I WISH the groundskeeper would have kept the lights off at the New Meadowlands last night.
It would have spared the eyes from a hark-back to the dark ol’ days of last season’s porous defence with a secondary in disarray and the opponents gaining big plays at will.
As referenced in last week’s piece on G-Men HQ (Cause for Pessimism), I feared ominous clouds were ahead for the boys in blue.
Here was a demoralising afternoon when dropped balls (Boss, Nicks), bad punting (Dodge with a patented 31-yard clunker) and turnovers (fumble, INT) were punished. It was only a matter of time.
Seven days is a long time in football and just one week after the Giants were supposedly top of the NFC and perhaps one of the league’s best…it’s back to the drawing-board.
I find myself agreeing with an exasperated Carl Banks, who repeatedly said during the radio broadcast yesterday: “Mistakes made in previous weeks have now manifested themselves in this defeat.”
Exactly: errors which have been papered over due to some excellent offense finally came to the fore.
I think the key factor in the loss came down to one thing – no pass rush to speak off at all.
The Giants’ victories seem to go hand-in-hand with the pass rush. If the D is rolling, the Giants are rolling. Last night they were static. Yesterday saw a solitary sack from Osi but, stats aside, it felt like Kitna was never under any pressure and had all day in the pocket. The pass rush was non-existent. If you want an early hint as to whether the Giants stand a chance to win, it comes from the pass rush.
It reminded me of the gloomy Sheridan era rather than the recently rejuvenated Perry Fewell regime.
Its so frustrating as there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why some days they show up and some they don’t. How can this be the same D which brought so many sacks just a few games ago? It’s not like the Cowboys have a particularly good O-line. It’s perplexing and disheartening.
As I said last week, the Giants need to be measured against better opposition and the meat of the schedule is coming up – this is where we’ll really start to find the true character of these 2010 G-Men.
P:S: I’ll be rooting for the Redskins tonight (MNF) as I don’t want Philly to be on the same 6-3 record as the G-Men next Sunday at the Linc. It’ll be nice to have a cushion.