Big Blue View
With the New York Giants facing the Washington Commanders on Sunday, teams with a combined 15 straight losses between them, we turn to Hogs Haven’s ‘Eboracum’ for this week’s ‘5 questions.’ Jayden Daniels’ future and Kliff Kingsbury’s potential fit as Giants head coach are among the topics discussed.
Eboracum: The biggest problem has been injuries, and not just to Jayden Daniels. On offense, the Commanders have been without their starting QB, WR1, WR3, and RB1 for most of the season. On defense, they have been without their top three defensive ends, best safety, and have lost their top two cornerbacks to season-ending injuries. What’s more, the injuries have been perfectly placed to expose weaknesses on the rest of the roster. The duo of Jayden Daniels and Terry McLaurin were really the tent poles that held up the offense, so losing them has caused the entire offense to regress. The injuries at DE have exposed the poor tackling of the secondary and inability of the LBs to contain runs to the edge.
The second-biggest problem has been a much harder schedule. The Commanders played a relatively easy schedule last year, but this year’s schedule has been an absolute gauntlet and we always seem to be playing teams right when they have something to prove or are getting a bunch of important players back from injury. In that sense, maybe expectations were too high considering the difference in schedule difficulty was known even in the offseason.
The third-biggest problem seems to be poor coaching by Commanders DC Joe Whitt Jr. The defense has looked out of place and befuddled for most of the season, something that was true last season, but was hidden by the offense carrying the team. Dan Quinn finally demoted Whitt and took over as DC himself in Week 11 against the Dolphins and it was like a completely different defense stepped on the field. However, the defense by now has been gutted by injury and still isn’t especially good, it relies on the offense keeping time of possession to help it out. If the offense stutters, the defense seems to collapse as well.
Eboracum: It’s been a flukey season with injuries all over the roster, not just to Jayden Daniels, so we don’t want to draw too many conclusions from just this year. However, I’d say fans have to be a little concerned about Jayden’s ability to hold up in the NFL given that he sustained a rib injury that hampered him last year and has sustained three different soft-tissue injuries (knee, hamstring, elbow) this year. He hasn’t even been...
