NFL-Giants: NY Giants football news

Here’s an article on the Giants new defensive coordinator. Basically his former players say he knows the game and treats his players right. Sounds good to me.

While it would be nice to see Pepper Johnson get the Giants defensive coordinator position, I don’t think now is the time for sentimentality.

A lot of guys have more experience:

Jets’ linebackers coach Bob Sutton was the defensive coordinator of the Jets under Eric Mangini.

Former Bills and Bears Head Coach Dick Jauron.

Former Browns Head Coach Romeo Crennel used to be an asssitant coach for the Giants during some good times.

Perry Fewell was the Bills’ defensive coordinator from 2006 to 2009 and the Bills’ interim head coach for the last seven regular-season games this year. He was the defensive backs coach for Tom Coughlin in Jacksonville for a while.

I’m afraid that by writing much about the Giants 41-9 defeat to the Carolina Panthers it’ll get stuck in my memory though…

The one thing that scares me most is that I don’t know for certain Bill Sheridan will be gone next season. It makes no sense to bring him back but until the Giants officially fire him you just don’t know…

The New York Times has a pretty objective look at Coughlin’s and players’ reactions to the bad defense. Paul Schwartz calls it a swiss cheese defense. Both articles mention an important lapse from Giants safety Michael Johnson who I think many of us would like to see replaced as much as we want Sheridan gone.

In Mike Garafolo’s review, I think Osi is the only Giants defensive guy to get a game ball. Sure the forced fumbles are nice, but I don’t think 6 sacks is nearly good enough from Osi who seems to be a liability against the run.

Some stats. The Giants are 28th in the league in points given up per game (25.4). Prett pathetic if you look at our company:

28 NY Giants 3993 307.2 2685 206.5 1308 100.6 330 25.4
29 Kansas City 5008 385.2 3083 237.2 1925 148.1 342 26.3
30 Tampa Bay 4699 361.5 2603 200.2 2096 161.2 356 27.4
31 St. Louis 4810 370.0 2896 222.8 1914 147.2 361 27.8
32 Detroit 5206 400.5 3537 272.1 1669 128.4 406 31.2

In 2008 we were giving up 18.4 points per game. We were ranked #5. Big difference…

Giants pride took a big hit today when Bill Sheridan’s joke of a defense gave up 46 points to the Eagles. The personnel can not be this bad so i guess we have to blame the defensive coordinator.

Osi coming back was supposed to make the Giants defense even batter than last year despite the new defensive coordinator. That didn’t happen and Bill Sheridan has been taking some heat. At least now he’s doing something. Fred Robbins is also joining the second team. If only we had someone to take over the linebacker and safety spots now…

With the return of Osi to the Giants defensive line (not counting the addition of Canty or Boley for obvious reasons) the Giants defense was supposed to get better. The only question mark was the new defensive coordinator.

This Mike Garafolo article doesn’t come out and say Sheridan sucks but it does present a pretty big problem when Sheridan says he didn’t know there was a communication problem on the Giants defense. Like Mike G. says, you see the Giants players looking around confused as fullbacks rip them for big gains and receivers run around uncovered…

What I think is most interesting is that he acknowledges Eli Manning’s bad performance: “He didn’t play his best game this past weekend or the past couple of weekends,” Reese said.

But he says CC Brown is doing real well: “It sounds like everybody’s giving C.C. Brown a hard time. He’s come in and really done an admirable job for us.”

Perhaps we fans who criticized Brown may need to reconsider since Reese surely knows more than we do. But I guess we can keep citicizing Manning until he picks up his game.

Each of these OTA reports has something a bit different to add so here goes:

Mike G
Pat T
Tom R