Big Blue View
It seemed as if the New York Giants were starting to get close to being a respectable team. The quarterback of the future was in place, an accomplished veteran quarterback had shown he can still run an explosive offense, the pass rush was good and deep, the offensive line was getting its best blocker, Andrew Thomas, back, an exciting new running back was making plays, and the Giants were coming home to face a Kansas City Chiefs team that was struggling with injuries and ripe to be taken down. All the ingredients were there for an upset, a coming-of-age moment for this team that has been downtrodden for so long.
The fans knew better, though. How many teams play their home opener in front of a crowd that is 50% made up of fans of the opposing team? And the Giants fans were right. We do these analyses of Pro Football Focus grades and snap counts every week to see who was on the field and what an objective analyst’s post-mortem of the performance of individual players is. In this case, though, “post-mortem” may have something closer to the original meaning of the term. It feels as if the Russell Wilson era may soon be coming to an end, as may the Graham Gano era, and more importantly, the Brian Daboll – Joe Schoen era. Still, you can’t change all 53 players. Let’s see if there were any flowers blooming in the desert of last night’s execrable 22-9 loss. Are the Giants (apologies to Paul Simon) nearer their desired destination? If so, the more they keep slip-slidin’ away, it seems.
It will come as no surprise to find that Russell Wilson played a terrible game last night. He was actually 13 of 17 for 127 yards when kept clean with his only big-time throw of the game, but he only graded 61.4 because his two interceptions came from clean pockets where he just threw deep to a receiver who wasn’t open. Another part of the story is that PFF has Wilson being pressured on 54.1% of his dropbacks (Next Gen Stats only recorded 37.8% as pressured – still a larger than average number). He was an awful 5 of 15 with a 39.3 passing grade on those throws. He was 2 of 6 when blitzed for 30 yards and a 37.3 grade.
As we noted last night, Wilson hardly explored the intermediate depths of the field at all (1 of 2 for 14 yards), and he only went deep five times, completing one and having three of the other four be turnover-worthy.
The good news was that Thomas was back, although he only played the first half, and his pass blocking was as good as ever (84.4), with no pressures allowed. On the other side, Jermaine Eluemunor was almost as good (76.4), with just one hurry. Marcus Mbow replaced Thomas for the second half and had a rougher go of it than in his first...
