Big Blue View
After an amazing but heartbreaking game for the New York Giants in Dallas on Suday, perhaps performing a statistical autopsy on Monday is not fans’ favorite thing to read about. Nonetheless, it’s useful to get an idea of who played well and who didn’t, and if possible why. Let’s see what the analysts at Pro Football Focus thought of individual players’ performances, and who was and was not on the field for most of it.
Russell Wilson had what must be one of the most amazing games of his career yesterday, with 450 passing yards and 3 TDs. Unfortunately his one awful pass in overtime led to the winning field goal, but that shouldn’t take much away from the rest of his performance. In advanced stats, he was just behind Drake Maye (19 of 23 for 230 yards and 2 TDs) for the league high in expected points added per play and third in completion percentage over expected:
When they write Wilson’s biography and want to show what the term “moon ball” refers to, Sunday’s tape should be the example. Wilson threw 11 deep balls yesterday and completed seven of them for 264 yards, six of them being judged as “big-time throws” by PFF and with a grade of 93.4. Wilson has a reputation of not being great at (or interested in) the short game, but he was 14 of 17 for 106 yards and a grade of 80.9 on passes between 0-9 yards. Wilson’s 13.6 yard ADOT was second only to Jordan Love’s 15.0.
Like most quarterbacks, Wilson was a lot worse when under pressure (56.0) than when kept clean (92.2), and his lone bad play, the interception in OT, came while pressured. PFF had Wilson being pressured on only 22.2% of dropbacks; Next Gen Stats once again differed, saying he was pressured on 33.3% of dropbacks.
The Giants’ pass blocking was once again not exemplary. Wilson was only pressured nine times (by PFF’s reckoning) and sacked once, which is not a lot. Even Next Gen Stats’ higher estimate of pressures was still ninth- best in the NFL through Sunday night’s games. Still, PFF was not impressed with the blocking. Only Jon Runyan Jr. (68.0) and Jermaine Eluemunor (61.6) graded above PFF’s 60.0 threshold for average play among the offensive linemen, with only one hurry between them. John Michael Schmitz (47.8) gave up two hurries, Greg Van Roten (51.1) three, and Marcus Mbow (51.0) a hit and a hurry. James Hudson III (46.8) gave up a sack and had a penalty before he was taken to the argument clinic.
The seeming discrepancy between the generally low blocking grades and the modest number of pressures as a whole says that Wilson was escaping from potential pressures by defensive linemen who’d beaten their blockers and getting the pass off before the rusher could get close enough to affect the QB. That would be consistent with NGS’s higher pressure percentage.
Not surprisingly, Wan’Dale Robinson (85.3) and Malik...
