Offseason intrigue

The team I was most worried about making a play for Victor Cruz was the Patriots. They have the cap room, especially after Brady redid his deal. They showed disenchantment with Welker by franchising him last year instead of making a long term deal with him. They also did not play him at the beginning of the year and put him in the lineup only when they absolutely had to because of injuries. Further, they constructed their spread offense that gets great productivity out of that slot receiver, so there was a need. The first round draft choice that they would be giving up would be in the back of the first round because of Patriots finish last year, so there was also less value for them to lose by signing Cruz. So as they say on Law and Order, there was motive and opportunity. Now, however, the threat of Patriots making a run at Cruz seems past. They actualized their dissatisfaction with Welker by letting him walk and sign with the Broncos, but they immediately signed a replacement in Amendola. I guess their logic was: if they think Amendola can be as productive (or nearly as productive) as Cruz in that slot position, why not sign him instead of Cruz and save the 1st round draft choice. It took them about five minutes to announce the deal with Amendola, so you have to believe that they had already come to an agreement and were just waiting to close the books on Welker before signing Amendola. Now that they have their slot receiver, they won't go after Cruz.

The Rams, who lost Amendola could theoretically be in the market for Cruz. They have two first round draft choices, slots 16 and 26. They finished strong last year - improving to 7-8-1 and in a strong division might feel that they need to add talent to keep up with 9ers and Seahawks. The obstacle for them is that they came into the offseason in a slightly worse salary cap situation than the Giants did. Cruz is not the missing piece that can lift them up over their division rivals. They would be smarter to keep their draft choices in a draft that is QB-poor but WR and OT-rich, so they could do very well in the draft with their 2 first rounders. They could get talent at positions of need and would not hamstring their salary cap structure for years to come. Furthermore, if they are in roughly the same salary cap position as the Giants, or slightly worse, there is no offer that they could make that the Giants could not match. Rams could still make a run at him, but I doubt it. With the extra emphasis and value assigned to draft choices because of the rookie salary structure in the new CBA, teams are very reluctant to part with those draft choices, especially in the 1st round.

Another team that may pose a risk is the Vikings. They were a playoff team last year, so they may be looking to add that one weapon to put them over the top. They just traded their most dynamic threat in Percy Harvin and therefore may be looking to replace him. They have cap room, because they too have a young (cheap) QB that is not absorbing cap dollars. But like the Rams, they also got extra draft picks in the trade, including a first rounder, so they may want to sit tight, use their draft picks and set themselves up to be competitive for the next several years without worrying about cap problems in the future. We'll see about the Vikings.

As more time passes, it becomes less likely that Cruz will get an offer. You could imagine a scenario where a team is counting on the draft to fill their WR needs, doesn't come away with the player they wanted and then in desperation makes a run at Cruz. However, there's no need to worry about that scenario, because the RFA signing period is March 12 - April 19 and the draft is after that, on April 25. A really sly team might wait until the last possible moment and make an offer to Cruz on April 19. The Giants would have five days to match the offer and the offering team might hope that the Giants salary cap structure would have become too rigid at that point. Further, that the team does not have the focus to deal with contract negotiations because they are cosnumed with draft preparation. It's unlikely, but it is at least possible.

The interesting thing about the Amendola, Welker and Cruz situations is that they all combined to give an idea of what the market is for slot receivers in the NFL. Welker and Amendola, two of the best at their position, got about $6M per year. Giants probably offered a similar package to Cruz, but he wanted to be paid like the very best WRs in the game, the big outside guys and pull in 10 or 12 M per year. The market has now been set and it shows that the Giants were smart not to overpay for Cruz. If some other team comes in and offers Cruz $6M or so, Giants will probably match - Cruz still has some leverage. But if the April 19 date passes and Cruz still has only the tender offer from the Giants, the team then has the leverage. The best scenario for the Giants might be to make a long term deal with Cruz after the draft. He will get paid $2.8 this year and if he injures his knee in week 15 of the regular season, he's damaged goods and won't get a good offer in 2014. So Giants could offer him a "middle" package that gives Cruz more than the 2.8 he would have earned in 2013, but a little less than full market value that a UFA might get.

If you're interested in where Cruz stands among all WRs in the last 2 years, see below. Ranking is based on receiving yards for 2011-2012 seasons.

					Receiving
Rk	Player	From	To	Tm	Rec	Yds	Y/R	TD	Y/G
1	Calvin Johnson	2011	2012	DET	218	3645	16.72	21	113.9
2	Wes Welker	2011	2012	NWE	240	2923	12.18	15	91.3
3	Brandon Marshall	2011	2012	TOT	199	2722	13.68	17	85.1
4	Roddy White	2011	2012	ATL	192	2647	13.79	15	82.7
5	Victor Cruz	2011	2012	NYG	168	2628	15.64	19	82.1
6	Steve Smith	2011	2012	CAR	152	2568	16.89	11	80.3
7	Vincent Jackson	2011	2012	TOT	132	2490	18.86	17	77.8
8	A.J. Green	2011	2012	CIN	162	2407	14.86	18	77.6
9	Reggie Wayne	2011	2012	CLT	181	2315	12.79	9	72.3
10	Dez Bryant	2011	2012	DAL	155	2310	14.90	21	74.5

Provided by Pro-Football-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 3/14/2013.

How did Giants get into this "mess"?

Following post is compilation of email discussion with my friend Ray:

The concerns:

After cutting Webster's salary and restructuring Baas, it sounds like Giants were about $10 mil below the cap. After adding the money to sign Cullen Jenkins, it may be yet a bit less. Though in reality, the 2013 hit for Jenkins is probably small: he got a $2M signing bonus which is spread over 3 years and probably modest 2013 salary. Sounds reasonable, but:

1- Giants tendered Cruz, A. Brown and S. Brown for a total of about $7M. If they get an offer from another team, it could drive it up even more. Now that Vikings have traded Harvin and they have a lot of cap space, they could make a play for Cruz.
2-Later this year Giants will need $4-5 mil in cap space to sign draft class.

3-Giants are letting Bennett and Phillips go on the market. To retain them would require more money. You have to assume that Phillips will go, especially since they tendered S Brown, but it's not clear that they have the talent on the roster to replace Bennett (wouldn't it have been nice if Adrien Robinson got on the field last year?)

4-There is no room for any but the cheapest free agents, without much more cap work.

How did we get into this mess?

The approach:

I think every team that has a big cap commitment to a franchise qb is in the same mess that the Giants are in. In the last CBA, the salary cap kept climbing every year, so teams signed players with a signing bonus, but little up front salary and the larger salary on the back end. They assumed that they would either be able to afford the player later because of rising cap numbers or would cut him if his performance was not up to par with the salary. The new CBA seems to me like it is greatly in favor of owners, taking a lot of sources of income out of the defined revenue pool that comprises the salary cap. The cap now is actually less than it was in 2009, the last capped year of the previous CBA (remember 2010 was uncapped year). So teams that are suffering are those that had long term cap commitments to key players, expecting the cap to rise, as well as stupid teams like the Jets who pay big money to old/ bad players. The major commitment (if you know what you are doing) a GM will make is to a franchise qb. Eli has the highest cap hit of any qb, so that is part of Giants problem. Note that Ravens signed Flacco and dumped Bouldin the next week because of being short on cap space (also because Bouldin was aging).

As far as Cruz, I think it may not end well for Giants; and the Vikings are indeed a logical choice to do the damage and pick up Cruz. They have cap space, they just got rid of their star Harvin and have a hole to fill. They also have a young QB that does not take a lot of cap space so they won't get into trouble for another 3-4 years. However, if Vikings don't make a play for him, I'm not sure there will be too many other suitors. You need to be a team that: (1) is a player/weapon away from contending for SB (2) have cap space (3) are willing to make a commitment to a slot receiver that is comparable to what an outside WR would get (4) are willing to overpay Cruz because if they offer him just a "reasonable" contract, Giants will match it.

Don't get me wrong: I love Cruz; and Bennet showed the Giants something last year also. But let's remember: Eli is the key. The last two SBs that the Giants won, they had Kevin Boss and Jake Ballard as TEs, not exactly a pair that is going to make anyone forget Mark Bavaro anytime soon. In  2007, Giants had Steve Smith in the slot, who was a very nice player, but in retrospect, he was made to look much better than he really was by the QB. Smith broke the Giants franchise record for catches by a WR, since broken by Cruz. My point being: Giants need a good player in that slot, and Cruz is one of the top 3 players at that position, but it is Nicks and Eli that make this offense tick. I would like to keep Cruz, but it won't kill the Giants if they don't. Maybe Jernigan can actually get on the field this year and we can see if he can play.

Nicks and Cruz

What to do at the WR position? Victor Cruz finished a 3 year contract with the Giants and as such is an RFA. He has been very productive the last two years and has made noise about wanting a contract that puts him up there with the top 5 WRs in football. Nicks is in the last year of his rookie contract and will be UFA at the end of the 2013 season. Watching the Giants offense struggle this year when Nicks was so hampered by injury, it became most clear that Nicks is the player that really makes the Giants passing offense percolate (aside from # 10 of course). Cruz had a very good year, but defenses were able to stop him or at least control him when they could pay a little more attention to him with Nicks not the threat on the outside he usually is.

So - who should the Giants prioritize? In a perfect world, they would sign both of them, and I am sure they are trying to do that. But in the salary cap era, it may not be possible to sign both, so theoretically, Giants might have to pick just one.

Here are the arguments on both sides:

Nicks is the real star, he is the bigger threat. He can catch the ball in traffic and has the speed and size to play on the outside, which is the "big boy's" position among the WRs. Nicks can be productive without Cruz, but Cruz was much less productive without Nicks. That argues, of course for signing Nicks as a priority and doing the best to retain Cruz, but ultimately letting him go if they have to.

The flip side is this: While Nicks is the better player and the more complete threat, dangerous players at his position come into the league every year and it might be easier to replace him with another at least approximating his ability. In fact, they may already have a player on the roster in Reuben Randle that can be an excellent threat on the outside. Conversely, while it is true that Cruz may need the protection of a partner on the outside who can open up the field, he is the most dangerous slot receiver in football and that position is very difficult to replace.

The other factor to consider in these plans is how the salary cap will move in the next few years. That influences how much money teams have to offer the FAs and how much competition the Giants would have for these player's services. A new TV deal starts in 2014 but most people seem to think that the cap will not increase much until 2015 when there will be a modest bump of about 2-3% and a more significant bump in 2016. This means that FAs this year and next year will not get massive deals offered to them because teams just don't have a lot of money to spend.

Therefore the best plan for the Giants would be:
1. Extend Nicks contract now.  Giants would probably get a better deal for him since he is getting the security of signing before his contract is up. Joe Flacco rolled the dice played out the last year of his contract and seemed to have won his gamble. But what if Flacco had injured his shoulder during the season? Nicks might be happy to sign now at a cap friendly deal and lock in security.
2. Tender a contract to RFA Cruz which gives them a 1st round draft choice if someone signs him. If another team offers him a manageable contract, match it. If the deal has a poison pill in it, let Cruz leave. If Cruz stays under the tendered deal, sign him next year when even more teams will be in salary cap hell with the cap being flat for a 3rd straight year and the Giants might have less competition for his services.
3. (Nothing to do with cap) Get Jernigan some playing time and find out if he can be a good slot receiver in the NFL.

Salary Cap Cuts

I once heard Jerry Reese say when he was talking about roster construction "you have to be careful not to fall in love with your own players". He is sure living up to that mantra this off season cutting three players that had important roles contributing to the Super Bowl a year ago, and one of them, Bradshaw, contributing also to the previous one in 2007. He did the same thing a few years ago when he let Kevin Boss walk at TE and did not match the offer by the Raiders. Though I didn't agree with exactly the way he managed the process, making an offer to Boss and letting him shop it all over the league, but it turned out to be the right move to let him walk. We'll see how these cuts work out - it's hard to argue with any of them. All three players were very good NFL starters and have had good careers. But Boley and Canty have seen their production and playing time decline over the last year and have suffered through the types of injuries which seem to indicate wear and tear, perhaps indicating that there is not much tread left on the tire. It's better to get rid of a player a year too early than a year too late especially when you're constricted by the salary cap and have to throw some money at your own FAs.

Bradshaw, while he was probably the best of the three players cut may have been the easiest decision because of the depth currently on the roster at his position. Wilson and Brown (RFA whose contract  can be controlled) are there to fill the void. At DT Giants have only Linval Joseph as a good player who is  locked in. Marvin Austin looks like a bust, Rocky Bernard is also a FA so Giants will have to add some DL strength. The LBs were weak last year, and cutting Boley leaves a group with Paysinger, Williams, Blackburn and Herzlich that need to be upgraded. Rivers is also in the group but he is a FA also.

It's almost a given that Osi will not be resigned and Kiwanuka will move to DE. Unless - could the Giants plan something radical like moving Tuck permanently inside to DT and resigning Osi as the 3-DE rotation with Kiwanuka and JPP? Unlikely.

 The flip side of not falling in love with your own players and not overpaying to keep them is that sometimes you underrate your own players also. A year ago the Giants let Manningham walk. It was no doubt based largely on salary cap but also on the fact that we saw Manningham running the wrong routes one too many times causing throws by Eli to go into empty space on the field. When the player is on your team, you see him up close, warts and all and sometimes dismiss the good. I am not saying it was a bad decision to let Mario walk, but looking at Giants struggles in the passing game this year with Nicks hurt, it might have been nice to have Manningham.

IMO, Giants are not done cutting. These cuts saved them about 14-15M and they are now about 3 or 4 M under the cap, depending whose numbers you believe. There are some of their own players that they need to throw some money at and make some decisions upon the most prominent of which are: Nicks, Cruz and Beatty.

I think Webster may not survive. Diehl will probably go, but not until they resign Beatty. Giants will not keep both Phillips and Stevie Brown who are FAs. I suspect they will let Phillips go, even though he is a very good player, because of his injury history. If Brown is too expensive they may let him walk also. It's possible that Will Hill will be an important player for Giants next year as a S who can run and also hit, and can be useful defensing the running QB trend in the league.

Giants may try to restructure Rolle who is getting paid a lot of money.

Cutting these three players also may move Coughlin off of his unwritten-but-seldom-violated rule of not playing rookies until game 10 or 12 of his rookie season. If Giants cut more veterans, he will have no choice.

Review of season: coaching

There are several measures that you can apply to evaluate a coaching staff and in some ways that evaluation indicates what the coach's job requirements are. The HC responsibility has changed greatly over time. At one time, the HC was involved in every facet of the offense and defense, usually called the plays at least on one side of the ball, installed the schemes and had the player management responsibilities around cutting, motivating and determining the depth chart. Parenthetically, I always said that the most important thing a coach in any sport did was to fill out the lineup card. Sounds trivial and obvious, but a coach can really mess up the team by playing the wrong guys. (More on that in later posts). In today's NFL with the complexity of both offense and defense brought on at least in part by the benefits of technology and the much wider amount of data that can be interpreted, manipulated and analyzed, the HC can not be in charge of every facet of the game. Every HC delegates more and more responsibility to his coordinators. Some HCs do none of the play calling and some retain the play calling for one unit while giving it up for the other. I haven't really seen a pattern as to which method works best - Coughlin, Bellichick, Tomlin, Shanahan, Fox and Reid are examples of successful coaches that seem to have given up the in-game play calling. McCarthy in Green Bay, Jason Garrett and several others still call the offensive plays (though some could validly question how successful a coach Garrett is). The coaches that retain play calling completely outsource the other side of the ball to the coordinator and sometimes have almost nothing to do with that unit. That sure seemed to be the case with Rob Ryan in Dallas and with Sparano with the Jets and it didn't work out well for either of them. Regardless, the point is that with the coordinators taking on more responsibility, perhaps the most important job that a HC has is to build a capable staff that can effectively manage this wider load.

Everyone always glowed about the Bill Walsh coaching tree in Frisco - many successful coaches came from it. I have to say it is pretty impressive. It included Dennis Green, Holmgren, Gruden, Shanahan, Dungy, Mariucci, Lovie Smith and a few others. Perhaps no less impressive is the Parcells coaching tree which includes Bellichick, Coughlin, Payton, Crennel, Weiss, and a few others. If I count right, there are 6 Super Bowls among those Parcells trained coaches. My point is that while these coaches are icons, perhaps the best things they did was to pick talented staffs and train their coordinators to be great. You have to say that across town, Rex Ryan has not showed himself to be a good talent evaluator in picking coaches and Coughlin's record in this area is very spotty also.

Coughlin had a few successful picks: Spagnola was probably his best pick, though his record after he left the Giants in St. Louis and now in New Orleans has been weak. Gilbride, with all the complaining we do, is a solid though certainly not spectacular OC. But let's not forget that Gilbride replaced John Hufnagel who didn't make it through an entire season with Coughlin. He left the Giants and never got another coaching job in the NFL. Coughlin's first DC was Tim Lewis who was also overmatched for his job and let go after two years. He also never got a DC job after leaving the Giants. He grabbed a job as a DB coach somewhere and was gone after that gig never to return to the NFL. Spags replaced Lewis and was a good hire, but when he left for the Rams, Coughlin promoted as DC the completely overmatched Bill Sheridan who was fired after a year. Sheridan hung around for a while as a defensive position coach elsewhere in the NFL, but never achieved DC again. As far as Fewell, who replaced Sheridan, his record has been very weak. The Giants have a Super Bowl on his watch, but the defense was ranked last in the league and near last in the league the last 2 years. They won the Super Bowl with this defense, which shows that they have the talent to reach the heights. But constant blown coverages and a scheme that fools absolutely no offense has to be put on the DC. The ST coach has also not been a gem - Giants do a little better when they play the starters on ST and they spring Wilson as a kick returner a few times, but they also lost the Steelers game by being overwhelmed on punt returns. Thye also got fooled on a few on-side kickoffs in the past year or two, also on the ST. Many of the position coaches are good - Pope is a legendary TE coach and you can look at the productivity Kevin Boss had as Giant and his complete invisibilty when he left and at least give some credit to Pope. Ingram (RB) and Flaherty (OL) also do a great job, but too many mistakes in the DB-field tarnishes the reputation of Merritt and Giunta who I always thought were good coaches. The position coaches work is greatly influenced by the DC, so it's hard to tell how they did.  In summary, Coughlin has not had a very good record picking his coordinators and this may be the most important part of his job. I also get the feeling that Coughlin is a little too hands-off in letting his coordinators come up with the game plan; his influence and fingerprints should be more evident in the strategy. Coughlin is a good in-game decision maker and clock manager, but the game plan, strategy and schemes, especially on defense need to be better.

Taking a closer look at the defense, it might be instructive to compare the Giants strategy to others in the NFL. When you look at opposing defenses and how creative they are - how they always show one defense presnap and switch out of it right before the snap to confuse the offense; how they will switch between man and zone; how they will play different types of zones; how they will fake a blitz and pull out of it; how they will use deception and change so that the offense can't get a read on what they're doing, you realize how weak Fewell is. He plays mostly zone, rarely blitzes, and relies on the simple philosophy that the defense will be fine if the Giants strong DL gets a pass rush. When the opposing offense goes to quick 3-step drops to blunt the pass rush or comes up with creative blocking patterns to stop the pass rush, he does not have an answer. I know that the read-option running game with the fast QBs caught the NFL by surprise this year. I know that many defenses had trouble stopping it, but the Redskins took the Giants apart twice with it - running for around 200 yards in both games. Fewell with his read-and-react defense is exactly the wrong scheme for that style offense. I am not upset that it worked the first time against NYG. But when they used the exact same defense with no adjustments by Fewell the second game and it was just as effective, it is a sign that he is an uncreative, unimaginative DC. He did not give his players any advantage to handle the opposing offense. If they dominated physically in a game (Packers, 49ers) the defense looked great. If not, they had no answers for the opponent. Giants front has to be aggressive and attacking, more risk taking, and Fewell could not see it.

Season in Review

I don't want to make this post sound like a Giants fan whining, but it's really hard to take the fact that the Giants are not in the playoffs. Looking at the season and the team's record dispassionately and coldly and just analyzing the final results, one could argue that the season was not a total disaster. After all, the Giants did have a winning season, the last game they played had relevance and playoff meaning though of course they did need some help from other teams. Furthermore they did discover some weapons that unfortunately lay dormant for too much of the season. (More on that in later posts.) In addition to that, this 9-7 record was built on what could surely be considered the toughest schedule in football. Very often, the schedule looks difficult coming into the season but turns out otherwise. This is because you evaluate strength of schedule coming into the season on the basis of last year's playoff teams and last year's record. This doesn't always translate into a hard schedule in the current year, because there are always some teams that rise and fall from last year's performance. However for the Giants in 2012, the schedule was rough coming in and even in retrospect was among the hardest in the league. Specifically, the way the NFL schedule is constructed, the maximum number of current year playoff teams that could be on one team's schedule is 7 and the minimum number is 2. This year, the Giants had 6 playoff teams on their schedule and no team had the theoretical maximum of 7. Of course, the Packers also had 6 of the team's that made this year's playoff on their schedule, and they won more games than the Giants and amde the playoffs in a tougherr division. But it doesn't diminish the fact that the Giants had a rough schedule. By comparison, the 49ers and Redskins had 4 current-year playoff teams on their schedule and the Falcons had only 2.

Those are the facts, and I don't want to sound like a Giants apologist, because the raw numbers certainly must be taken in context. The music surrounding these facts is that the Giants won the Super Bowl last year and should be expected to follow up with a better season. They were 6-2 through the first half, sank to 3-5 in the second half  and kicked away several winnable games that doomed their playoff hopes. They beat badly 2 of the teams that are still in the NFC playoffs in the Packers and 49ers, which certainly rubs more salt on the wounds of a playoff-less season. If Giants beat them, they should have done better against some of the weaker teams. The Giants showed no grit, no toughness and lost to teams they should have beaten. The most painful defeats were the loss to the Eagles, particularly painful in retrospect when we see what a bad team the Eagles really were; the loss to the Redskins when the Giants showed a complete inability to adjust their defense from the first Redskins game and allowed the Skins to trample the Giants running defense. The other two bad losses were the opener to the Cowboys, where the Giants just assumed that the Cowboys would give the game to them and did not play tough at all and the game against the Steelers, when the Giants were winning by 10 going into the 4th quarter and fell apart on special teams and defense to give the game away.

The flip side of these 4 losses was the fact that the Giants got one gift from the Cowboys in the game in Dallas and won a close game against the Redskins on a last minute TD to Cruz. Giants were 2-4 in close games and winning those close games is about doing the little things right, not having the mental mistakes and having the coaches giving the players a slight advantage in the game deciding plays. Giants did not have that this year. Perhaps after a Super Bowl season, where everything falls into a place, the players subconsciously feel that the same will happen the next year. The games will come to them and they don't have to go and get it. Giants did not fight hard enough in those close games and let them get away from them. When they fell behind against good teams (Bengals, Ravens and Falcons) they showed no fortitude, no grit in mounting a comeback of any kind. They did come back against the weak teams of the league - Browns, Buccaneers and they were even trailing the Saints early - but in those games they washed over them in talent and got some turnovers. They didn't display toughness. Wait until next year.

Saints Game Review II

The QB
Eli threw some great balls against the Saints, but his two INTs were inexcusable. On his first INT he threw the ball 3 yards behind Jernigan. I wonder if he expected Jernigan to pull up and sit down in that spot in the zone instead of continuing his cut to the outside, because there was a DB out on the sideline also. If so, we should charge that INT to Gilbride because he has an offense that requires the QB and WR to have ESP to know what the other is thinking before the throw, or at least to Jernigan for making the wrong read. However, the second INT, where Eli telegraphed where he was going, locked onto the receiver all the way, then hesitated and double clutched, giving the S lots of time to get over and make the play was the kind of play that Mark Sanchez would make. I am not worried about the QB, but that was a bad play. Eli also made a few throws that could have been intercepted but were dropped by Saints defenders. One throw to Cruz in the 2nd half on the goal line was underthrown and should have been a TD. Instead it could have been picked, though it would have requried a great play by the DB. The one that really bothered me was the ball to Hixon in the first half, where it looked like Hixon was behind his man on a seam route and a good throw might have been a TD. Ball was underthrown badly and was dropped by the Saints DB. I am not saying that Eli is not a great QB - he is. Maybe this is nitpicking, because he did throw for 4 TDs and >250 yards. Maybe it's just that we have come to expect excellence from him and when we don't see it, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Maybe it's the lack of burst from Nicks, who made the passing offense go last year and who everyone acknowledges, even tight-lipped Coughlin, is below full strength. Giants passing offense always had a very low margin for error, requiring perfect reads and throws by the QB. When it's a little off, it can look pedestrian. Whatever it is now, that's what the Giants are going to have to ride into the playoffs, because it's the passing offense and the DL that are the best units on the team and have the potential to reach the greatest heights and propel the team.

LBs

Jacquian Williams got back onto the field and looked pretty mobile. The LBs did a decent job against the pass, but the run defense overall was not very good. Saints got a good push against the DL and the LBs were not filling the holes. Surprisingly, the DTs have been pushed around lately. I thought that with Canty back in the lineup the run defense would improve, but they have been vulnerable last two weeks especially. I thought that the Redskins game was an aberration because of the unusual style of their attack, but the run defense was poor against Saints also. Giants defense rises and falls on the ability of their DL to stop the run and generate pass rush in passing situations. They have to step it up.

Don't know if you noticed but the Giants in the second half seemed to use Tuck in coverage on a few occasions. There have been many plays in the last few games where Tuck is standing up at the line before the snap, but that was more for confusing the OL and not letting them get a read on where he was coming from and who needed to block him. This week, there were several times when the Giants rushed only 3 and Tuck dropped back into (short) coverage. Giants did not get burned by this, made a few stops and in fact, this was the formation where they got their only sack of the day, so I can't kill its use. But if you want to play a 3-4, my instinct says you should use 4 real LBs.