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We feel awful: not only did Big Blue come out totally flat against the Philadelphia Eagles last night, allowing Michael Vick to walk all over us in a 19-17 victory, but the Giants we're going to be hearing for the rest of the season about the hole the Giants will be digging themselves out of as this loss couples with the opening day loss to Tony Romo and the Cowboys to give the Giants an 0-2 divisional record.
While the Giants have bigger problems (such as, "What happened to Corey Webster?" and "When will Hakeem Nicks be ready to play?" and "Where'd the pass rush go?"), the bad divisional record and the incredibly tough schedule ahead of us make on thing clear: the remaining games with the Cowboys and Eagles are absolutely must-wins. Sure, we dropped two against the Redskins last year and still won the division, but does anyone see having us having a better record than either of our top rivals if they beat us twice?
But that will all play itself out over the course of the season. In the meantime, let's take a quick glance at the problems the Giants will have to fix before hosting the Cleveland Browns next weekend.
What happened to Corey Webster?
The Giants have actually done a halfway decent job of holding the secondary together despite a litany of injuries. But the one guy who has been healthy and was thought of as the least of our problems has been the biggest bust out there: Corey Webster.
He's just getting eaten alive out there and we're not going to bother to try and figure out why. What we're going to wonder is whether he loses a starting job to a hopefully-soon-to-be-healthy tandem of Prince Amukamara and Jayron Hosley.
Speaking of "what happened to's" on defense, anybody seen the Giants pass rush recently?
Jason Pierre-Paul has been a beast, but we haven't seen what we're used to seeing from the Giants rushers this year. Chris Collinsworth even said it politely last night on the telecast. Justin Tuck has been absolutely invisible and Osi Umenyiora has been a counterproductive force as teams use his upfield stride against him.
Chris Canty might be able to reinvigorate the defensive line to some degree when he gets back, but we're wondering if Mathias Kiwanuka doesn't start putting his hand in the ground more often if this keeps up. A healthy Keith Rivers, an up-and-coming Jacquian Williams and an athletic-if-unspectacular Spencer Paysinger leave plenty of bodies to play linebacker.
Let's not blame this all on the defense, though…
The offense and their coaching staff should take plenty of blame as well. Eli Manning spent the first half of the game running for his life and threw one of the ugliest interceptions (in the red zone) that we've seen from him in ages in the fourth quarter. The running game went back to stagnant as the coaches forgot that Andre Brown has been super productive and inserted Ahmad Bradshaw back in as the lead back.
The offense looked a bit lost without Nicks last night, so one can only hope his knee and foot are feeling better.
Speaking of injuries…
Last night the Giants escaped relatively unscathed, other than what's being called a sprained knee by Kenny Phillips. No news on that yet.
Where do we go from here?
Next up, the Cleveland Browns…the kind of bottom feeder the Giants need to face after a game like this. But like we said before, every good game you play against a team like the Browns this year is only going to make us think "Sure we can beat up on these kind of teams, but what happens when we have to play Dallas or Philly again?"
It's going to be hard for us to think about sports for the next week. Anyone up for a good round of "Let's Go Yankees" chants?
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norm says:
October 1, 2012 at 10:58 AM
Luzz brought up an excellent point earlier.
The coaches must do a better job managing the snaps of their defensive personnel.
This game followed a familiar script that we’ve seen all too often during the Coughlin/Eli/Killdrive regime. The D comes out of the gates balling but the O is largely ineffective while Eli and Killdrive “figure things out.” The Giants find themselves more or less locked in a low scoring stalemate come halftime. In the second half, the offense finally starts “figuring things out” but the D is gassed and its performance takes a nosedive. At which point it comes down to whether or not Eli can pull another rabbit out of his helmet late in the game.
This problem could be mitigated somewhat if the four D-line starters were afforded more of a blow early on. Yeah, I know Tracy and Ojomo are probably not as talented as the three guys ahead of them. Newsflash: Neither are the likes of Darryl Tapp or Brandon Graham relative to Trent Cole and Jason Babin. But Castillo and Jim Washburn have no problem subbing them in throughout the game to keep their big hosses fresh for the stretch run.
Same is even more true at DT. Right now, Kuhn is a waste of a roster spot. I suspect he’s just a place holder ’til Canty returns (at which point he’ll be shipped to the PS) but as long as he’s on the 53 man roster, he has to play more than he’s been. Landfill and an aging Bernard simply can not continue to play as many snaps as they have received. And we knew going into this year that we would be getting little from a redshirting Austin.
Bottom line: I’m not going to pin too much of the blame for this one on the D. Yes, mistakes were made but at the end of the night, they (assisted by the Eagles crappy QB) held an explosive offense to one TD and 4 FGs in their house in a big game on national TV. Amazingly enough, they could have held the Eagles to less had the starters been handled in such a way that would have left them something in the tank in the fourth quarter.
I like this post.
I agree. I think the rotations are why our defense has been lights out in the first half until the last few minutes and struggled for the most part in the second half. We clearly are getting winded. Tracy needs to play some. He’s active and has passing rushing skills. Tuck and Osi are not playing well enough to keep Tracy off the field. DTs I understand more because it appears the kids aren’t ready. The good thing is that Canty returns in week 7 which will be a huge boast.
Every Eagles game ends up with ‘couldas and shouldas’. But the final result is always the same … we found a way to lose. When the chips were down we choked … again. Blew it … again. One-and-eight.
Teams choke because they’re tight. They’re tight because they’re afraid … worried … because they lack confidence. We expect to lose … the Birds expect to win.
This is the hurdle we have to get over. It’s not players or coaches or some mysterious juju. It’s attitude. They got it … we don’t.
At the same time, give props to Vick. He played his best game of the season, as he always does against the Giants. He was hard to catch, he took hits and kept playing. He made plays when they needed to make plays, and he didn’t turn the ball over. It’s not like the Giants had no pass rush at all, they did. But Vick was one step ahead of them all game.
He didn’t turn the ball over, I’ll give him that.
I’ll also concede that he played better than he has all year.
But he did leave a lot of points on the field last night. A competent QB would surely have been able to punch it in on one – if not both – of those goal line stands. My opinion of him as a mediocre QB remains unchanged.
Agreed. Both QBs left points on the field. But Vick played just well enough to win. Eli played just well enough to have a chance. And this was one of the rare times when he didn’t make good on that chance. I’m pretty sure the only 2 of the last 8 game winning drives that Eli hasn’t won were against Philly.
One was against San Fran last year.
Seattle, Philly & San Fran.
Forgot about Seattle. That wasn’t his fault as much as Cruz. He was also robbed by a non-call in SF.
On balance I think we are overstating the loss.
First, I disagree that we were flat; we just got the Eagles at their best — which should have been expected after 3 lousy performances and then playing us
We still could have and should have won the game. Eli got us to the 26; the only person who choked was Gilbride in calling the end zone pass
We should get a breather this week and hopefully have Nicks back by the time we face the Niners, which in my opinion is now close to a must win game. come out of that game 4-2 and we’ll be in great shape.
Who is getting released this week to make room for Sash? Kuhn? Ojomo? Petrus? Jernigan?
If you remember those bad old Giants teams from the distant past … how they’d play tough for a while … then something would go wrong and they’d fold. We resurrect that attitude when we play the Eagles. It’s the worst two deja vu moments of the season for me every year.
I agree with everything except Gillbride. A 43 yard FG is not a lock, not at all. I think going for the endzone when they are playing to guard us from getting us a few yards is a good move. It was just executed badly. If Tynes missed a 43 yard FG everyone be asking why we played for a FG. I think you have a great QB and you trust him. I think Eli made a questionable decision and a poor throw. To me you play to win the game and I credit Gillbride for doing so even if it backfired.
Completely agree. Eli made a bad decision and a bad throw. But Barden didn’t exactly help him out either…
I never thought about it like that but I do know that when we were in range for a 43 yard field goal i felt like we were going to win
Probably Petrus. They seem to love Kuhn. And they wanted to retain Ojomo from his preseason clinic. But doesn’t seem to want to give him a chance at real game action. They won’t give up on Jernigan just yet.
Browns won’t be an easy game. If I know they Giants (and I think i do) they have a tendency to feel a llttle sorry for themselves in these early season stretches. I predict they come out slow against the Browns, possibly turn the ball over early, and they play well enough to win in the second half, escaping with a thin margin of victory.
I’ve been watching this for years and i just know that’s how it will go down. They will win a close one against the Browns and the fan base will be grumbling and predicting a blowout loss going into SF. Again, if I know the Giants, they will beat SF in a brutally physical game that will be their defining win of the year and that’s where the season begins. That’s my prediction. 4-2 start. But the Browns games will be a nail biter. 4-2 start though.
+1
I really foresee the same thing. The Browns at home is the type of game we have struggled with the last handful of years. But a difficult road game at SF is the type of game we always seem to win.
The offense wasn’t flat? They scored three points in the first half. They couldn’t run the ball and, in the first half, couldn’t throw it either.
They didn’t get anything going until they had to panic at the end of the game. That’s the definition of flat.
Was their offense flat? They only scored 7 points. Or did us just take to figure out how to move the ball on their defense?
Any news on Nicks’ knee? Is he expected to play next week?
Maybe I’m being overly paranoid here but I find the lack of news on that front disturbing. Kind of reminds of me of the Tuck situation last year in which, week after week, we’d hear guarded comments on how his neck was “improving” only to find out come game day that it was not.
I’m aware that NFL teams are typically not forthcoming on such matters. But I’m getting a real bad vibe about this one for some reason. In fact, I’d hardly be shocked if we were to see Nicks placed on temporary IR as the roster move made to clear space for Sash’s return.
Yikes – I hope you are wrong on this, but it makes a bit of sense
What is going on with Webster? If you want to blame one person, its him. There is no doubt in my mind that I could have covered Jackson better on that touchdown. I’m not sure if you he is hurt or out of shape, but he has been awful every single game. He looks completely lost.
Is he lost or is he playing Fewells scheme and keeping his eyes on the quarterback and not on the receiver….Read and react
They really need to start to give Ojomo and/or Henderson some snaps. Not a lot, but some in order to spell our starters. Pass rushing in today’s pass all the time league is tiring. When you then compound it with a mobile QB where you are chasing him all over the field, these 280 pounders get gassed quickly. We will see plenty more mobile QBs this year in Kaepernick, Vick again, Griffin twice. This needs to be addressed.
In addition you get the see what you have in Ojomo and Henderson. Who knows, one of these guys might be a real play maker, which would then help JR out as he figures out what his future DE situation will be. We’ll never know what we have unless we give them some snaps on the field. They both looked good in preseason.
And why was Collinsworth so shocked on how bad Osi was? Hasn’t he been watching him over commit to the pass ever since he got in the league?
Yeah it was nothing new. Same old Osi that I complained about for years. What happened to preseason Osi who was making plays?
Methinks the league has this one-trick pony figured out. Sure he might beat some young tackles off the edge and force a few fumbles, but this guy is far from a complete player or every down player.
My buddy and I were talking about this last night: JPP and Kiwanuka should be the starting DE’s this year, with Tuck and Osi cycling in mainly as pass rushers.
Makes a ton of sense. Since the league has him figured out an all, they’d surely have no problem with his one trick in specific passing situations.
Osi got embarrassed last night. The play where Vick waited for Osi to spin inside and Vick just simply bounced outside for an easy 25 yard scramble
Dirt I’m not sure I get your point…
Point is you said his rush move is figured out. Why would you only put him out on the field in pass rushing situations?
Plus see my post on the next page of this thread for why his performance last night is being overblown (again).
Osi is a 3rd down pass rush specialist. He damn good at that. But in his mind he’s an every down DE. He should be getting 15 snaps a game … and all of them in rush situations where he can do his trick. It’s not his fault that we use him incorrectly.
Osi would not be a happy camper at and would let the team know about it if we gave him only 15 snaps a game in a year where he is playing for a contract.
Osi’s not doing his free agency future any favors playing like he did last night.