NFL-Giants: NY Giants football news

Giants beat the redskins with tough defense and an efficient offense

We played a good game. A few Giants penalties were irritating, and when the Giants got the ball at their 44 in the 4th quarter and couldn’t put the game away, that was disappointing. But overall we played a good game. I mean after the offense failed to put the game away the defense stepped up. Washington gave us the ball back. Tiki Barber had some nice runs to pick up yards and eat up the clock. It was like watching Giants football again. Then Brandon Jacobs comes in and picks up a big first down with a nice run. Sweet! We kick a field goal to go up 19-3 and the game is pretty much over with less than 3 minutes left.

The Giants defense deserves credit. Brandon Short did well replacing Carlos Emmons. Nice to have linebacker depth! Speaking of backup linebackers, Chase Blackburn did a nice job on special teams cover units. The starting linebackers played well enough, but not great. Pierce dropped an interception and Arrington wasn't in on many tackles. That's fine with me; it's a team game and we don't need one guy to have big numbers. If everyone gets the job done all year like they did today, the Giants are all set.

The Giants defensive line played well. Despite a number of blatant holds that went uncalled, we got good pressure from our front four. Strahan and Robbins picked up big sacks. Cofield still looks like a real NFL defensive tackle – great value from the rookie considering we got him late in the fourth round. The only downside here is that Osi Umenyiora had another quiet game. He did sack Brunell in garbage time. I didn't see the helmet to helmet hit the refs called. I think they gave Washington 3 points by blowing that call so I don't balme Osi there.

The secondary kept the Redskins receivers mostly covered. Sam Madison and Corey Webster get most of the credit from me. RW McQuaters played well when he was in. The Giants safeties still need to do more for me to be 100% satisfied.

Who am I kidding? I am 100% satisfied. We held them to under 100 yards passing and rushing. No way they could win with our defense dominating like that. 86 yards passing? 78 yards rushing? The Redskins 3.9 yards / rush isn’t bad but we had them much lower early in the game when it really counted. The Redskins 3.6 yards / pass is just bad (for them obviously). Something woke up our pass defense.

On offense, the Giants didn't put up big points but they moved the ball consistently, put together long drives that wore down the Washington defense, and didn't turn the ball over. In other words the offense played well. They did get lucky when Petigout recovered Tiki’s fumble (Sean Taylor made a nice play there – no need to worry about Tiki) but there's nothing wrong with a little luck.

The offensive line didn't give up a sack. Eli did face some pressure, often from the blitz (nice job by Jacobs picking some blitzers up) but came through with the big passes. Eli hung tough and there is no question – he is our QB and we're lucky to have him. If you think stats are important his completion percentage was closer to 70% than to 60%: 23-33, 256 yds, 1 TD, no interceptions.

The Giants receivers hauled in some nice catches, didn't drop too many (Shockey had what I felt was an important drop), and everyone showed up to play. Tim Carter might not lose the #3 job even if Sinorice ever gets himself healthy. Nice game Tim!

The offensive line had some nice run blocks and Tiki averaged over 5 yards a carry. Hard not to win when you do that.

On special teams, I already mentioned our coverage units when I mentioned Chase Blackburn. Tyree didn't do much, but other guys were able to get the job done. Chad Morton looked better than he has all season. The Giants did miss a 47 yard field goal attempt, but we made 4 others.

Defense (awesome), offense (good against a strong redskins D), and special teams (better than the other guys) – we outplayed the Redskins in every phase of the game. Let's build on this very solid effort.

If you're counting the Giants are 2-0 in the NFC East. Washington is 0-2. Now we get to watch the Eagles and the Cowboys beat each other up...