Big Blue View
Entering today’s game, technically there was still a path for the New York Giants to run the table and make the playoffs now that the most difficult part of their 2025 schedule was mostly behind them (next week at Detroit notwithstanding). If you buy that, though, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you. So fans needed another motivation to watch this 2-8 team whose three most exciting players are all injured, two of them out for the season.
That motivation only indirectly concerned the people between the lines. Yes, it would be fun to see what Jameis Winston could do with Jaxson Dart still in the concussion protocol. Much of the interest, though, focused on the coaches. Interim Giants head coach Mike Kafka has been interviewing for a head coaching position for several years. Turning this Giants team around, albeit against an easier second-half schedule, would do more than anything he could say in an interview to make his case to return as head coach in 2026.
On the other sideline, Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur is under fire for his preference to run the ball and offensive results that have not followed from that. Packers defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley, a New Jersey product whose defense has been suffocating, has been more in the conversation as a possible Giants head coach hire. Since Kafka is still calling the plays, he and Hafley would be going head-to-head. To be honest, I didn’t think Hafley distinguished himself today, and I thought Kafka acquitted himself well in his first game as head coach. Nonetheless, the Giants lost again, so let’s see what we learned from this latest fourth quarter collapse.
Did you see anything different about the Giants’ defense today? I didn’t. It looked like they played a lot of man defense. Props to Jordan Love, he played great today. Still, the Packers knew that whenever they needed yards, all they had to do was run the ball. Green Bay averaged 5.6 yards per rush for the game, most of it without their lead running back. Your lead back, Josh Jacobs, goes down with an injury? No problem, send backup Emanuel Wilson into the game and watch him do just as well. Wilson sliced through the Giants’ interior run defense for an 11-yard touchdown while hardly being touched. On runs between the guards, the Packers averaged just as much as when they ran outside: 5.6 yards per carry. How can that happen? For good measure, Emanuel caught Love’s 2-point conversion pass to increase the Packers’ lead to 7 points in the fourth quarter.
I will say this much. Bowen did blitz more today (12 times) after hardly blitzing at all last week. It had some effect: Love was only 5 of 10 when blitzed, although he did have one of his TD passes on a...
