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It's not a secret to anyone that the New York Giants offense has been stagnant as of late. Eli Manning has been making lackluster decisions with the football, receivers are not getting open and the offensive line has not protected Manning in the pocket. There have been breakdowns at every level of the offense and the Giants have lost their last two games, in part, because of their offensive struggles. Although these issues have been recent problems that appear to be amendable, Big Blue's red-zone offense has been pathetic for the entirety of the 2012 season.
The Giants have scored touchdowns on just 43.9 percent of their possessions inside the 20-yard line, which ranks them 26th in the NFL. Big Blue is tied for second in the NFL with 41 trips to the red-zone. However, they only scored a touchdown on 18 of those possessions.
Hakeem Nicks' health issues have been a major contributing factor to those statistics. The Giants have been unable to throw Nicks the fade pass to the back corner of the end-zone because Nicks has not been healthy enough to make a play on the ball. Without Nicks' physical presence on the outside, opponents have been able clog the passing lanes with linebackers and force Eli Manning to make throws through traffic. Offensive tackle Sean Locklear admits that the red-zone offense has been a nightmare to watch.
“We got to figure out what it is,” offensive lineman Sean Locklear said. “I couldn’t pinpoint it. I don’t know if it’s how teams are playing us or we’re not making the plays, but we need to fix it.”
The silver lining to this problem is that it has made Lawrence Tynes a valuable commodity in fantasy football circles. Through the first 10 games of the season, Tynes is 28 of 31 on field goal attempts. He leads the NFL in scoring with 109 points. However, the Giants can not afford to have Tynes breaking records for most field goals kicked. As a team with an unknown quantity on the defensive side of the ball, Eli Manning and Co. must be able to score touchdowns.
We're going to find out in the next six weeks if the Giants are for real or not this season. History tells us that we should expect them to rebound nicely and make a playoff run. However, this is a new season with very different dynamics than a year ago. There are no cupcake games left on the schedule and Big Blue must come to play each and every week to have a chance to win.
Scoring inside the red-zone is going to be a major determining factor in whether this team achieves its goals in 2012. Coming off the bye week, it should be interesting to see if the Giants came up with any effective solutions to this issue against the Green Bay Packers.
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One thing is for sure: if Eli Manning is the elite quarterback those in New York believe he is, there’s no way he allows Rodgers to do anything better than play equal to him tomorrow.
Yeah I throw the bullsh-t flag on that, man. Eli has no influence on the offensive production of Aaron Rodgers, or any other QB he faces, “elite” or not. Eli will go out there and hopefully put together a better showing for himself than he’s had in the last few weeks. But if Rodgers balls out for 3 quarters and loses (something he’s quite adept at, “elite”-ness notwithstanding), that doesn’t make him “better” than Eli.
Only 1 of the QBs on the field tomorrow night is a two time Super Bowl MVP, and it’s high time erudite fans of this team stop buying into this notion that Eli’s ranking on a subjective list of arbitrary players who excel at their position is up for discussion on a week-by-week, play-by-play basis. He’s had a rough stretch, one of the worst in recent memory. But he’ll bounce back and right the ship. And he’ll probably have 3 Super Bowl trophies when he retires. That’s elite.
So elite QBs only have to outperform the other guy in certain spots because they’ve done it a couple times before?
Kill me for demanding greatness out of our great quarterback in a huge game.
For the record, I obviously think he’s elite and think he will outperform tomorrow. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be angry if Rodgers comes out doing well like you know he will/how he always does and Eli tacks on another mediocre performance.
Eli would shred our defense.
Haha probably! But why wouldn’t he shred a beat up Green Bay defense?
Packers win tomorrow. 34-24.