So all the articles I've been reading say the same thing I was going to write anyway. The Giants played tough on both lines of scrimmage but they also played dumb so they lost.
My first thought after the game winning touchdown reception was to blame the coaches. I mean when the game is on the line do you want your rookie corner on the other team's best receiver?
And then you can blame the players who should know better. Like Luke Petigout's penalty that basically forced the Giants to settle for another field goal when they could have put the game away with a TD.
But what really killed the Giants all game were their cover teams. Missed tackles and bad positioning meant big returns all day against the Giants. Do we blame the coaches for that?
There were also missed tackles on defense. Will Allen had one early that allowed a big gain. Speaking of Will Allen, he was closer to Chad Johnson than Deloatch was on the final touchdown, but he couldn't do anything but let Johnson make the catches and then go for the tackle. At least he didn't miss those tackles.
All in all what should have been an encouraging game wasn't. Watching your team play sloppy football just isn't that fun.
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So a few days ago I wrote about how playing the Bengals defense should be easier going that the Redskins, Steelers, and Eagles defenses. We'll see.
I'm having second thoughts because Luke Petigout may be out and Snee is still out, making the Giants offensive line a mess. There may just be a practice squad player starting at left tackle! If Petigout does play (Dan Martin writes it will be a game-time decision), both he and O'Hara will be playing hurt.
Neil Best points out that Eli is getting better at dealing with pressure, but how much will he get? Will Shockey be a high priced blocker?
Now that he's faced the ebst defenses in the league, Eli gets to play against some of the worst. I'd like to see the Giants finsih the season with a few inspiring wins, starting Sunday vs. the Bengals. I'd prefer to be an optimistic Giants blogger during the long offseason...
Neil Best is certain Dayne will be playing for another team next year. Giants fans have been calling him a bust for a while, and while he has been inconsistent I believe it's because he never did get a chance. Sure he had a chance in short yardage situations, but that was never his specialty and Coughlin should have known better.
While I blame Coughlin for miscasting Dayne, I don't blame him for leaving Tiki on the field instead. Tiki is going to the probowl because he was a one man show most weeks:
Barber, 29, has proved his worth and then some this season, accounting for an astonishing 44.6% of the Giants' yards - by far the highest percentage in the league. His 1,314 rushing yards are 73 short of his career high and rank second in the NFC, and his 1,857 total yards rank second in the NFL.
The article also reminds us that Collins has been playing well for the Raiders and the irony regarding the Chargers unexpected success this year and the Eli draft drama...
Here's an intersting 10 page article on Eli Manning from New York Times magazine. I learned a few things including a bit about Eli torturing his dad and Warner holding onto the ball too long (an average of 3.8 seconds per play). Oh wait a minute. I already knoew Warner held onto the ball too long...
Just a little expansion on my questions about the Giants coaching staff and why Manning had to tell them which plays he could handle. This is from the post game press conference:
Q - To what degree was the playbook condensed?A - It's not that we took plays out, we just put in plays that I felt comfortable with and plays that I have been running. Plays that I ran during training camp or the preseason and plays that I've seen against live action, that I've seen in games. I knew how to make my reads quickly. My feet and my mind were all working together and you get in that rhythm where if the first thing is not open, your feet are already getting set to go to your next progression and I knew when to run when things weren't open and I could take off and get some yards. They were plays that I felt comfortable with, so obviously you have to have your base plays where you can run it and you know what to do and then you can add some new things for special occasions. Hopefully we will continue improve and put some new things in and get comfortable with them.
Q - Was that your suggestion?
A - Yes. I went and talked to Coach Coughlin on Tuesday of last week and talked to him about why I was struggling and what we could do to change things. I just said that we have put in so many new plays from week to week that I don't feel comfortable if we see it against a new defense or a new blitz, I'm not exactly sure where to go. I think we need to run plays that I know what we're doing that I am familiar with and I can get the ball out of my hands and make quick decisions.
Eli Manning went 16-23, 182 yards, 2 TDs, 1 Int (which looked like a pass interference to me but wasn't called) and a long of 49. Light years ahead of what we had been seeing. While Giants fans should be very happy with what we saw from Eli, we have to wonder about our coaches.
Why is it that Eli had to tell the coaches what plays he's comfortable running? Why weren't the coaches calling plays he could handle all along? If we can almost beat the Steelers while our defense is depleted, why do we get embarassed by 4 weeks in a row? I'm not real impressed with the Giants coaches this year.
There may not be many Giants fans who can laugh at how badly Eli ahs been playing, but if you can (you know holidays and jolly feelings and all), Reuben Frank has a humorous comparison of Eli and Peyton. Eli also comes up short against Feagles and Bettis, but at least Peyton is sticking up for Eli: "I think the Giants will be a tough team real soon," he said. "I really do. When the time is right, Eli's going to wreak havoc on this league. I can just tell."
I can't find one. The Pittsburgh Steelers site has an intersting look at some important matchups. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic now that the season is over, but they all seem to favor the Steelers. Even Tiki Barber might be in trouble going up against Farrior.
Hank Gola reports on what it takes to get Eli Manning comfortable. Basically it seems that Eli Manning is telling Coughlin which plays he's comfortable with. Is it just me or is this scary? Shouldn't the coach know which plays the QB can handle?
Ernie Palladino has many of the same quotes as Gola. To me he seems to be saying that the Giants are hoping for luck. Instead of trying to account for all the movement they see the plan is to snap the ball and hope Pittsburgh is out of position. The problem is Pittsburgh never seems to be caught out of position, so the Giants might need more than a bit of luck...
Still I think this is the best way to go. I mean what other choice do we have? The Giants offense looked like fans pointing all over the field at various Ravens defenders. We can't have that!
I was wrong when I argued that the Giants offensive line was good enough (at least I never said they were good!). I was wrong about Diehl who I thought would be a fine right tackle. I mean it wasn't that long ago that when he played Kearse in game 1 he had trouble but didn't give up a sack.
Speaking fo tackles, Jay Greenberg for the New York Post argues that since Petigout is having another bad season at left tackle it is time to move him to the right and claims to have sources calling this possible move likely.
That means the Giants have to go looking for a left tackle in free agancy:
No instant starter is likely to materialize between picks Nos. 36-45 of the draft, unless Accorsi is able to trade up a long way for an Alex Barron of Florida State or Michael (chip off the old block) Munoz of Tennessee.Both Walter Jones and Orlando Pace, designated as franchise players for 2004, may again be free agents but the cap cost for a top left tackle likely will be prohibitive. The only above-average guy remaining might be Buffalo's Jonas Jennings, which means someone is going to overpay.
Did the Patriots resisgn Matt Light? He was due to become a free agent. Anyway, something needs to be done.
Have you ever seen a QB play as badly as Eli Monning did against the Ravens? I mean the Ravens are good but is our offense really that bad? I have to believe that the coaches are not doing their jobs. They are not getting the Giants players ready to compete. Eli was obviously confused and even Amani Toomer said he was confused. If the coaches were doing their jobs, would the players all be confused?
Jeremy Shockey has not been happy recently and the papers are attributing that unhappiness to his role in Tom Coughlin's (and to probably a lesser extent Hufnagel's) offense. Mike Garafolo takes a superficial look at the routes Shockey is running compared to what he did in Fassel's offense.
Paul Schwartz doesn't seem to care what sort of routes the Giants run as long as they start passing the ball more often. He's probably right. The Ravens and Steelers are both almost as good at stopping the run as the Redskins.
Yesterday I wrote about Coughlin and the Giants coaching. Today I'll continue along the same lines.
Coughlin defended the Giants offensive coordinator, saying that play-calling is difficult now (presumably because the Giants can't do anything right on the field). Amani Toomer also seems to blame execution. That allowed the Redskins to sell out against the run and blitz because they knew the Giants passing game wouldn't burn them.
It seems that Hufnagel is going to need some more defenders to keep the New York press and fans from calling for the axe. Ernie Palladino writes that the players also want different plays called, although no doubt he is overgeneralizing somewhat.
Of course it would be nice if Eli Manning could make adjustments a the line the way Peyton does, but he can't. We Giants fans can only hope that Manning will learn the offense and adjust to the NFL well enough for the play-calling to be a bit more exciting.
Bob Glauber at Newsday writes that Coughlin is failing as miserably as Fassel did and has a chance to be even worse by losing all the remaining games and setting a new Giants record.
Ralph Vacchiano writes that while the Giants say they haven't quit yet, they are still getting worse every week. If the Giants are trying, than this is either the least talented or worst coached team in football. Or both. According to the next article all the players are trying...
Gary Myers claims to have a source in the Giants organization that said:
"The focus is too much on beating him during the week instead of beating the other team - avoid fines, being five minutes early to meetings, trying to be perfect all week," one Giants source said after yesterday's game. "You have to fight two battles and you can only win one. That causes you not to win. People might be drained or not focused by the time the week comes to an end."Myers also reminds us that Accorsi needs to take some heat for not putting together a decent offensive line (he signed players, but obviously the wrong ones). Also the extra picks we gave up for Manning in the 2005 draft are starting to look like pretty good ones, possibly a top ten.Is Coughlin losing the team? "I think we don't have much of a team anymore," the source said. "Look who's in there. I don't know anybody on our team."
Mike Vaccaro also has something to say, calling the Giants a beaten team (I could have told you that) and Coughlin a bewildered coach. He argues that Coughlin sent the wrong message by benching Warner.
Fact is Warner was playing badly. He deserved to get benched. Now the problem is that Manning is playing worse. But I say keep him in there. 2004 is finished.
And maybe it doesn't matter who the QB is. Neil Best indicates that maybe the play calling is too predictable and is causing problems. I mentioned back on October 31 that Coughlin was too predictable in the red zone. Now the predictability has spread.
Erik Boland confused me a bit whne he called Will Allen a safety, but got it right when he said the Giants were not tough enough against the Redskins. When one of the most predictable offenses in the NFL, an offense that has looked bad pretty much every game, walks all over your defense...
Eric from BBI blames the owners for sticking with Accorsi and hiring Coughlin. He says the Giants will not be a competitive football team for a long time. Still have hopes for this season anyone? The Giants defense may have suffered another injury: Green's knee is hurt again (thanks to an illegal block). Robert Royal claimed it was unintentional, but give me a break. You don't run right at somebody and dive to take out his knees by accident. It looked like a deliberate play and I wouldn't be surprised if the coaches were involved. Royal is now in an elite class of players who I'd actually like to see out of the NFL along with Dawkins and Roy Williams from our other division rivals.
Mike Garafolo is right to point out that Peterson is playing better than the other Will (Will Allen the former first round pick who has been beaten for 8 touchdowns so far the season) but I have to wonder why Eagles vice president of player personnel Tom Heckert calls Peterson a shutdown corner when the stats suggest something else:
So far this year, 52 passes have been thrown his way. That's slightly less than five per game. Only 27 have been completed, a 52 percent average.That's good, but I thought shutdown meant that other teams didn't throw near you. Has it changed since Deon Sanders' time? Now if a team throws at you 5 times a game and only completes 50% of those passes you are shutting somehting down?
So I predicted the Giants defense would play well but not well enough. I didn't expect the Eagle to emabrass our offense as badly as they did.
Manning didn't look so great, but Coughlin is sticking with him. His reasoning is that "As I said in the beginning when the change was made; if we didn't do a better job overall, it wasn't going to make a whole lot of a difference who the quarterback was." How's that for confidence?
Then the Giants lost Bromell and Wiley who of course were replacing Strahan and Washington. Ouch! The defense is going to miss those guys.
Ernie Paladino argues that the playoffs are within reach. I suppose if the offense suddenly realized its potential with Eli playing like Peyton or even Big Ben that would be true. For now, the Giants are an extremely low-scoring team with a good defense that has been hit hard by injuries. For now, the Giants are not a playoff contender.