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Giants Film Session: Week after Saints

by Tom Peticca

A win is a win, and while it wasn’t pretty the Giants are 2-0. After last years shootout if you told me the final score of a Giants vs. Saints 2016 was 16-13 I would have called you crazy. While the defense played great, especially Jackrabbit Jenkins, the offense shot themselves in the foot the entire afternoon. So the offense will be the focus of this week’s Film Session.

Let me start out by saying I will not group in Sterling Shepard with the rest of the offense this week, Shepard was lights out all afternoon, so there is no need for us to scream at the rookie wide receiver.  The rest of the NY Giants offense played badly. Fumbles by Eli Manning, Victor Cruz and Shane Vereen are unacceptable.  It could have put the Giants in a massive hole if it wasn’t for the defense stepping up and playing dominant football.  Odell Beckham and Cruz both dropped passes that should have been huge plays but instead had Giants fans shaking their heads. Thankfully Cruz made up for it with a monstrous catch along the sideline with a defender in his grill to set up Josh Brown’s game winning Field Goal.

Let’s not forget the poor offensive line play. It’s hard to find one “dog of the week” because everyone missed their assignments. Giants’ running backs averaged 2 yards a carry behind Newhouse, Jerry, Richburg, Pugh and Flowers. In addition to not getting the run game going, they did not do a great job of protecting Eli. While Eli was only sacked twice, he was under pressure often and one of the sacks lead to Eli’s fumble.

The Giants offense also failed to score on 4 straight plays from the 1-yard line. Lots of fans got flashbacks to the bad goal line play calling from the 2015 season. Ben McAdoo needs to be more creative.

As a whole the offense was bad against the Saints on Sunday. That being said, take away 5 or 6 places that were drops/ fumbles, and the Giants win that game in a blowout. Emphasizing ball security heading into this week’s game against Washington should put the Giants in a position to dominate the 0-2 defending division champs.

(@peticca95)