Big Blue View
Another year, another Week 1 disaster for the New York Giants, this time a bad 21-6 loss to the Washington Commanders.
Things were supposed to be different this year. Brian Daboll got shouty in training camp and played the starters in the game — even after tough joint practices. The early results were fantastic, and the Giants finished the off-season as the eighth team to have a +60 point differential.
That obviously didn’t carry over into week 1. The defense, while they certainly had issue, did enough to win. They held the Commanders to 14 points into the fourth quarter, and held runners not named “Jayden Daniels” to roughly 60 yards until a single 42-yard run on the final drive.
The offense, however, was atrocious.
They only had 231 total yards, 157 passing and 74 rushing (44 of which came from Russell Wilson), converted 4 of 16 third downs, and only scored 6 points despite having 13 plays inside the Washington 20-yard line.
So that all begs the questions: What the hell went wrong, and how can they fix it?
Going over the Giants’ offensive tape, there were certainly a bunch of problems, but I think they definitely boil down to two main ones. The play of the Giants’ skill position players wasn’t the main problem with the offense, but it did also contribute to everything feeling so disjointed and difficult.
That said, this is also a bit of an appetizer before the main course.
In the case of tight end Theo Johnson, he needs to be more consistent, and consistently physical, in his chip blocks as well as simply catching the ball. This play in the red zone is a good example.
The Giants’ slide protection leaves Dorrence Armstrong (92) essentially unblocked on the outside. Since the Giants are showing run-action to the offensive left, Johnson’s assignment should be the back-side block. He needs to be faithful to that assignment and disrupt Armstrong’s rush with a good chip. Instead he simply releases into his route without disrupting the defender at all.
Since this is a play-action pass, the chip block does multiple things within the structure of the play.
First, it helps to sell the run-action and keep the second level defenders faithful to their run fits. Second, it prevents the defender from getting into the passing lane and either influencing the throw or forcing the quarterback to speed up his process. Finally, it’s baked into the timing of the play, which we can see is off here. The ball has to come out before both Wilson and Johnson are ready. It probably wouldn’t have been a touchdown, but Johnson could have gotten to about the 5-yard line.
Running back Tyrone Tracy could also stand to be more assertive in how he approaches his pass protection duties. He is mostly used in scat protection (ie: releasing into routes as a check-down as opposed to directly blocking defenders), but there were instances in which he ran...
