Giants announced today that Micahel Boley's knee was scoped to clear out a partial meniscus tear. He is expected to be out 4 weeks. I have noted in my blog how well Boley had been playing and while the Giants should be able to survive this week against Oakland, his absence will surely be missed against New Orleans and their high powered passing offense. (Giants are 16 point favorites against Oakland and the health of their QB is in question.) In particular, one of the reasons that the Giants signed Boley was to improve the LB pass defense and challenge the good pass catching TE's in the league. In particular, Giants play Whitten twice per year and Boley will be instrumental in that contest. The TEs Giants play in the 4 weeks Boley will be out are: {{who-cares}} of the Raiders; Shockey of the Saints; {{non-descript-TE-with-3-catches}} on the Cardinals; and Brent Celek on the Eagles. Those are 2 very good TEs and two invisible ones. If Boley were to come back in the 5th week after his injury, he would defend the very dynamic TE Antonio Gates on the Chargers. While it would be nice to have Boley back for that game against Gates and the Chargers, it is also the last game before the Giants week 10 bye. Depending on how things look at that time, it might be nice to sit Boley one extra week, because then he would get 6 straight weeks of rest and rehab and he should be able to finish the season strong.
I am hopeful that the Giants will give Wilkinson some playing time at Boley's slot while he's out. I have said before on this blog what a good athlete I think Wilkinson is and how good he is defending the TE. But coming out of training camp, Blackburn was the starter, so I guess the Giants coaches favor him. Kehl has played well on ST so they may want to give him a shot also. Against the pass catching TE's Blackburn is less effective, because he is not as fast and doesn't play as well in space. He tweaked his ankle, so that may slow him down a bit more. Wilkninson and Kehl should get some playing time.
My friend Ray pointed out that the Giants injured players on defense: Alford, Phillips, Ross and now Boley are very talented players and their absence would diminish any defense. At some point, no matter how much depth you have, you get hurt when starters go down. If you throw in Canty to that group, you have 5 excellent players that could probably form the core of a very good defense somewhere in the NFL.
I know there is the 'on any given Sunday' mantra, you want to give your team the best chance to win every game, and therefore these injuries are really damaging. But really - even with these injuries, if they are not season ending and Ross, Boley and Canty can come back in the second half of the season, the Giants will get an infusion of talent for the hoped-for playoff run. Even with these injuries and even though every coach likes to think only one week ahead, Giants still have a good chance to make the playoffs and hope they can get healthy then.
2 comments:
Turns out Kehl had surgery (broken finger) on the same day Boley did. He is now supposedly "week to week", whatever that means. Probably means that he, too, will sit against the Raiders this week.
So we are down to Blackburn and Wilkerson this week. Good thing Russell probably does not know a te from a punter.
Ray,
I saw the announcement about Kehl injury. Week to week probably means that he will be out 2 weeks and will be reevaluated then.
Eli was apparently not listed on the injury report, which means that he will practice fully on Wednesday.
I know that this is a football blog - but the only thing that could have set up the Yankees better was if the Twinkies-Tigers game lasted 17 or 18 innings. I would still rather be playing the Tigers than the red hot Twins.
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