It's still hard to believe that the Giants looked so disorganized and disjointed against the Redskins. Imagine - Redskins have 5 wins the entire year and 2 of them are against the Giants. 3-9 against the rest of the league, 2-0 against NYG. Sheesh.
Looking back on the decision to keep Osi - with 20-20 hindsight that really turned out to be the wrong move. Osi had knee surgery, missed 2 games at the beginning of the season, is missing his 4th game in a row now with this high ankle sprain, and was fairly ineffective, unproductive and played completely uninspired football in the games he did play. Reese should have traded him then and gotten what he could get for him. But Reese loaded the team with such a young load of LBs who were of unproven talent, that they were forced to push Kiwanuka to the LB spot and therefore needed Osi to play DE. Bad GM planning.
Reese got all the kudos for the 2007 draft when Giants won the championship in his first year, every draft choice made the team and was considered to be a real contributor towards the title. They say it takes 5 years to truly evaluate a draft and here we are in the 5th year from that fabled draft and the results are a bit more sobering. The draft picks were: CB Aaron Ross, WR Steve Smith, DT Jay Alford, LB Zak DeOssie, TE Kevin Boss, OL Adam Koets, S Michael Bradshaw and RB Bradshaw. Of those 8 players, only 3 are still on the team with DeOssie being the LS, hardly an impact player. Ross has not panned out to be a star and Bradshaw, while he shows some talent has been injured every year. No stars, a few flat out busts, some players that hung around and joined other teams. Not exactly the same sparkling addition to the GM's resume that we thought it was at the time. A fairer, more complete analysis of the GM will come after the season is over.
In addition to the poor coverage by the Giants secondary, there were some horrible missed tackles on Sunday against the Redskins. In first quarter, Redskins had a 3rd and 17, Grossman threw a checkdown pass, Rolle missed a tackle and the WR ran for 16 yards, close enough for the Redksins to go for it on 4th and 1, make it and set up their first FG. On 3rd and 12 in the 2nd quarter, Grossman hit a short throw to Gaffney and he made Amukamara look sick when he made him miss and ran for an additional 10 yards after the catch to make the first down and set up a TD.
Everyone was yelling at the Giants for not signing Blackburn earlier after he made a few plays in the Green Bay game. It doesn't look like they're yelling now, when he has come back down to earth and approached the average level of play that he always represented at LB. Now we remember why the Giants (or any other team for that matter) didn't resign him this year.
Giants had a stupid sequence in the 4th qtr that effectively sealed the game when they had two TDs called back by refereeing decisions. One when the play was reviewed and it was ruled that DJ Ware had not gotten in to the end zone. Second was on the next play when a TD throw to Nicks was overturned by a holding call on Diehl.
Diehl has really been poor pass blocking at LT. He was beaten badly by Ware in the Cowboys game several times and had a rough go against Orapko this week. Against the Cowboys, their secondary is so weak that WRs were open and Eli could find them even on the move when flushed out of the pocket. The Redskins have a better secondary and the pressure just did not give Eli time to throw. This does not bode particularly well for this Sunday against the Jets who have a very good secondary. If the Jets manufacture pressure by blitzing or by beating the Giants OL, could be a rough day for the Giants offense.
I would try to run the ball against the Jets this Sunday; Jets have a good pass defense and have been run on by some teams this year. A good way to attack the Jets is at their S position, because, especially with Leonhard out, they don't defend the pass well. However, Giants do not have a healthy TE that they can suit up. Beckum, Pascoe and Ballard are all hurting and probably all out. I would play Barden at TE and try to attack with him in the middle. This might create some challenges for the running game, but the three TEs are not great blockers anyway, so it may not be that bad. Maybe Giants can sign Marka Bavaro - he was at the game a few weeks ago for a ring of honor induction ceremony and he still looked fit.
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