Big Blue View
Last season the New York Giants played two competitive – but losing – games against the Washington Commanders. The Giants probably would have won the first one were it not for Graham Gano’s injury on the opening kickoff. The Commanders had the better of the play in their second meeting, although the Giants closed the gap at the end. On the basis of those two games alone you’d never have guessed that one team would finish 3-14 and the other 12-5 plus a trip to the NFC Championship Game.
Neither team’s defense was anything to write home about last season, with the Giants giving up 415 points and the Commanders 391. The difference was (unsurprisingly, if you watched the Giants last year) on offense, where Washington scored 485 points to the Giants’ 273, second lowest in the NFL. That’s a large gap to close if the Giants are to have any chance of winning this Sunday.
The Commanders’ running game (third-highest yardage total in the league) exploited the Giants’ sixth-worst run defense twice, but especially in their first meeting. The big contrast, though, was in quarterback play. Jayden Daniels had a remarkable rookie season. Part of it was his running ability – his 891 rushing yards were second only to Lamar Jackson among NFL quarterbacks. He had a strong season passing as well, though. Not in raw numbers – his 3,568 passing yards were only 16th among NFL quarterbacks. His 25 TDs tied for 10th in the NFL, though, and he added six rushing TDs.
The Giants’ defense will have to deal with that in some way. Daniels was sacked 47 times last year, sixth most among NFL quarterbacks, so the hopefully fearsome Giants pass rush may play a role in the outcome. Still, sometimes you have to fight fire with fire rather than dousing the fire with a hose, and the Giants’ best hope for victory is for their slumbering 2024 offense to be awakened by Russell Wilson and go toe-to-toe with Washington’s.
Here are the somewhat remarkable statistics for the Giants’ and Commanders’ wide receivers. last season:
Malik Nabers had more receptions and yards, plus a higher PFF receiving grade, than the Commanders’ newly re-signed Terry McLaurin. McLaurin, though, scored 13 TDs, second only to Ja’Marr Chase among wide receivers. In that regard, McLaurin’s season was an outlier in his career:
McLaurin has been remarkably consistent in his career, but he never had more than 7 TDs in a season until 2024. It’s not that he played any better last season than in previous years. Here are ESPN Analytics tracking metrics for his career. ESPN uses NFL Next Gen Stats to track how well receivers get open, how well they catch passes thrown to them, and how many yards after catch they get. The results are reported as percentile rankings among all wide receivers with at least 30 targets. Here are McLaurin’s season-by -season percentile rankings:
Overall, McLaurin’s 2024 was only in the mid-range of NFL receivers (48th...
