Giants: Jets preseason game

OK, I am not going to get catatonic, pessimistic or suicidal and predict that the season is going to be a mess off of one preseason game. But what I can say is that there is plenty of stuff from this game that has me concerned. Principally, it seemed to me that the Jets just beat the Giants up at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. To balance that out a little bit, and modify the concern - this being the first preseason game, nobody game plans or schemes for their opponents, so you can't take too much out of it. And - the Jets, presuming that they don't do anything special and don't game plan either, just went with their base defensive looks also. But their base, vanilla defense includes lots of blitzes, overloads of blitzers on one side of the defense, bringing DBs etc. If you don't come up with special blocking packages to pick up their "normal, vanilla" defenses, you look like garbage and can't do anything. The way you have to approach that style of defense is go to some max protects occasionally, slide blocking coverage to the overloaded side and hit some long plays. The Giants are fairly well equipped to do this kind of blitz pickup, because their OL is athletic and can move, their TEs are good pass blockers and their RBs, especially Jacobs, are excellent at picking up the blitz. There's no way you can look good on offense against them by playing simply; their defense is too aggressive to play passively and conservatively. You have to accept the fact that their aggressiveness will blow up lots of plays and that you will look bad on some drives, but you will hit a few long plays because of their gambling defense. (Nevertheless, the Jets defense is really impressive.)

Even if we give a pass to the OL on the basis of the above analysis, which some might consider a lame rationalization, there's still the DL to worry about. The second time the Jets got the ball, they just marched through the defense with not much pressure and few stopped plays. The tackling was good, the LBs were OK, the DBs did not get beat deep and the S play was pretty good, but the DL put no pressure on and could not get the Jets off the field on 3rd down. Most disturbing was when the Jets (easily) converted a 2nd and 23 with two plays that picked it up. Like I said - I am not too pessimistic yet, but there's plenty to worry about.

The good news is that when the subs and rookies got in, there was plenty to be pleased about. Pierre-Paul's sack was against a first team Jets OL and he made Woodie look stupid. He needs to learn to handle the run a little better, but that will come with a little more coaching and experience. His quick outside burst was extremely impressive. Osi had better watch out, because I would play Pierre-Paul a lot. Linval Joseph also looked stout and very quick at DT.

Cruz looked great, even against the Jets second teamers. Remember that the Jets DBs are all first teamers. Jets do most of their blitzing with extra DBs, so they all play a lot and can be considered quasi-starters. This makes Cruz performance even more impressive to me. Sinorice Moss may as well kiss his Giants career goodbye. Cruz is small, similar in size to Moss, and has already made more great plays in one preseason game than Moss has made in his career.

Other observations:

Sintim and Boley at LB looked fine. Goff didn't hurt the defense, but I have to review the game again to really grade him. (On the road, won't have access to my DVR until later this week.)

Barden looked shaky.

Hard to get a read on Beatty. He was OK, though not impressive.

Once again, I don't want to get crazy, but I am worried that the game has passed Gilbride (and maybe Coughlin) by. Our best offensive player is the QB supported by the WR corps, we have a stadium that is supposed to be a little less windy than the old one, we have an OL that is not a huge, road-grading run blocking line, and yet we keep saying that our approach has to be to run the ball in a power running game. I am not sure I agree. Our QB came off his best statistical year and we are still trying to be a run-first team. I am not saying Giants shouldn't have balance, but having old coaches who want to be throwbacks to old school Giants football, might not be the best approach. Let's see if Kevin Killdrive opens up the offense a bit in next few games.