Big Blue View
It’s not much fun reviewing a game in which the New York Giants played poorly for much of the game, and that was the case Sunday in Philadelphia. You probably already know who some of the guilty parties are. Let’s see, though, how the analysts at Pro Football Focus saw the game and who might deserve some praise despite the loss.
Here are the grades for the offense as a whole. It’s not pretty when only three of your offensive players who played most of the game were graded at least average or higher:
Let’s look at Jaxson Dart’s passing performance in more detail:
The offensive line didn’t have a great day. Dart was pressured on an unacceptable 48.4% of dropbacks (NFL Pro had it at an even higher 54.8%). On three of his five sacks, Dart had some responsibility – not a surprise given how he tries to extend plays behind the line of scrimmage.
Nonetheless, Dart graded a stellar 81.1 overall, with three big-time throws and no turnover-worthy plays. He also had an impressive 11.6 ADOT considering the pass rush he faced. The amazing thing is that he scored better, and had two of his BTTs, on pressured dropbacks. The one red flag was that he was worse when blitzed than when not. That’s just a small sample, but last week in Denver we saw the same thing, with Dart grading much worse when blitzed than when not. The great QBs don’t mind being blitzed because it opens up an uncovered receiver and they make the defense pay for it. It’s possible that Dart’s instinct is to escape the blitz rather than make a quick decision to get rid of the ball to the vacated area. Still, he had his only TD on a blitz, so it’s not all bad.
Now, the offensive line, which was part of the story yesterday. First the pass blocking:
The pass blocking wasn’t terrible (14 pressures), and as we saw, Dart brought several of those on himself. However, the left side of the line was leaky. Even Andrew Thomas (50.0) allowed four pressures, as did Jon Runyan Jr. (48.5) next to him. John Michael Schmitz (40.9) also graded poorly although he gave up only one sack and one hurry (that means he was getting beaten more often but on plays where Dart either moved or got the ball out quickly so the rusher didn’t register a pressure). The right side of the line held up well, though: Jermaine Eluemunor (84.7) had a clean stat sheet, while Greg Van Roten (78.1) gave up a hit and a hurry.
Now, the run blocking:
Not much to see here, as usual. The Giants’ offensive line mostly run blocks adequately but not well. On Sunday, Eluemunor (65.4) and JMS (63.2) were the best and Runyan (43.1) the worst. The same thing goes for the tight ends. If you want to see what a good run blocking line looks like, look no...
