OL
When I read in the papers that the OL just has to restore some pride and block better next week, you can count me as officially worried. When you see the OL-men use the same lame excuse that I used in my first post - that it is a hard place to play, it's so loud, blah, blah, I want to yuke. It's OK for me to say that, but not the players. I remember the last time the Giants went to Indy, with Kerry Collins at QB - he threw for 300+ yards, a bunch of TDs to Toomer, who had 200+ yards receiving, if I remember correctly. Was it noisy that day? I still remember the first play of the 2nd half - a flea flicker with Tiki Barber taking a handoff and flipping the ball back to Collins who hit Toomer for a long TD. Was it noisy in the stadium that day?!? I understand that the noise makes it harder to block because of the silent snap count, but for an OL-man to bring it up as an excuse.... and then quickly say it is not an excuse, just an explanation, I have to worry. The OL played poorly and were dominated by the Colts DL. There are a few possibilities: (1) the OL is really as bad as they looked and the Giants offense is going to stink; (2) the Giants OL is really very good and just had an off-night; (3) the Giants OL was once good and is now slipping - they are not horrible, but are far from great and the Giants offense and season will be limited by how much they can do.
Unfortunately, I think choice (3) is the likeliest explanation. The truth is that the Giants OL was never a great, dominant unit filled with powerful, athletic players. Rather, they were moderately-talented and exceeded their talent level by working hard, playing intelligently and working cohesively. Those last few attributes still may hold, even though we have all seen a bunch of blown assignments on blitz pickups lately. But if their talent has slipped just a little bit because of age and injury, and they can be dominated phyically and athletically by opposing DLs, no amount of hard work and cohesiveness is going to make up for that. So I suspect that the Giants OL will have a mediocre season. They will stand up to the mediocre DLs and have trouble against the teams that are a little better, especially from the purely athletic point of view. This is what happened Sunday night. I don't think Freeney and Mathis are great players; they are very good, somewhat one-dimensional, but not great. However, they are pure speed rushers / athletes, particularly the type of player that I assert can give the aging / slightly declining Giants OL some trouble. If this analysis is correct, than the suggestion I made in the last post, about making some changes in the lineup, by getting Andrews in the lineup or Beatty when he comes back from injury, is the only way to work out of the predicament.
Jacobs: Time to go
I like Brandon Jacobs - he is defintiley a different style RB than others that there are in the NFL. The entire league is going to speed, both in the running game as well as the passing game; Jacobs is a power RB in a speed league. Therefore, you could say that he gives the Giants a unique edge, a dimension that no other team has. He won't be as fast as the pure speed guys, but if he is fast enough, quick enough and smart enough at hitting the holes to use his power, then he can be a real weapon. However, if he is a hair too slow, then instead of becoming a weapon, he becomes a liability. I thought he looked good in preseason and was hoping he would get his touches and carries. However, once he starts pouting and throwing his helmet, it's time to go. Re-sign Andre Brown and get DJ Ware into the game as backups to Bradshaw.
He threw his helmet into the stands and said it was an accident. He didn't mean to throw it in the stands. He did intend to throw it.... it's just that he did not intend to throw it in the stands. Great excuse. The helmet is hard and is a weapon. He's lucky it didn't gravely hurt someone or even kill them. I think this is much worse than the Plaxico Burress incident, because Burress did not intentionally shoot the gun, it went off by itself. I certainly understand that Burress was carrying the gun illegally and I'm not saying he should not have been convicted. I am just saying that Jacobs actions, in turns of potentially causing harm to others were more reckless and egregious.
Imagine a case where a person takes a gun into a public place and intends to shoot it at the ground. At the last minute, before he is about to shoot harmlessly at the ground, his hand slips, the gun points upward and he shoots instead into a crowd of people. Can his defense be: "I was trying to shoot it at the ground not at the crowd of people". I don't think so - if he caused damage or injury to someone he would be 100% guilty and if he was lucky enough to miss everyone in the crowd and not cause injury, it would still be some kind of crime... reckless endangerment, or some such thing.
Showing posts with label week 2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label week 2. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
Giants: Manning Bowl II
The first few games of the year, fans of a particular team will go from the apex to the ash heap in a heartbeat. Your team wins one game and you're excited and poised for a Superbowl run. Your team loses one game and you're sure that they're the worst team in football and headed for an 0-16 season. Of course on this blog, we tend to take a more mature, measured approach, but in this case, I think it might be time, if not to push the panic button, at least to realize that it is time for some changes. The situation I am referring to, of course is the OL and the coaching.
I was fairly upbeat after the first game because Gilbride had a good game, did some intelligent things and actually made some successful adjustments in the 2nd half. However, he seemed to revert to form last night and did not put the offense in the best position to win the game. It's hard to completely blame Gilbride, because the OL was so badly manhandled last night, and this is not something coaching, schemes or play calling can fix. There's nothing that makes an offense look quite as bad as poor OL play. Eli is lucky to have escaped without injury. Perhaps they could have stuck a TE next to Diehl to give him some help on Freeney or a RB to give a little chip block, instead of sitting in the backfield looking for blitzing LBs. However, one time that they did try this, Travis Beckum looked back to Eli right before the snap, whiffed on his block and Freeney went breezing around both Diehl and Beckum and had a clear shot at Eli. Beckum stood there like a statue. Ironically, even a statue takes up space and Freeney had to take a wider path to Eli around Beckum, which allowed Eli to take a step forward and complete the TD pass to Manningham in the 3rd quarter. In a weird way, I guess this means that the strategy might have worked, if it was implemented more often. Of course, Gilbride is the most predictable play caller and designs the most conservative pass routes for the Giants. It seems like 80% of the Giants routes are these hook routes which puts no pressure on the DBs. How many times last night did you see a Giants WR run hard at the DB and come back for the ball. And how many times did you see the DB hold his ground and actually jump over the WR and deflect the ball away. Now look at the Colts pass routes which all had the WRs running when they caught the ball either down the field away from the line of scrimmage or parallel to it. If you catch a hook route, you have no chance to make yards after the catch. However, if you run slants, crossing routes or out patterns, you have a big opportunity to do so.
Fewell looked good in that first game, partly because he was going against the worst QB in football. Unfortunately, he seemed to borrow a page out of Gilbride's "predictable" book in the second game. Even the announcers were saying that the Colts were happy to run at the Giants when they had only 1 LB and 6 DBs in the game. To make matters worse, the Giants dressed only 2 DTs, sitting down both Rocky Bernard as well as rookie Linval Jospeh (who did not dress last week either). I guess the logic was that the Colts would pass-pass-pass so the Giants strategy would be to have extra pass rushers in there. Consequently, they decided to dress Tollefson instead. (Tollefson is the Giants version of Notre Dame's Rudy.... great guy, big motor, huge heart and absolutely no talent.) So the Giants dressed 5 DEs and only 2 DTs last night. No doubt, they analyzed that they needed the extra pass rushers, and furthermore, the Giants played Tuck and Kiwanuka at DT at times, so they didn't need as many DTs. If only the Colts had cooperated and passed the ball all night like they were supposed to. Then Giants could have generated a pass rush wth the DEs and the DBs would not have been obliterated time and again by the Colts in the running game. Because they dressed two DTs, they were dead tired by the 2nd quarter and I think we saw that the Giants run defense got worse and worse as the night wore on. It's OK to come up with a plan of what the opponents are going to do, in fact that's what coaches are paid to do. But if they do something different, you have to be prepared to change and adjust to what they actually are doing. Furthermore, you have to dress the personnel to do it. Sheesh.... this is not rocket science.
After the game, all Coughlin would say is that "we were out-executed". That's great.... how about out-coached? Saying that his team was "out-executed" is coach-speak for saying: "I had a wonderful game plan, if only the stupid players would have executed it, we would have won." Reminds me of the old Casey Stengel line, when he was managing the 120-loss Mets of the early 60's. Casey said: "I manage good, but, boy do they play bad". In Stengel's case, he was probably right - but it's not completely true with the Giants.
To demonstrate his point, Coughlin will run the film and show how the Giants defense got defeated time and again by 1-on-1 blocks in the running game, proving that they were "out-executed". However, if your defensive plan calls for 6 DBs on the field on every down and a 210 pound safety is supposed to take on a 340 pound OL man who (big surprise) flattens him, why did the defense not stop the play? Technically you could say that the DB was "out-executed" by the OL-man, but I would argue that the team was out-coached and a mismatch was created by the other team making it impossible for that player to succeed. It's the coach's job to put players in a position to succeed, not to create a situation whether they will almost certainly fail because they over matched. And then, complain that they were out-executed, to boot.
I am not ready to throw in the towel on this season, but the OL has to be fixed and the coaching needs to get more creative. Nothing much is going to happen about the coaching - Giants won't make a mid-season change. But the OL has to change and it's not likely to do so unless there are actually some changes made. I know that sentence sounds repetitive and redundant (actually, so does this sentence), but what I mean is this. Nothing is going to improve if the coaches just instruct the players to play harder and play better. If Beatty hadn't broken his foot, he would be (or should be) starting against the Titans in place of Diehl. Maybe Andrews should get a start at LT.
Before I get too carried away, let's remember that Indy is a tough place to play. The stadium is so loud that the OL can't hear the snap count and the QB has to go with a silent count. This requires the OL-men to look back at the QB or the C and take their eye off their man until they see the ball snapped, which gives the pass rusher an advantage. To make matters worse, I think the Colts saw something in the Giants timing of the snap, because there were at least 2 or 3 times where I saw a Colts DE raise up before the ball was snapped or just as it was getting snapped and actually was moving forward (though not crossing the line for an off side penalty) before the T got out of his stance, giving him no chance to make an effective block. So maybe the OL is not as bad as it looked last night (that has to be true). But they didn't look that crisp in game 1, so this is definitley the biggest concern threatening a successful Giants season. More on the game later in the week.
I was fairly upbeat after the first game because Gilbride had a good game, did some intelligent things and actually made some successful adjustments in the 2nd half. However, he seemed to revert to form last night and did not put the offense in the best position to win the game. It's hard to completely blame Gilbride, because the OL was so badly manhandled last night, and this is not something coaching, schemes or play calling can fix. There's nothing that makes an offense look quite as bad as poor OL play. Eli is lucky to have escaped without injury. Perhaps they could have stuck a TE next to Diehl to give him some help on Freeney or a RB to give a little chip block, instead of sitting in the backfield looking for blitzing LBs. However, one time that they did try this, Travis Beckum looked back to Eli right before the snap, whiffed on his block and Freeney went breezing around both Diehl and Beckum and had a clear shot at Eli. Beckum stood there like a statue. Ironically, even a statue takes up space and Freeney had to take a wider path to Eli around Beckum, which allowed Eli to take a step forward and complete the TD pass to Manningham in the 3rd quarter. In a weird way, I guess this means that the strategy might have worked, if it was implemented more often. Of course, Gilbride is the most predictable play caller and designs the most conservative pass routes for the Giants. It seems like 80% of the Giants routes are these hook routes which puts no pressure on the DBs. How many times last night did you see a Giants WR run hard at the DB and come back for the ball. And how many times did you see the DB hold his ground and actually jump over the WR and deflect the ball away. Now look at the Colts pass routes which all had the WRs running when they caught the ball either down the field away from the line of scrimmage or parallel to it. If you catch a hook route, you have no chance to make yards after the catch. However, if you run slants, crossing routes or out patterns, you have a big opportunity to do so.
Fewell looked good in that first game, partly because he was going against the worst QB in football. Unfortunately, he seemed to borrow a page out of Gilbride's "predictable" book in the second game. Even the announcers were saying that the Colts were happy to run at the Giants when they had only 1 LB and 6 DBs in the game. To make matters worse, the Giants dressed only 2 DTs, sitting down both Rocky Bernard as well as rookie Linval Jospeh (who did not dress last week either). I guess the logic was that the Colts would pass-pass-pass so the Giants strategy would be to have extra pass rushers in there. Consequently, they decided to dress Tollefson instead. (Tollefson is the Giants version of Notre Dame's Rudy.... great guy, big motor, huge heart and absolutely no talent.) So the Giants dressed 5 DEs and only 2 DTs last night. No doubt, they analyzed that they needed the extra pass rushers, and furthermore, the Giants played Tuck and Kiwanuka at DT at times, so they didn't need as many DTs. If only the Colts had cooperated and passed the ball all night like they were supposed to. Then Giants could have generated a pass rush wth the DEs and the DBs would not have been obliterated time and again by the Colts in the running game. Because they dressed two DTs, they were dead tired by the 2nd quarter and I think we saw that the Giants run defense got worse and worse as the night wore on. It's OK to come up with a plan of what the opponents are going to do, in fact that's what coaches are paid to do. But if they do something different, you have to be prepared to change and adjust to what they actually are doing. Furthermore, you have to dress the personnel to do it. Sheesh.... this is not rocket science.
After the game, all Coughlin would say is that "we were out-executed". That's great.... how about out-coached? Saying that his team was "out-executed" is coach-speak for saying: "I had a wonderful game plan, if only the stupid players would have executed it, we would have won." Reminds me of the old Casey Stengel line, when he was managing the 120-loss Mets of the early 60's. Casey said: "I manage good, but, boy do they play bad". In Stengel's case, he was probably right - but it's not completely true with the Giants.
To demonstrate his point, Coughlin will run the film and show how the Giants defense got defeated time and again by 1-on-1 blocks in the running game, proving that they were "out-executed". However, if your defensive plan calls for 6 DBs on the field on every down and a 210 pound safety is supposed to take on a 340 pound OL man who (big surprise) flattens him, why did the defense not stop the play? Technically you could say that the DB was "out-executed" by the OL-man, but I would argue that the team was out-coached and a mismatch was created by the other team making it impossible for that player to succeed. It's the coach's job to put players in a position to succeed, not to create a situation whether they will almost certainly fail because they over matched. And then, complain that they were out-executed, to boot.
I am not ready to throw in the towel on this season, but the OL has to be fixed and the coaching needs to get more creative. Nothing much is going to happen about the coaching - Giants won't make a mid-season change. But the OL has to change and it's not likely to do so unless there are actually some changes made. I know that sentence sounds repetitive and redundant (actually, so does this sentence), but what I mean is this. Nothing is going to improve if the coaches just instruct the players to play harder and play better. If Beatty hadn't broken his foot, he would be (or should be) starting against the Titans in place of Diehl. Maybe Andrews should get a start at LT.
Before I get too carried away, let's remember that Indy is a tough place to play. The stadium is so loud that the OL can't hear the snap count and the QB has to go with a silent count. This requires the OL-men to look back at the QB or the C and take their eye off their man until they see the ball snapped, which gives the pass rusher an advantage. To make matters worse, I think the Colts saw something in the Giants timing of the snap, because there were at least 2 or 3 times where I saw a Colts DE raise up before the ball was snapped or just as it was getting snapped and actually was moving forward (though not crossing the line for an off side penalty) before the T got out of his stance, giving him no chance to make an effective block. So maybe the OL is not as bad as it looked last night (that has to be true). But they didn't look that crisp in game 1, so this is definitley the biggest concern threatening a successful Giants season. More on the game later in the week.
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