants running backs to the left side, and with David Diehl and Shaun O'Hara still not guaranteed to return, that was a really comforting performance.
The second thing here was the flip–flop of Brandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw in the starting lineup. The numbers weren't too gaudy, as the Giants only got to run the ball 23 times, but at almost six yards–per–carry they were doing something right. While a lot of that credit goes to the aforementioned left side of the line, Jacobs deserves credit for running hard all day, and Bradshaw for not fumbling.
We still see Bradshaw as "the guy" when push comes to shove, but look for yesterday's pattern to repeat itself as Tom Coughlin isn't one to mess with success.
JPP and The Boss Man
The Giants have been waiting for Jason Pierre–Paul to utilize his massive potential, and his two forced fumbles in yesterday's second half were a sneak peak at what the big guy can bring.
Kevin Boss, who has proven time and time again what kind of player he is, has been up and down since the injuries to receivers have turned more eyes in his direction. Despite two early penalties, one that nullified a Mario Manningham touchdown, and an ugly dropped pass, Boss made some huge plays in getting the Giants this win.
Return on the horizon?
Speaking of Diehl and O'Hara, the NY Daily News reported this morning that the Giants are "hoping" that Diehl can return this week, while there is no news on O'Hara except for the observation that he was on the sidelines without his trusty walking boot. The line played well yesterday, so this might slide under the radar more than it would otherwise, but the Giants have to be happy to be getting either one of these guys back.
As for the other walking wounded, Steve Smith is still looking to return for the Dec. 12th game against the Minnesota Vikings. No word on Hakeem Nicks. But with studs like Derek Hagan and Michael Clayton out there, who needs em?
No other injuries reported from the game, save an injured hand for DB Brian Jackson.
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Hope they can squeak another one out vs the Skins Sunday and then stat bringing ion the reinforcement in time foir Minny. Love to have Diehl, Andrews, Ohara, Smith and Nicks back for Philly..
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speaking of getting off marios back, i hope everyone is off of the lets trade osi bandwagon. If his numbers arent enough he lit the spark under the team in the locker room yesterday.
Mario had that fumble back in 2009. Then there’s that lousy Wunderlich score. No number of receptions and TDs can erase those.
I missed the game i am out of the country and couldnt find a good feed to watch the game. How did the WR’s do? How was the new comers did they play? MM how well did he play? How was the play calling?
listen folks…..I will be the first to eat crow on Eli and the rest of the team….my comments come from frustration knowing we are much better then most of the teams in this league and its hard to see us getting whooped by a lousy JAx team..with that said…I am extremely happy with the win and alll that jive but I am still not impressed with this giants team in the second half of every year, this year is no different….
I dont want to hear about injuries, every team has them….we should not be trailing to a piss poor Jax team 17-6 at half at HOME nonetheless…a better team would not let us get back into it in the second half.
I firmly believe most of our struggle come from poor schemes and coaching, I have noticed many mahy times over the years as you guys have that our coaching staff just doesnt put our players in the best position to succeed considering their specialities and areas of talent.
Like I have been saying all along, it took a Spags D to give us that anomily of not foling in the second half and frankly I dont see anything different from this team when comparing from previouse years with the exception of the late run by the 2007 team….until I see different that is my thinking.
You have to realize that and this point of the season your record is how good you are as a team. Jax is not piss poor, they are pretty good. They have weapons on offense. Their defense is shaky but so are a lot of teams in the NFL this year.
I think yesterday had little to do about schemes, coaching or even adjustments and more to do about player execution. They just ran the ball down our throats in the 1st half, nothing fancy at all. We woke up in the 2nd half. We definitely had no reason to come out and play defense they way we did. But instead of sulking and hiding the players stood up and came out with season turning 2nd half performance.
GOAT56, you can not look at records..Living here in Tampa, I get to see a ton of JAx games, and JAx is not a good team….they are a very bad team that will probably finish the year 8-8 at best, and not because they are average, but just because the whole league is filled with mediocre to bad teams.
I disagree..I think Jacksonville is a pretty good team and will finish 9-7 or 10-6 and may win that division.. Del Rio is a pretty good coach. Their not an elite team but their not a bad team at all..
agreet to disagree then….to me Jax is will not win that division no way….I just dont see them as a good team..they have an AWFUL defense….and a suspect passing game….their saving grace has been MJD and he has recently been hot over the last few games after an awful start….jack del rio has been on the hot sit the whole year and has been talked about getting canned after some of their embarrassing losses this year….
agree to disagree but Jax is not a good team.
You can’t always tell from the TV what the actual defense set is. But I do know that when we just rush our front 4… with no stunts or deception… and drop 7 into coverage… then it ends badly. Sadly Fewell seems to do this a lot. But when we blitz and bring pressure we kick butt. Sadly Fewell doesn’t do this a lot.
Krow, thank you! Iv been saying this the whole time…I know you guys dont want to hear this…but I am going to be upfront….I think the Giants vaunted D line is one of the most overrated in recent memory….truth be told without additional help from the back…our DLINE hardly ever gets penetration on their own, except in 07 late in the playoffs….dont forget we had the great 92 then and Tuck, Cofield, Osi who played out of their minds late that year….
when we blitz we cause havic, when we sit back in that dumb 2 zone we get carved up..very simple.
The Dline has been facing MAxProtect or at least 6-7 blockers on nearly every passing play since they knocked out their 5th QB in their first 7 games..The problem is not at all with the front four but entirely with the back 7.The LB’s are non existant and our CB’s can not play zone..Fewell will figure it out as the season progresses..Also this Defense is adjusting to its 4th Defensive Coordinator/ Scheme in 5 years.. Let them Gel and they will be primed for thre playof push. We need the LB’s to step up though
I hope he figures it out I really do…but iv seen this movie many times before and frankly I am getting tired of the ending.
Yesterday was a gut check. It wasn’t pretty and we played horrible defense in the 1st half. But it showed this year’s team has fight. I feel like last year even with our injuries we didn’t fight when we got down early. The past 2 weeks we had showed fight but we were at the point we needed to win the fight and we did.
I think considering his weapons Eli had one of the best games he has ever played. He wasn’t perfect but he was really really good and even more clutch. The offense played as well as can be expected considering our injuries.
The defense gave us memories of last year in the 1st half then reverted into what many of us feel they can be in the 2nd half. We need that 2nd half type effort from the defense the whole game going forward.
All year we really haven’t won a nail bitter. In the long run it might have been better for us to win the way that we did. A win like this builds character and confidence that we need going forward.
We now have another “one” game season vs. the redskins. Even with our injuries if we bring our 2nd half effort we should have little problem with the redskins. I live in DC so I know the redskins very well. This is a team like Philly that you can make one dimensional. However, they don’t have nearly the same playmakers as Philly. This is another DL game – the must stuff the run and then pressure McNabb. The only concern I really have is Brandon Banks, he has been dynamic as both a KR and PR. We have struggled at times in our special teams coverage although we appear to be improving. Allowing Banks to run wild and/or a return to mass turnovers are the only was the redskins can beat us. Garrad is almost perfect prep for facing McNabb, at this point in time they are very similar QBs. McNabb has a stronger arm and is more of a threat down field whereas Garrad is more accurate.
On the blitzing/coverage Issue…
You have to have balance. Look at the eagles, they blitz all the time, and eventually your gonna get burned (unless they are playing NYG). They looked terrible yesterday, and they have always been tripped up in postseason by great qbs who can just toast the blitz like that.
Krow, it isn’t that simple (as you well know). The first thing the DC needs to see is whether he can get pressure by just rushing his four down linemen. If so, he has a good chance to shut down the opposing offense. And you have to give them enough snaps to see what’s happening before reaching a conclusion.
Then if he cannot generate pressure that way he needs to start calling for additional rushers, but judiciously so they don’t run into max protect blocking schemes that leave the secondary vulnerable to good receivers who will find holes in the zones. If the OC outguesses him he can be burned. That goes against the bend-but-don’t-break proclivities of Fewell’s system.
If I were Coughlin I would pull Fewell aside and tell him he needs to turn it up a notch and start thinking about how early and often he can try to make his defense the aggressor. But to be quite honest, I’ll bet Fewell is looking at his cornerbacks and not loving the idea of all of them out on islands on quality receivers. Give him a really top cover corner and he might feel otherwise.
I’m not as concerned about this as I am that there is a huge, consistent, hole in the Giants’ defensive scheme in the medium-to-deep middle. teams are consistently exploiting it. I don’t understand why they aren’t counteracting that. It can be done with some small adjustments. Those ought to happen, and soon.
^ That
Not sure which victory was most impressive yesterday. Was it
A) The Giants come from behind victory vs Jax
B) The Arss kicking I put on Kujo in Fantasy
Autoerotic Asphyxiators (MTLK) Kujo Kiernan -68
Orlando Demolition (DEMO) Mike DEmo -111
C) The Whooppin I gave Sean Carrol in the G101 Fantasy League
Victor Cruz Fan Club (CARR) Sean Carroll – 69
Orlando Demolition (DEMO) Mike DEmo – 103
I haven’t been on the site since before yesterday’s game, so some/many of my points may have already been made.
1- I wrote several times last week that the Giants needed to “win ugly, win pretty… just win”. Actually, they managed to win both ugly AND pretty yesterday.
2- What made Fewell’s blitzes in the fourth quarter so effective is that no two were the same. Different people coming from different positions and angles each time. (I might add that during that last drive, Garrard looked like a fighter on the ropes, hoping to just hang on until the final bell.)
3- If JPP’s second half is indicative of things to come, look out. He was tremendous.
4- I’m a big Jonathan Goff fan, and have been all along, but he had a pretty rough outing. (That can be said for the entire linebacking corps.)
5- Beatty and Boothe got the job done.
6- He may not play mistake-free football, and he does pay for his aggressive style sometimes, but Antrel Rolle is a great addition to this team.
Well, there’s plenty more to say, but what it all comes down to is that things look very different for our Giants today than they did yesterday morning. I believe that one of my fellow Os said before the weekend that that might be the case.
By the way, lost in all the hubbub is that Tom Coughlin and his assistants up in the coaches area above the field may have won that game with Coughlin’s throwing the red flag on Hagan’s “fumble” that was later ruled incomplete on that first drive. Coughlin was out on the field explaining to the referee that Hagan had juggled the ball enough before his second foot came down and I’m sure that guy went into the review booth with that in mind.
The Giants got 3 points out of that reversal. If the Jags had been down only 1 point on that last drive they could have done a lot better job mixing run with pass since they only would have needed a field goal to win. We may well have not seen that succession of sacks out of all-out blitzes.
And add to that the gutsy decision to go for a 2-point conversion, which also took field goal out of Del Rio’s thinking as the game wound down.
Any way you look at it Tom Coughlin had an awful lot to do with winning that game.
I thought TC was great yesterday..I also thought Gillbride did a good job, considering what he had to work with..Neither will ever get their due on this site but both get all the SH*T when anything goes wrong
I’ve always been — despite having some complaints about him — a Coughlin fan. I haven’t always been a Gilbride fan, but the fact is that for the most part he’s calling much better games this year. As Demo says, he did very well yesterday, especially with the limited arsenal at his disposal.