Giants: Odds and Ends

As I said in an earlier post, JPP was directly responsible for 8 points in the game, making his contribution huge, but there is another way to look at his impact. Cowboys had 12 possessions in the game and they scored on 6 of them - 4 TDs and 2 FGs. Of the 6 possessions that they did not score on, JPP directly stopped 4 of them.

1. He forced the safety on the Cowboys second possession 
2. He stripped the ball away from Jones and forced the fumble before the half on the Cowboys fifth possession 
3. He got a sack of Romo on 3rd down to force a punt on the Cowboys 8th possession.
4. He blocked the FG attempt on the Cowboys 12th and final possession.

On the Cowboys next to last possession, when Romo missed Austin on 3rd and 5, JPP also teamed with Canty to stop Jones for no gain on 2nd and 5, bringing up that 3rd and 5. That was not him doing it on his own and was not the play that actually ended the possession, so I am not giving him credit for that one. Nevertheless, 4 out of the 6 defensive stops go on his ledger. Unbelievable. I wonder what Fewell will do if/when Osi comes back. I don't care what they do with Osi, but if he moves JPP out of starting RDE position, I will scream.

It seems obvious to me that Fewell is out of his element, is in way over his head and is clueless at how to coach a  defense. The defense is getting worse as the year goes along, a sign that the players are confused, that the opposing offenses have figured out the Giants simple schemes and that he is unable to adjust to what they are doing to the Giants D. I know Giants have had lots of injuries on defense, but Giants are now playing 3 of the top 4 CBs that they had planned to use coming in to the year. The LBs should have matured a little bit by now and the Giants certainly have some talent in the DL. I am not saying Giants defense should be top 5 in the league, but they certainly should not be bottom 5. One way of looking at a coach is - does he make the players better or not - how would an average coach in the league do with these players. In my opinion, the answer is obvious and it is getting worse rather than better.

There is no getting around the fact that the OL is better with Petrus in at G. He is more athletic than Diehl, more mobile and has more of a classic G's body type. Diehl had a poor game against Ware at LT even though he didn't give up any sacks of Eli. That is more a testament to Eli moving some in the pocket and getting rid of the ball quickly against the weak Dallas secondary than it is Diehl's blocking. Don't be surprised if Diehl is fighting for his job next year.

With Osi out and Tuck banged up, with Boley back healthy, with Blackburn on the team and with rookie LB Williams playing a little better, there is no longer any excuse to play Kiwanuka at LB. He should be exclusively at DE. I know I have been whining about this all year, but it is more urgent now with the DL almost as thin as the LB corps.

My most un-favorite two offensive play calls for the Giants are the straight draw out of shot gun formation and the WR screen, usually thrown to the RB when he lines up first in the backfield and then goes in motion and lines up as a WR. It's not that I don't like the plays for any aesthetic reasons, it's just that they never seem to work. This week, Giants ran a fake off of that WR screen and it went for good yards. Eli pump faked to Ware, coaxing the DB that was lining up opposite Nicks to charge hard towards Ware. Nicks faked a block and then  ran a simple wheel route and was wide open for about 18 yards. This completion was right after the intentional grounding penalty on Eli and one play before the blitz/blown coverage/TD pass to Mario Manningham.

Giants: First round pick JPP

I'm not going to use revisionist analysis and all of a sudden proclaim that I love this pick of Jason Pierre-Paul. I don't, for all the reasons that I mentioned in my comments to the previous post. The biggest mistakes in the draft come from scouts falling in love with player's results at the combine, where they somehow show ridiculous athletic ability that exceeds their on-field performance. Conversely, the draft is replete with guys that did not show freakish athleticism, or had moderate times in the 40 and therefore slipped later in the draft, only to become excellent players. Jerry Rice comes to mind as an example of this latter category, someone whose 40 time was much lower than his football speed. Rod Smith is another WR in this category who was actually undrafted and will probably be a HOF candidate. In the former category - players that wowed the scouts with their pure athletic skill but were not football players, you don't need to go back much further than the last few drafts of the Oakland Raiders. They took Darrius Heyward-Bey who has incredible straight line speed and Jamarcus Russell whose arm is as powerful as a MIRV missile and apparently about as accurate. (Editor's note: MIRV missiles were a category of offensive nuclear weapon called multiple reentry missiles. The idea was to load a rocket with multiple warheads as a first strike, offensive weapon and when the rocket re-entered the atmosphere and approached the target, multiple warheads would be delivered in a somewhat random pattern across the target area. Accuracy was less important in this weapon, hence my rather lame comparison of MIRVs and Jamarcus' arm.) Frankly, this is why the Giants stuck to their guns and drafted Hakeem Nicks last year at WR. They loved him (accurate judgment imho) because of the play making ability he showed ON THE FOOTBALL FIELD. His 40 time was good enough, but somewhat pedestrian and certainly not eye-catching. They scouted a football player on the field in his time at UNC and they were right in their evaluation.

Anyway - you get the point - players can rise or fall on the basis purely of their athletic performance, while the actual production and performance on the field is ignored or at least minimized in value. Ryan Leaf had a stronger arm than Peyton Manning. Enough said. My concern with Jason Pierre-Paul is exactly that - his athleticism supersedes his football skill. He is a freak of an athlete - good size, strong hands, great speed and a frame that could carry a few extra pounds. But he only started playing football in his junior year in HS and was not recruited to a major college program. He spent time in junior college, where of course his dominance was predictable and he played only one year at the Division I level. He did well at USF, but because of his inexperience there, he did not even start every game in college. Generally, someone who has two years at the junior college/community college level and only one year experience at Division I, would stay for two years in college, build some experience, learn the game, enhance his credentials and enter the draft after his senior year. My suspicion is that with the expectation, or at least possibility that 2011 will be a lockout and further, that the next CBA will have some kind of rookie salary cap, JPP was encouraged and strongly incented to come out this year. With all that, in the best case his athletic talent may give him an opportunity to be a good player, but expecting him to contribute strongly in 2010 might be a stretch.

That's the bad news; the pessimistic view of drafting a great athlete instead of a football player. Let me put on my rose colored glasses and explain that there is a positive side to it as well. For one thing, with a name like Pierre-Paul, I figure he's got a great recipe for brioche that he can share with us. Furthermore, I guess we have to have some faith and confidence in the Giants scouting and drafting department because they have not had many (any?) draft busts in a long time. Another accomplished DE was on the board, available for them to pick in Derrick Morgan and they excitedly and eagerly opted to take JPP. They did scout him on the field at USF and they are making a positive assessment of him based on his performance on the field, not only on his ability to do back flips. There is no denying that he is a freak of an athlete, combining incredible speed and strength. He even showed that he can play the run in his time at USF and the Giants are not taking him because he was just the best player left with limited talent. They really love him and think that he can become a dominant game changing player for them. In the end, every player taken in the first round has boom-or-bust capability. Even the so called can't-miss players sometimes miss, regardless of position. The Giants scouting department scouted him and evaluated him carefully - let's hope they're right.