NFL-Giants: NY Giants football news

Bob Whitfield is rightly mad at his performance on Sunday subbing for the injure Luke Petigout. By the way, no word on how long Petigout wil be out yet – all Coughlin said was that they haven’t decided if he can return this season or not.

The problem is that Whitfield is too slow to handle a good speed rush. If the outside rush were the only problem a chip every play might be all that’s needed. However, I think he can be beaten to the inside as well where it’s much more difficult to get double team help.

Coughlin does mention that he’s considering moving Diehl to left tackle. The Giants depth at guard is very good, so if he can handle the speed rush better than Whitfield that would be the way to go. Hopefully this thing will work itself out.

Here’s something on the Giants working out Peter Warrick from this article:

No team has been more decimated by injuries than the Giants, especially at wide receiver. Amani Toomer is out for the year, rookie Sinorice Moss has yet to play this season, and Plaxico Burress has been battling back spasms. This helps to explain why, on Monday, the day after their disheartening loss to the Chicago Bears, the Giants worked out former first-round pick Peter Warrick. The Bengals recently worked out Warrick, but opted to pass on him for the time being. But the Giants’ need at wide receiver might be greater than the Bengals’.

I thought Tyree played OK (Manning’s throws were the real issue with our passing game against the Bears) but it makes sense for the Giants to explore their options.

The Giants got the ball first, and our MVP took over. Tiki Barber is just amazing and had some nice long runs. The Giants drive stalled when they started passing thanks to a couple of poor throws from Eli Manning. To make matters worse, Feeley missed a field goal. Blame the wind if you don’t want to blame our kicker.

The Giants defense stepped up, and not only did we stop Chicago on their first possession, Kiwanuka forced a turnover (he actually intercepted the ball) that led to a Brandon Jacobs touchdown run. There was a strange call on Jacobs for unsportsmanlike conduct after the TD run. Maybe it’s just me, but if the dude’s wife is pregnant and he wants to say hi to his wife by sticking the football under his shirt, then what’s the problem?

Of course Chicago had good field position after that. A weak Feeley kickoff didn’t help. The Giants defense held on Chicago had to punt. Manning was soon intercepted and while the defense held firm, Chichago still kicjed a 49 yard field goal to make it 7-3 Giants.

The Giants didn’t go anywhere with the football thanks to more poor passing from Manning. The Giants D stopped the Bears again. The Giants again got nowhere on offense (this is when Petigout went down and Whitfield came in). At this point in the game I was wondering why the banged up defense was playing lights out while the offense missing Toomer was playing pretty poorly. Mostly because they were calling passes and manning wasn’t delivering the ball.

Soon after Chicago got the ball back our D came up huge with a fumble that Gibril Wilson both forced and recovered. Sweet play that led to a Giants field goal. Feeley gets credit for making a 46 yarder in the wind – he had missed a 33 yard attempt earlier. Feeley made another field goal a bit later to make it 13-3 Giants.

However, right before halftime the Giants defense gave up a few 20+ yard plays and allowed a Chicago TD. That sucked. There was a 26 yard run up the gut, a couple of big pass plays that victimized Madison who looked hurt. I’m not sure what happened to the defense there. 13-10 at halftime made me a lot less confident than I had been a few minutes before at 13-3.

Unfortunately, it was a sign of things to come. The Giants played poorly on both side of the ball in the 3rd quarter and two Chicago TDs later it was 24-13. Giants fans everywhere were wondering what happened. The refs were making a lot of calls against the Giants (most but not all the Giants deserved) and the lines were both getting beaten. But the Giants offense came through with a quick TD to make it 24-20 with 3:30 left in the 3rd. This was thanks to a big run by Tiki who hadn’t looked good so far in the 3rd.

When Chicago got the ball back it looked like we had them stopped deep in their own territory, but they converted on 3rd and 13 (Corey Webster went for the big play instead of making the tackle). Their passing game continued to kill us. The third quarter ended with Chicago facing a 3rd and 4 at the Giants 35. The Giants D had another chance to stop them, the commercial break was pretty suspenseful. A penalty made it 3rd and 9. Fred Robbins came up with a huge sack to make it 4th and 18 with the Bears well out of field goal range.

Awesome start to the 4th quarter. The Giants looked good driving the ball. Tiki was running hard. Eli made a nice play to get the ball to Tyree who made an even nicer catch. Tyree was so close to going out of bounds that the Bears challenged. They lost their challenge. Everything was great until Whitfield let his man sack Eli who fumbled (luckily out of bounds). A Tiki run on 2nd and 24 made it 3rd and 15.

An insane 51 yard field goal attempt (into swirling wind) was of course missed. Devin hester of the Bears then returned it 108 yards for a touchdown. 31-20 Bears. That play was just infuriating. How can your head coach put his guys in that situation? I mean the Giants just stood there and watched it happen – the coaches had obviously not prepared them at all for the possibility of a missed field goal being returned. Just incredibly stupid considering that the field goal was 99% certain to be missed anyway.

Manning’s second interception killed any hope that was left of a Giants comeback. How can you win when your QB is credited wit 2 interceptions and 3 fumbles on 13/28 accuracy? With 11 minutes left in the 4th Eli had thrown for 111 yards. Rex Grossman had played much better and it showed in the stats: 3 TDs, 1 int., 18/30 for 246 yards.

Well soon it was 38-20 and with 8 minutes left the game was over. Eli, Coughlin, and Webster (in that order) cost the Giants dearly in this game, wasting some solid efforts from all the backups who were forced to start. Well not Whitfield who badly needed help he didn’t get, but on defense anyway, the backups played as well as we could expect.

Here’s a weird article from Chicago that says if the Bears win they are the best team in the NFC. That kind of makes sense until you read the part about the Giants being an overrated team that is simply not very good. He says Eli Manning makes mistakes like Grossman (seriously which one would you rather have?) and the defense was awful even before losing Strahan and Umenyiora. I concede only that we do have serious questions on defense when we’re missing our top 2 or 3 defensive ends but that goes without saying for any NFL team.

Personally I think Chicago is overrated. The Giants will be the Bears first real game. We amy see some changes besides the required ones thanks to injuries. Ward might be returning kickoffs. As long as he holds onto the ball he can’t do less than Morton.

Another Chicago article has some criticism for Jacobs and Burress for talking too much. Burress says the Bears don’t cover well (the reporter agrees that man to man is not their strong suit) and Jacobs says the Bears can’t tackle him. What’s said is said. Now we just have to see if these two can back it up. If they don’t have special games then I’ll have lots of criticism for them.

Toomer is done for the year. If Burress doesn’t play against the Bears, we’ll be in a tough spot Sunday. We’ll also need to add someone to the roster when Toomer is put on IR.

Steve Serby reminds us that while the Giants defense heals, the offense needs to score some points. That means Tiki Barber has to keep kicking ass. Mike Lupica reminds us that neither team looked particularly good last Sunday, but that the country will be watching anyway.

The Bears are hurting a bit too, though this Chicago paper thinks Urlacher will play. They also think he’ll be less effective. Considering the Dolphins success running off tackle, and the Giants ability to run off tackle, if Urlacher is slowed the Bears might be in trouble.

For the Giants, Strahan is optimisitic but probably not playing. Ernie Palladino says Kiwanuka and Awasome are playing well enough. They are playing well for 4th and 5th string defensive ends, but is that good enough to play the Bears? I suppose that will depend on how often the Giants and Tiki score…

A Texans FanBlog lists a few things that the Texans did well and says the texans are just learning how to win. On the Giants side of things, Mike Garafolo says the Giants are continuing to win ugly.

What amazes me is that when the Giants running game looks so good, and the run defense plays well, the game is still real close. The Butler penalty can be blamed, some people will criticize the play calling. Sure 28 rushes and 29 pass attempts seems like good balance, but there are always some who say keep running it down their throats.

I would like to point out some positives besides the obvious one (we won): Gerris Wilkinson forcing a huge fumble (DeMeco Ryans got a lot of attention as he played well for Houston and he was one guy I wanted in the draft, but Wilkinson seems to have similar potential).

Tiki Barber (MVP as usual).

O’Hara had a great game. He gets to the second level and consistently makes blocks.

The Giants didn’t look much better than Houston, but with 3/4 defensive ends out it’s hard to look your best. Kiwi and Awasome didn’t look bad – looked good against the run actually, but the Giants sure did miss Osi, Strahan, and Tuck. We really need some or all of those guys back for the Bears game. The secondary could use some healing as well…

But, ugly or not, the Giants get a win. The Cowboys (crazy game), the Bears (Miami was able to run on them), and Atlanta all lost. The Giants are in a good position.

In case you’ve forgotten about the Giants second round pick, here’s an article on Moss and the infamous quad. A bigger Giants draft pick, Brandon Jacobs (2005 round 4), is being compared to Jim Brown. We’ll see about that, but you have to appreciate the attitude:

If they give in one bit, I’m gonna beat ‘em. In my mind, nobody out of those 11 people on the other side of the football can stop me.” And, he added, “None of them ever want to tackle (him). I mean, they can hit you a few times, but if you keep bringing it and bringing it and bringing it, eventually they’ll give up. I can see it in their eyes. I see it week in and week out.

Jacobs isn’t the only Giant playing well. Newsday reminds us that this team simply has it. Now they just have to bring it vs. the Texans. They say they are ready.

We have an article on Brandon Jacobs from a Kansas university paper and an article on Ryan Kuehl from a high school newspaper. Not surprisingly, both articles are better written than what we tend to get in the New York papers…