Cardinals post mortem II (the game)

Eli was outstanding. Every throw was on the money and his decision making was impeccable. He spreads the ball around to all his WRs, in fact, there was even a Sinorice Moss sighting. (Digression - two years ago Giants had 4 players on their team who had brothers that were also NFL players - Manning and Moss are the two that are still on the team. Can you name the other two?). He hit a very high percentage of his passes and made it look easy. He had a terrible drop by Toomer on the Giants first possession that would have set the Giants up in great field position. Burress dropped one also, but at least the DB made a good play on that ball. I guess Eli likes playing in Glendale.

In other games this year where Eli excelled, the OL did a great job pass blocking and gave him a clean pocket to throw out of. Eli was under some pressure this week in Arizona and he made several throws under a rush and moved in the pocket several other times to avoid the rush and give himself some extra time and space to throw. My favorite play was the 30 yard pass to Steve Smith down the sideline. Eli saw a blitz coming, saw that he had one-on-one coverage on Smith, waited until the last second and lofted a perfect throw just as he was being hit 40 yards down the field. Smith made a good play on the ball, but it was a great play by Eli.

Everybody is talking about Warner being the potential MVP this year and he wasn't even the best qb on the field this past Sunday. Switch qbs and the Cardinals win the game.

Hixon is a very gifted player - not just WR and not just return guy, but he is tough and a good runner. On the end around, he needed to be elusive to get 11 yards and on a play in second half, he caught the ball right at the first down marker and shrugged off a tackle by a LB to get the extra yard or two and make sure that Giants would get the first down and not rely on the refs to give Giants a favorable spot. He is a great player and if Giants play him more, their offense will become even more productive than it already is.

By contrast, well dressed Amani Toomer is tough and a real gamer, but he never had the speed that Hixon has and he is probably a half step slower than he was a few years ago. He drops the ball too often considering he is more of a possession receiver now. But one thing that makes me crazy about Toomer is that he leads the league in: catching a 3rd down pass 3 yards short of the 1st down marker and getting stopped 1/2 yard short of the first down. OK - so maybe the NFL doesn't track this statistic, but it happens with him way too often. He's not elusive enough to get around the tackler and he's not powerful enough to knock him back that extra half yard. It happened again on Sunday in the second half. BTW - this almost cost us the Superbowl - I am sure you all remember the game winning drive, where Jacobs got a 1st down on a 4th and 1 right before the two minute warning. The reason it was 4th and 1 instead of 1st and 10 is because Toomer was stopped a foot short. It ended happily, but you get my point.

Giants running game was effective when it had to be and got just enough to keep the game balanced. Cardinals absolutely sold out to stop the run. They played a single safety high, instead of two deep and often had 9 guys in the box to stop the run. They run-blitzed often and flowed to the ball hard to stop the run. Even against these defenses Giants occasionally ran successfully. The plays that worked most effectively were counters, getting the defense flowing one way, and running back the other way. Giants also used trap blocking effectively on a few plays. Snee is a star and the entire OL plays very cohesively together. I am afraid of losing Spagnuolo to a HC job at the end of the season, but I am almost as much afraid of losing OL coach Flaherty. After the success former Cowboy OL coach Sparano is having as HC in Miami, I am sure some copy-cat team will pick off Flaherty.

Giants defense played much better than the statistics might indicate. Giants gave up 350 yards passing and 29 points, but somehow, never seemed overwhelmed or out of control. Cardinals only had one pass play more than 18 yards. The strategy was to try to keep the Cardinals WRs in front of them, tackle surely and force a turnover or two from Warner. This worked perfectly. Actually, the Giants DB's dropped 2 or 3 other balls that could have been picked off and played very well. If the refs had not given the Cardinals a gift TD with 3 very questionable penalties on one 2nd half drive that made the game closer, Giants would have won in a rout. Giants defense completely shut down the run and are very good at making teams one-dimensional. Giants also have great depth in the db-field. Terrel Thomas looks like a very good player and he is probably the 4th best CB behind Webster, Ross and Dockery. Corey Webster has become a star. The depth is evident in the fact that the Giants best two db's last year - Madison and McQ rarely get on the field and don't even dress for some games.

I give the Giants coaching staff a lot of credit for their cerebral approach to the game, and I love how they use personnel (with the Hixon/Toomer thing one notable exception) and are keenly aware of game situations. Case in point: when Burress got hurt, they took Hixon out of kick-off return duty, figuring that he would play a bigger part of the offense and they wanted to lighten his load and not wear him out, so Bradshaw came in to return the next kickoff. Then, Cardinals got called for an offside on that kickoff and the coaches, rightfully expected that they could get a big return out of the next kick. The kick was going to be from 5 yards further back, but most of all, the kick return team was probably tired from just having run down field covering the previous kick. So they put Hixon back in to replace Bradshaw after the penalty, Giants kick return team blocked it up real well and Hixon went for 80 yards. He did so well, that they left him in after that and he had a few other big returns. I call this subtle brilliance.

Finally - a word about the refereeing. When world's records in track are set in meets that are outdoors, sometimes there's an asterisk that goes next to the record calling it 'wind-aided'. Cardinals first TD drive of the 2nd half that made the game a bit closer should have an asterisk next to it and be called 'ref-aided'. There were three penalties called against the Giants db's and all were very questionable, ticky-tack calls. The first one, the PI on Ross on the 3rd and 15 was particularly bad. There was almost no contact on the play.

How is it possible that the Giants defense was blitzing and rushing all day, hitting Warner often, but not a single holding penalty was called against the Cardinals OL?

Giants missed first downs by inches on two bad spots by the officials, the last one on the 3rd and 8 draw play by Derrick Ward in the 4th qtr, preceding the Giants last FG. Giants missed that first down by less than one inch and I replayed the play several times, frame by frame and the refs missed the spot by at least half a yard. Speaking of measurements - explain this to me: When they put the sticks down initially, they simply eyeball where the nose of the ball is and put the stick at that point on the sideline. Then when they want to measure, they carry the sticks on to the field and approximate by eye where the stick should go down. They also line up by eye the stick so that it is directly behind the ball, so the chain is perfectly straight. Then with all this eyeball approximation to locate the back end stick of the chain, they measure to the inch whether the ball has been advanced 10 yards. Pretty stupid when you think about it. Approximations everywhere, but that final measurement is to the inch.