What was it that Dickens’ fellow said one time? It was the best of times; it was the worst of times! After convincingly beating Dallas in their season opener it seemed it was all upwards and onwards for the Giants who were literally being swamped by new a vibe, an optimism and an enthusiasm that the organization hadn’t experienced for literally the past decade and a half. Indeed, the only thing that could burst the balloon would be if QB Jaxson Dart suffered some kind of season-ending injury. And then three minutes into their Week 2 game in LA, Dart went down with what has now been confirmed is a season-ending knee injury that will require surgery.
Because we’re silver linings kind of guys here there are some very modest silver linings. For one, it is not a torn ACL and because it happened so early in the year Dart should be ready to go in plenty of time for the start of the 2027 campaign. And, of course, plenty of other prominent QBs, including the great Tom Brady himself, not to mention our own Phil Simms, have come back 100% from worse. It is also almost certain that the Giants aren’t going to be winning as many games this fall as they would have with Dart, but that also means they’ll have a better draft pick next spring and given the fact that even with Dart they’re still not quite ready for prime time, that adding another better need player not be the worst thing to happen.
And while we will obviously have to temper our expectations, the fact is the season’s not over. This is a different team with a much easier schedule than the past couple of years; in fact, there aren’t all that many games on the remaining schedule that would appear to be pretty much lost causes even before KO. Of course, Jameis Winston, or whomever, has to play better than he did Monday night in LA, but he has in the past, although John Harbaugh and his staff will have to make some adjustments to their approach.
Most of the focus on any changes the Giants make to their approach will be oriented to Winston and the offence, whether the Giants can in fact stay reasonably competitive this year will probably have to come from the defence. In fact, we have been totally mystified by the scheme the Giants have been running on that side of the ball thru the first two weeks of the season. Back in the spring when the Giants selected Arvell Reese, a hybrid ER/LB type, with the 5th pick overall, we were told that they would be employing an aggressive, attacking defence that was going to eschew much of the traditional positional model in favor of putting the players into spots where they could make disruptive plays. And that’s pretty much what we saw throughout the pre-season.
Presumably, that was because those were the kind of players the Giants actually have on defence. Instead what we have seen thru the first couple of weeks of the year is a re-run of the very traditional, very conservative, very static, very reactive base 4-2 with the LBs lined up 4-5 yards off the ball and the secondary playing well off the LOS. I don’t think that that’s a particularly effective scheme to begin with and its made worse with the Giants because few of their key players on D fit that system at all well. The DE/ERs, for example, are somewhat undersized guys in the 250-260 range and expecting them to hold the point of attack against 320-330 pound pro OTs in run defence is a huge ask. And its much the same with the pass rush. Yeah, you’d like to see them beat their guy to the QBs, but in this day and age when the NFL allows offensive literally unlimited holding in order to try and protect the passers; plus the QBs these days get rid of the ball so quickly and with the Giants coverage generally so soft there are almost always going to be receivers open underneath.
In fact, if the Giants want to get to the QB, and to have any modicum of success this fall they are going to have to, they have to get guys like Burns, Carter, Thibo and Reese in gaps and greases so they can use their speed and quickness to get leverage, if not free runs. And you do that by bringing a lot of people to the LOS, force the OL to have to make adjustments on the fly because 255-pounds guy tend to fly way faster than 325-pounders. It would also help if the coverage people were up there too jamming receivers before they get going. And yes they might give up a few big plays, but hell they’re doing that anyway!
in that same vein, I wanted to talk a bit about Reese who has struggled at times thru the first couple of games, especially in coverage. Let’s be clear though; in college, Reese was something of a hybrid ER/LB who made his money disrupting things in the backfield, while he also had only limited experience in coverage Again, instead the Giants have him playing as a true off-ball LB tasked with reading the play and running to the ball and dropping into coverage in passing situations. If we’re going to keep him at ILB can we at least think a little outside the box and get him up closer to the LOS where hopefully he can use his size and speed to beat the offence to the point of attack and start to make those impact plays. Update: Its just been reported that Brian Burns will also be out at least this week with a sprained ankle meaning maybe the Giants use Reese more in the DE/ER rotation this week.
