Loading ...This morning, we wrote that the New York Giants offensive and defensive lines' improved play showed quite clearly in the 26-3 drubbing of the San Francisco 49ers. On Wednesday, Ralph Vacchiano of the New York Daily News credited Mathias Kiwanuka's reinsertion into the defensive line for much of the turnaround.
Sound familiar? That's because last week we wrote in this space that the poor play of the front four and the glut of talent at linebacker made sliding Kiwi down a no-brainer. Looks like Perry Fewell is yet another loyal reader of Giants101.com (we kid, we kid).
More from Vacchiano, who points out that over the course of the season Kiwanuka was playing in less than half the defensive snaps given how often the Giants find themselves in a nickel defense in today's pass-happy NFL:
On Sunday, however, he took 62% of the defensive snaps, including 22 at defensive end, 15 at defensive tackle and one as a linebacker standing at the line of scrimmage on the last play of the game. He had a sack and got good pressure both up the middle and around the end.
The Giants harassed Smith all day, sacking him six times, hitting him nine times and playing a big role in his uncharacteristic three interception performance. Previously, Big Blue had only eight sacks…through five games!
While we're inclined to use stronger verbiage while we pat ourselves on the back for calling this one, we'll defer to Vacchiano, who wrote that the results and the new position for Kiwanuka were "probably not a coincidence."
Although Kiwanuka is typically, cryptically Coughlin-esque as to whether he'll remain in this old-but-new role, he clearly implies in the story that he likes to be in the trenches. Given both the early results and the youth (Jacquian Williams, Spencer Paysinger) and talent (Keith Rivers) behind him at linebacker, this one's a no-brainer to us.
Against a Washington Redskins team that in Robert Griffin III and Alfred Morris has enough speed out of the backfield to kill you if they break containment, they're going to need the physical Kiwanuka to set the edge across from Jason Pierre-Paul, all the while keeping Osi Umenyiora and Justin Tuck as fresh as possible for pass rush situations.
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Excellent. Who is he taking snaps from? I assume Austin at DT. Who at DE? Tuck or Osi? I recall Tracey got some late game action as well.
He took the DT snaps from Bernard, technically, since Bernard sat out the game.
The DE snaps belonged to both Tuck and Umenyiora, who quite frankly really needed to be seeing less reps than they have been this season.
Tracy took a handful of Kiwanuka’s snaps at LB (I don’t remember seeing Rivers, but he might have taken some too), while Spencer Paysinger is playing Kiwanuka’s LB position in short yardage situations.
Tracy wasn’t just in there late. I think he had a sack early in the game.
I feel like Tuck and Umenyiora will be more effective with fewer snaps, as well. I think Tuck in particular has reached a point in his career where he can’t be an every-down player anymore; he has just endured too many injuries.
Kiwanuka is the most criminally underrated player in football. Period.
Man, I’ve been saying that for years. Guy’s probably the second best DE and second best DT on this team right now.
He’s also a heck of a teammate and a smart guy. The kind of guys you want to fill out your organizations with.
It’s a shame his career has gone unnoticed due to a few injuries and being shuffled to linebacker and back again (and back again and again).
It’s the injuries, position changes, and the fact that he doesn’t put up gaudy numbers. His impact on the field goes FAR beyond the stat sheet.
I was saying last year that he was every bit as important to this defense as JPP. I understand that might sound blasphemous, but he just always seems to make big plays at the right times.
Not blasphemous to me. I’ve seen what you’ve seen: whenever Kiwanuka’s been on the defensive line, he’s been an incredibly disruptive player. In the running game, containing QB’s, getting the pressure that leads to bad throws or other people’s sacks…he’s a stud.
And while people oohh and aaahh at Osi for big sack and strip numbers, he gets those sacks and strips by doing one thing: going around the edge. It obviously works, but teams use it against him just as often.
With Kiwanuka, it’s not about the numbers. It’s about fundamentally sound, physical football play. Love this guy.
Hey, I was praising Kiwi a LONG time ago, and constantly reminding people of how well he played even when he wasn’t racking up stats, but why does praising him have to be linked with calling Osi essentially a One-Trick Pony? Not even close to true. You’re somewhat blinded by your earlier, dead-wrong, assessment of Osi. He’s still a VERY good player, and I still expect him to make a number of critical plays over the course of this season.
I didn’t mean to “essentially” call Osi a one-trick pony. I meant to use the words “one-trick pony.”
Come on man. He may have a little life left in his game. I may have been a bit too rough on him the past few years (although, in all those years, he had one good and mostly healthy season, which was last season). And he likely will make huge plays for the Giants this year.
That doesn’t change the fact that ALL he does is try to beat the left tackle by timing the snap well and getting a good first jump. He ends up three yards behind the quarterback more often than not…and the ONLY times he uses an inside move is when he is crossing with the tackle.
If you don’t want to believe all that, that’s your prerogative. But at the end of the day, Osi is in fact a one trick pony.
He is not a defensive end; he is a pass rusher.
Now, Mathias Kiwanuka…there’s a defensive end for ya. And THAT was my point.
Ugh, we’re getting into this again? Look, I’m gonna pull rank. I was praising Kiwi as a complete player and perhaps the most intelligent player on the team, not only a tremendous football player but a possible future President, back in his rookie season. I said he was the kind of guy who made you really happy to root for this team. I still cannot say enough good things about him.
BUT, you’ve been on Osi’s case for years and you’ve been dead wrong. I think a great case can be made that if not for Osi’s unbelievably important strip sacks last season the Giants don’t make it into the playoffs, much less win the Lombardi Trophy. Not only that, he is actually a pretty GOOD run defender. Yeah, his best pass rush move is the outside sprint, and that sometimes takes him past the pocket. but a guy his size who runs a 4.5 40 SHOULD be speed rushing, and if the defensive tackles do their job and don’t allow quarterbacks to step up into the pocket then Osi is always capable of hitting that quarterback or, even better, getting a strip sack. I do not know the statistics, but if you go back and look at the numbers I’ll bet that teams don’t have NEARLY the success running at Osi than you assume. The problem is that he looks awful when he gets beaten outside by a scrambling QB or a runner who bounces outside because that play or two stands out in the open so it’s caught prominently on TV sets across the land. And yeah, he gets taken past the pocket a lot too. But what percentage of pass rushes lead to successful hits for all of the best pass-rushers in the league? It’s small. And when Osi gets there he frequently makes something happen.
I love Kiwi. But I love Osi too, and hope they’re both back next season, though I doubt it in Osi’s case unless he’ll sign for less than he’d get on the open market. He’ll get paid decently because GMs and scouts will, I suspect, disagree with you. The guy can still play, very well, and he play the run but thankfully is not asked to do that all that much because the team knows he can change a game in an instant when he’s “hunting” the QB.
Osi has been a a weakness in the run game for years old man, don;t you remember the Denver game 2 years ago? Even last week Smith would audible a run to Osi’s side early and often with success
Uh, yeah, I remember the Denver game. A perfect example of what I’m talking about when I say unsophisticated fans usually don’t know what they’re talking about. There were 2-3 “obvious” plays in that game where Osi was beaten in the run game. But when the smoke cleared it turned out that Denver did better running to the OTHER side of the field than when it went toward Osi.
I may be “old” but that reminds me of the great WC Fields story. When accosted by a woman who said he was a disgrace because he was dead drunk he replied: “Well, yes. dear, I am drunk. And you are ugly. But come morning I will be sober.”
They ran the ball 20 times at Osi that game for an average of 7.6 YPC
Assertion of a point means absolutely nothing when not backed by evidence.
Look at the stats Valid posted below. Sorry, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Yeah, I get testy when someone insults me, so if you want to give it you’d better be ready to take it.
Paul Schwartz got this little nugget of a quote from Bradshaw:
“I was thinking about it the other day,” Bradshaw said. “I don’t know what it is at home, but away, we feel like the pressure is on us and we play good under pressure. But at home, we just feel like a lot of things are just going to come to us. It’s not like we don’t work as hard or we don’t play as hard at home. I just feel like we get lackadaisical and we feel like it’s going to be handed to us.”
Before he got hurt in 2010, Kiwi was looking like a dominant playmaker from the LB position too. It wasn’t a traditional LB role (he was a “joker” according to Fewell), but he was standing up and moving around, dropping into coverage or pass rushing depending on the situation. And he looked like the best player on the field during that brief time too. I’d like to see him get back to that once Canty returns.
Kiwi’s been playing DT since week 1. Its not new to the defense, I think it was a little desperation move since Canty was out, but he has absolutely been playing there for the first quarter of the season. The media is just now realizing it thanks to your post.
Osi is NOT a one trick pony, he’s a defensive end, makes some mistakes in his outside contain but is still very very capable of making a stop, and chasing down a RB. Just because he doesn’t have the tackles, it is his responsibility to have his “gap” control and if thats outside, he supposed to force everything inside to another tackler, hence the lack of stats. IMO a DE should have much fewer tackles than any LB. If a DE is doing his job, just as a DT, there are linebackers running around behind him unblocked, which I suspect happens quite frequently with the double teams that a LOT of our dlinemen deserve.
We take for granted the number of stud Defenders we have, which I will include the three DEs, Kiwi, Canty, Phillips, Webster and Rolle.
Add to that Mr Manning, snee, Weatherford, and its pretty impressive what Reese and TC have made.
Osi has always been a one trick pony. There may have been a 3 game stretch in the last few years which you can argue he played the run well.
The sad part is he no longer even looks good at his one trick.
Wrong. Go check your facts. Assertion of a point means absolutely nothing when not backed by evidence.
Boley and Bradshaw questionable? They’ll both play.
I think it’s way too simplitic to credit Kiwi with the DL turnaround. Just like many of us credited Brown with the turnaround of the running game. It’s not like Kiwi wasn’t getting any DL snaps in previous games. The improvement was a combination of players playing better and some different rotations. I’m not saying Kiwi wasn’t part of the solution but it wasn’t all him. And let’s see how we play going forward because that was still just one game.
FF55 and everyone else arguing about Osi -
I found a page that shows his stats against the run:
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/player/17097/osi-umenyiora
Now I just discovered these statistics so I’m not exactly sure how they all work, but I think some are fairly self-explanatory. For example, last season run plays to Osi’s side resulted in an average of 3.3 yards per play, as opposed to the season prior where it was only 1.9.
Shows in 2009 he let up 4.0 yards per carry and in 11 3.3…however like you said in 2010 he was very good only allowing 1.9 yards.
in 2011 he was ranked 71 at stopping the run.
So that would mean that he had been extremely good (along with the tackle next to him, the linebacker behind him, and the safety behind them) in 2010-2011. No one will EVER convince me that the stats in 2009 didn’t serve as more a reflection on that total bum Pierce than anything else.
Defenses certainly don’t lose games allowing even 3.3 yards per carry. And 1.9 yards per carry is stupid good.
So the argument that “Osi has ALWAYS been a one tick pony” is, on its face, simply wrong.
Someone tell Foxlin. He appears to require enlightenment.
Is that out of DE or D Linemen. 71 out of 64 starting DE’s looks pretty piss poor to an unsophisticated fan like myself
I would assume out of all DE’s who played a certain number of snaps..not only starters and probably not DTs
One could also say that there are some specialty DEs who are really good at stuffing the run and not as much rushing the passer who obviously may not be starters.
So you want to talk about just 2011 now, as opposed to “always”? Your comment is that he has “always been a one-trick pony”. Simply not true. Next time you call someone old you’d better make sure your memory is as good as his.
71 out of 64 starting DEs would be pretty sh!tty if he were a starting DE himself last year.