Big Blue View
You don’t have to sit in front of a screen for hours dissecting every player’s performance on every play the way the people at Pro Football Focus do to figure out why the New York Giants lost on Sunday. Furthermore, PFF only grades players, not coaches and general managers. Still, let’s see how many pleasant surprises (if any) there were yesterday in the Giants’ unfathomable 34-27 overtime loss to the Detroit Lions.
First, the offense as a whole, which is playing admirably without its top skill players:
Now let’s look at the details. First, the passing:
Patrick Mahomes? Josh Allen? Lamar Jackson? Matthew Stafford? I don’t know that you could ask any of those players to give you more than Jameis Winston gave the Giants Sunday. He was the No. 1 pick in the 2015 draft, and if it weren’t for his interceptions, he’d be considered one of the NFL’s great quarterbacks today. As usual, he had an interception, but it mattered little in the larger scheme of things. Winston played his you-know-what off, willing his team to what should have been a victory against a superior team on the road.
The amazing thing about Winston’s performance is that he was in some sense better under pressure than when kept clean, even though his interception and another turnover-worthy play came when pressured. Five big-time throws in a single game, and don’t forget his TD reception. Winston was pressured on 44.7% of his dropbacks, but that doesn’t mean that the offensive line pass-blocked all that poorly, as we’ll see. It’s because Winston was big-game hunting all afternoon: Only four throws behind the line of scrimmage, eight from 0-10 yards, 13 from 10-20 yards, and six of 20+ yards. That’s winning football in the modern NFL. By comparison, Jared Goff, the 2016 No. 1 pick, had only seven throws beyond 10 yards.
The Giants should extend Winston and keep him as their QB2 for years. With a good defense he’d be 2-0 this season. He and Jaxson Dart are a pair no defensive coordinator would relish game planning against.
Speaking of the offensive line, here are the pass blocking grades:
Detroit has PFF’s fourth-ranked pass rush, so yesterday was a tall order. Greg Van Roten and Andrew Thomas played very well, each with only one hurry yielded. Jon Runyan was just about average with two hurries. Jermaine Eleumunor didn’t play as well as he apparently thinks he did, given his comments about Aidan Hutchinson: a sack, a hit and two hurries, plus a penalty. Likewise, John Michael Schmitz yielded three hurries. Still, we’re being picky: 13 total pressures and one sack against the Lions is not a bad day’s work.
Now the run blocking for those players who did a decent amount of it:
As usual, the Giants had a lot of players in the nearly average range. Schmitz was the best of them, along with Eleumunor and Thomas. Runyan and Van Roten had a tougher go...
