Big Blue View
Another week, another blown fourth-quarter lead. That’s the story of the 2025 season for this New York Giants team. The Giants are the only team in the NFL to put 30+ points on the board against the 9-2 Broncos and the only team to do the same against the 8-2 Eagles. They didn’t do that yesterday, but without their three main offensive weapons (four if you include Darius Slayton), they still put 20 points up and were one Jalin Hyatt broken-off route from possibly beating the Green Bay Packers or at least taking them to overtime. Instead, for the fourth time this season, the Giants had the lead in the fourth quarter, and the defense could not make a stop when it needed to. Let’s see how Pro Football Focus saw the game, and who played a lot and who didn’t.
Count the names. Not to absolve them of any blame for the loss, but only 15 players played on offense for the Giants Sunday, and one of them was a defensive lineman who was out there for two snaps. That tells you how dire the Giants’ injury situation is on offense. Arguably their four best skill players (Dart, Nabers, Skattebo, Slayton) were out. That said, the other offensive players provided to Mike Kafka by the GM were deemed unworthy of playing time. For comparison, Green Bay played 20 offensive players yesterday; Philadelphia played 21 last night. Only one Giant graded excellent, but none graded out as terrible for the game as a whole.
Let’s look in more detail. First, the passing:
Jameis Winston was only 13 of 22, but for 201 yards. I thought he generally played well in difficult conditions, considering the receiver corps he had to work with. PFF graded him low, for a reason that should now be familiar. PFF hates, absolutely hates, it when a QB puts the ball up for grabs, and Jamies does that a lot. Sunday they gave him three turnover-worthy plays. I don’t know if the final intercepted pass was one of them. Most likely it was, because PFF can’t know if Jalin Hyatt mistakenly cut off the route, even though it looked that way. The fascinating thing about Jameis is that all of his TWPs were from a clean pocket, not the result of pressure. That’s just who he is.
Here are the offensive line grades, first for pass blocking:
While you were sleeping, John Michael Schmitz has started to become a decent pass blocker. Yesterday he graded 78.1 with a clean stat line. For the season, JMS’ pass block grade of 63.2 is mid-range among starting centers. “But he’s a second-round pick, he’s supposed to be good.“ OK, let’s compare season stats to Tyler Linderbaum, a first-round pick of the Ravens in 2022 that many Giants fans wanted:
Linderbaum is a much better run blocker than JMS at this stage of their careers, but this season the Giants’ two centers combined have given up...
