Big Blue View
There will be one fewer winless team in the NFL by the end of Sunday Night Football. The question is whether that will be the New York Giants or the Kansas City Chiefs.
The Giants’ offense is coming off of one of their most impressive performances of the last decade, putting up 506 total yards and 37 points. They’ll face a Kansas City Chiefs defense that is currently 13th in yards allowed and 20th in points allowed through two games.
The Giants could be getting some good news up front if left tackle Andrew Thomas is able to make his season debut, which in turn could boost an anemic rushing attack. On the flip side, Russell Wilson is coming off of his best performance since 2017, and one of the best quarterbacking performances in Giants’ history.
So what can the Giants do move the ball and score points on the Chiefs’ defense.
It’s unrealistic to expect that the Giants’ offense maintain the torrid pace they established in the fourth quarter against the Cowboys. The bigger question, however, is whether the offense can stay warm.
The Giants flashed the ability to move the ball well against the Commanders, and moved between the 20’s relatively easily against the Cowboys. Being able to sustain drives and move the ball between the 20’s will be the first step for the Giants in this game. Obviously the explosive plays are exciting and we should probably expect them to be a vital piece of the offense. Hitting those 10, 15, or 20+ yard plays forces the defense to respect the vertical aspect of the offense and prevents them from devoting too many resources to defending the short to intermediate area of the field.
Russell Wilson delivered one of the finest performances ever by a Giants’ quarterback last week, but it was marred by the offense’s inability to finish drives and convert in the red zone.
The Giants have been poor in the red zone for… a while now. They ranked 28th in red zone percentage (the rate at which a team reaches the red zone and scores a touchdown) in 2018, 16th in 2019, 31st in 2020, 32nd in 2021, 7th in 2022, 31st in 2023, 32nd in 2024, and currently rank 31st in 2025.
Figuring out the red zone will be key to sustained success for the Giants’ offense. Scoring inside of the 20’s isn’t perfectly correlated to offensive success — after all, the Chicago Bears and Carolina Panthers were both Top 10 teams in terms of red zone success last year. However, being able to score touchdowns instead of settling for field goals is obviously good.
Wilson proved last week that he can still pick apart defenses at all levels of the field. Adding that long-missing element back into the Giants’ offense went a long way toward curing the feeling that the offense was constantly iceskating uphill. Being able to get the tough yards when the field is...
