Giants: Eagles and random thoughts

Eagles are fast at every position on offense including QB. If there is one DL that has the athleticism and speed to at least challenge Vick, if not completely stop him, it is the Giants DL. (You can't stop him, you can only hope to contain him.)

Perry Fewell has gotten a lot of credit early in the year for the resurgence of the Giants defense. I am glad to give him credit, but two of the three Giants losses are directly attributable to Fewell getting out-coached by the opposing team's OC. It is one thing for the opposing offense to come in with a plan that you didn't expect or plan for, but you have to realize what's going on and make adjustments on the fly to address the unexpected. Against Indianapolis, Fewell expected the Colts to pass-pass-pass and sent in a 3 S, 2 LB alignment with only 6 players near the line of scrimmage to stop the run. Peyton saw the "soft box",  took what the Giants defense was giving him and he toasted them. It took Fewell until late in the 3rd qtr to change things up, by which time it was way too late.

Against the Cowboys, Kitna was max protected often and the Giants did not go to any pressure packages or different coverages on the back end to challenge them. The one time that the Giants did blitz a LB, the Cowboys read it perfectly, called a screen pass right behind it, which went for 71 yards and a TD. When the opponents hit you for a big play or two, you give them credit or write it off to a blown coverage. When they run 7 plays of more than 24 yards, then they are consistently out-scheming you and it is more about coaches than it is about players.

I thought punter Matt Dodge had things straightened out but he reverted to form last week. When he was punting from deep in his own territory he twice shanked a 30 yard punt. When he was out near midfield, he twice nailed a 55+ yard punt into the end zone, so the net on the punt was 20 yards less. With the Eagles dangerous team speed, Giants cannot afford to give up field position. Giants need a good day out of the punter as well as out of Tynes and the kick coverage teams.

Giants have to be physical with the Eagles. Eagles are faster, Giants are bigger. The DL needs to smack Vick around a little bit and be rugged and tough with him. I am not saying that they should be dirty, but they have to rediscover the swagger and be physical with him.

Statistics are funny - Vick has been sacked 15 times this year and Eli only 12 times, while Eli has played all 9 games to 6 by Vick. I guess this means Eli is more elusive in the pocket than Vick is.

What are we seeing with Vick? Is he on a short run of excellence and he will revert to form? Or are we seeing the emergence of one of the best pure athletes in the NFL finally marshal and control his incredible physical talents and channeling them towards being one of the great QBs in the league. I suspect he is on the rise, because Reid was very anxious to stick with him and announce that he would be the starter after he saw him perform in just a few games. Reid is a great offensive coach and recognizes what he has.

I guess Reid knew what he was doing when he traded McNabb. What are the Redskins thinking by giving McNabb that extension? Unless they outright cut him at the end of the ear, he is going to get lots of guaranteed money from the Redskins. McNabb looks terrible and the Redskins are another 2 years away of rebuilding their roster before they are any good. That's not a team that you want an aging QB for. It was a dumb move to trade for him and it is a dumber move to give him a contract extension with lots of guaranteed money.

Everyone is making a fuss over the Jets being lucky during their winning streak and saying that they are not really such a good team. I disagree - just win baby - that's all it's about. In 1986 when the Giants won their first Superbowl, they had a lot of close games that were decided by a break or two, by a lucky play here or there, but nobody on the Giants was apologizing for winning those games. Anybody remember the game up in Minnesota that year? I think it was week 10 or 11 in the season; Giants were down 20-19, a little over 1 minute left, and the Giants had a 4th and 17 at around midfield. Simms hit Bobby Johnson for a 20 yard gain down to the Vikings 30 yard line, right on the sidelines so Johnson could go out of bounds and stop the clock. Giants moved it a little closer and Raul Allegre kicked a winning FG as time expired. Giants won a few more close games that year where they were outplayed but survived. It's just about winning the games, not style points.

A few weeks ago when the Giants beat the Cowboys I made a fuss on this blog, posting  that the Cowboys were not really a talented team, as everyone had judged. I saw them with major holes in the OL and in the DB-field. The fact that they covered up the holes and came up with a game plan to beat the Giants does not change my assessment. Their DB-field is awful and the Giants had no trouble at all moving the ball through the air against them. Two soft offensive penalties nullified 2 Giants scores and gave one to the Cowboys for a 21 point swing. Cowboys covered up their OL weakness and hit a bunch of big plays against the Giants. Maybe they are better than I gave them credit for in my earlier analysis, but I stick by my assertion that they are not a great, talent-stocked team. Let's see how it goes the rest of the season.

Giants: the roster - young and talented

It is a little premature to start talking about the makeup and character of the Giants team, since we simply don't know who is actually going to make the final roster at this point. Every NFL team has 80 or so players that they sign at this time of year. The first cut down date is September 1 where the teams have to get down to 75 players and they must reduce it further to 53 by September 5 going into the regular season. However, we can certainly speculate on one important fact. Last year the Giants, while having the best record in the NFC and the second best record in the entire NFL also had the 5th youngest team in football. In fact, this average player age was artificially raised by having the two oldest players in the league on the team in the specialty units in P Jeff Feagles and PK John Carney. Of course Carney is off the team this year and while it is too early to figure out how old the Giants will be this year, it is certainly likely that they will have gotten much younger because of the departure of other veterans including Sam Madison, Amani Toomer, RW McQuarters, Grey Ruegamer and Plaxico Burress. Right now, excluding Feagles, the Giants have only 9 players on their roster that have more than 6 years in the league. That means that probably a bit more than 80% of the roster will have 5 years or less in the league. I will assert that because of the quality of the roster, the Giants are ready for a championship run this year; but furthermore, because of their youth, they are primed to be in a contending position for the next 5 years or so. The oldest unit on the team is the OL with several players with longer experience: O'Hara (10th yr), MacKenzie (9), Seubert (9) and Diehl (7) in addition to veteran Tutan Reyes (10) signed this off-season as possible veteran backup. There is no guarantee that Reyes will make the team. It depends greatly on how good Beatty, Whimper and Koets look in camp. Nevertheless, the players in the OL are still in their prime, with the only signs of possible decline showing in MacKenzie's back problems. Furthermore, the Giants have on their team two young possible replacements that could provide an upgrade in the next year or two in Guy Whimper and William Beatty. Jerry Reese has done a masterful job at revitalizing, building up and rejuvenating the roster in the last several years making it much more talented AND much younger.

This has not been an accident by Reese, it was a conscious effort to get younger, more athletic and, of course more talented. Even though Reese was running the draft for Accorsi when Ernie was still GM, Ernie was still setting the strategy and the course for the team. Ernie was nearing the end of his career, and he knew it, in the 2003-2005 period. While he drafted Eli in 2004, which surely was a risk, he wanted to go out a champion and he rolled the dice on bringing in some veterans as FAs, who were proven players elsewhere, in an attempt to go out in a blaze of glory. You may recall that he brought in players like Lavar Arrington and Carlos Emmons at LB. He brought in Will Demp at S and he brought in Bob Whittfield as a veteran back up to the OL. He also re-signed Luke Pettigout and gave him a fairly stout contract to keep the veteran players that he had on the roster at the time. This strategy really backfired on the Giants. Emmons was coming off a broken leg, had injury problems with the Giants and never regained his form with the Giants. Lavar Arrington did not fit in smoothly and also had a serious injury when he tore his achilles tendon. Will Demp also did not regain his speed and spent time on the injured list. Pettigout was never very good, had back injury problems and apparently had a brain malfunction that affected his hearing, his timing and his memory. He could never remember the snap count, could not hear the qb's calls and could not time when to stand up and start the play, because he led the league in false start penalties all the time. The worst part of the aged roster arose with Whittfield, however. He was the substitute OL-man and when Pettigout went down with an injury and he had to come in to replace him, he was absolutely awful. He did not know the playbook, was not in good physical shape and certainly not in game shape. He had assumed that because he was a substitute he was never going to play and so he simply did not prepare himself for that possibility. It's lucky Eli did not get killed when Whittfield started playing.

Reese saw all these things, especially the Whittfield debacle and decided that he was going to make a commitment to a younger, faster, more athletic roster, even as some substitutes, who would work hard to be prepared to play when they got their opportunity and, most importantly, were less likely to be injuried. Reese cut all of those veterans, then he drafted very well, signed FA's selectively rather than as a policy to improve the team and has done an outstanding job. When you draft very well and sign only some FA's selectively, you set yourself up to be contenders for a long time. As you may recall from previous posts on this blog, I particualry liked the 2005 draft when the Giants had only 4 picks because of the Eli trade the year before and managed to get Justin Tuck, Brandon Jacobs and Corey Webster, three players that are an important part of the backbone of the team and have a good chance of being pro bowl players this year. In addition, the Giants additions of young veterans cut by other teams has been brilliant. Domenik Hixon, Derrick Ward, Danny Ware and Madison Hedgecock are examples of players that the Giants have signed cheap because they were cut by other teams and have made a real impact on the Giants. Danny Ware and Derrick Ward were both signed off the practice squad of other NFL teams (in both cases, the Jets). We will see how the FA additions this year of Canty, Bernard and Boley work out, but I have high hopes.

When you look back at the periods of time when the Giants were good and contending, you need only need to look at the drafts leading up to those periods as a forecast of the quality of the team. In the 1984-1990 period when the Giants won their first two Superbowls, the Giants drafts leading up to that sustained period of success included: LT, Simms, Banks, Bavaro, Morris and all the real good OL-men in Jumbo Elliot, William Roberts, etc. Conversely in the awful period starting with the late 1990's, the Giants drafted players like Dave Brown and Derrick Brown. The 2000 Superbowl run was a fluke and I don't consider one year as a counterexample to contradict my assertion about drafting being the main component to set up the team for a good run over several years. The drafts of the past 3 or 4 years have been so good that this portends a period of solid performance and sustained success for the Giants.

Breakdown of a running play

I mentioned in an earlier post what a great game Boss and Hedgecock had blocking and what a huge boost that was to the running game. I want to break down one particular running play that had a big affect on the Giants win to demonstrate how important they were and how the Giants OL works so well together.

Giants got the ball back on a Carolina punt in OT, and had the ball on their own 13. The first play was a run to Ward right up the middle and here's how it worked:

RG Snee fired straight ahead into the LDT and RT McKenzie ignored the LDE he was lined up against and fired out to give a one-handed push on the LDT helping Snee momentarily with a double team, but immediately ran to the second level and blocked the MLB. The LDE that McKenzie had left alone was free to charge into the backfield and disrupt the play, but Boss had him one-on-one and knocked him back with perfect form. O'Hara pushed forward and took on the RDT one-on-one and sealed him perfectly, pushing him to the left, opening a hole between the two DTs. Since O'Hara took on the LDT, this freed Seubert to pull behind O'Hara and run through the hole between the two DTs and take on the OLB which he did, pushing him back 2 yards. Hedgecock also led to the right and engaged the other LB. Because all these blocks were successful and Giants pushed them back a few yards, the back side of the Carolina defense could not run down the line and provide back side pursuit. Ward burst through the hole provided by O'Hara and Snee and the second level hole provided by McKenzie and Seubert and he literally was not touched until he was well down field. The WRs did a good job engaging the CBs and 51 yards later Ward positioned the Giants for the winning TD.

The OL blocked perfectly on this play, but it would have been a harmless 3 yards if Boss had not been able to defeat the Panther LDE on the play.

Giants are running draw plays more often out of shotgun formation. It worked really well against Carolina and it is a smart reaction to teams putting 8 in the box to stop the Giants running game. Lots of teams run draws to keep the defense honest, but it is more than that with the Giants. They are using it on 2nd down and other times when they go into passing personnel groupings. It influences the defenses into a pass defense personnel grouping and allows the Giants to stay with the running game. Instead of running a straight draw, Giants are pulling OL-men from that formation and running lead draws and power runs out of what looks like a passing formation.

I continue to be really impressed with the Giants coaching.

The key to how far Giants go in the playoffs may be how much rest the Giants defense can get from the bye week and the last meaningless game against the Vikings. Giants had the earliest bye in the league, after week 3 and have not had a break in their schedule, playing only good, playoff-contending teams for the rest of the season. I think they need a rest and the bye week might be the perfect remedy.

On defense

Giants defense is playing very well this year and DC Spagnuolo gets (rightfully) lots of credit for being the architect of the defense. He makes the schemes, calls the blitzes and the defensive calls. The Giants position coaches on defense are very good as well, especially DL coach Mike Waufle and DB coach Giunta. It is true that they have a lot of good raw material and talent to work with, but they are getting a lot out of them and they are improving their players in their fundamental techniques, not only within the larger design of carrying out their assignments on defensive schemes.

It is largely thought that Spagnuolo simply imported the defense that he learned when he was in Philadelphia under legendary DC Jim Johnson, but this is a great discredit to DC Spags who calls a much different game than Johnson does. Johnson is thought of as being a blitz-oriented DC, also called a very aggressive coach. (Digression -Just once, I want to see a new DC get hired and say something like: I will not run an aggressive defense, I believe in having a shy, retiring, timid defense.) Spagnuolo is aggressive but is much more thoughtful and cerebral in his defensive calls. In the last few weeks, he has blitzed selectively. In fact, I have seen him blitz more early in the game and show blitz formations in the 2nd half but blitz less often. He will bring one LB instead of an all out blitz and rely on the DL to beat their man to generate the pass rush.

Maybe by blitzing in the 1st half, he gets the opposing offense conscious of the blitz later in the game. Then when the Giants show blitz, the offense could make one of two mistakes: they could misread the blitz and keep extra blockers in to protect making it easier for the DB-field to defend; or - even if they read correctly, there is still a moment of hesitation to read whether the defense is coming and the offense is slightly more tentative coming off the ball. This was an adjustment that Spagnuolo made after the Bengals game when we blitzed a lot and the Bengals were able to max protect, pick up the blitzes and make plays down field. He has a much more cerebral approach to defense than just "blitz, blitz, blitz".

Another thought about team depth

With the depth of the roster that our front office has built and with the commitment of the coaching staff to playing the entire roster, we get to take advantge of every player, from 1 to 53. One of the things that drove me nuts about ex-coach Jim Fassel was his insistence on playing only the starters for every snap of the game. As a result, we suffered with the following consequences: (1) players got injured more often because they played even when they were tired; (2) they were less effective as the game wore on; (3) when a starter went down, you were putting in a player that had absolutely no game experience. And, perhaps most important, (4) when a player retired, left via FA, or got cut, you had no idea what you had on your roster - whether the subs were worthy of keeping or whether you had to go out and get new players. By contrast, under Coughlin, because players now know they are going to get into the games, they practice harder and prepare harder and are actually ready when called upon. Looking at the playoff run last year, in every game our pass rush got better as the game wore on, certainly because we had a 6-7 man rotation on the DL and stayed fresh. Very important.

I shared this thought with my friend Ray Murphy and he made the following great point that highlights the depth on the team and the commitment of the coaches to use the entire roster. The most important defensive series that the Giants had in probably the last 15 years was when the Patriots got the ball back with less than a minute to go in the Superbowl after Manning-to-Tyree and Manning-to-Burress TD put us ahead. The biggest play in that series was a sack of Brady on 2nd down that was done by Jay Alford, a rookie DT, who plays probably about 1/5 of the snaps of the game. But - it was his turn in the DL rotation, so he was in there.

I love this coaching staff.