Grading the Giants season
Justin Tuck grimaces on the sideline during a 2009 loss. (Dec. 27, 2009) Credit: David Pokress
There aren’t enough Fs in all the world’s
alphabets to grade yesterday’s meaningless game in which the Giants didn’t just “mail it in,” as Michael Strahan noted on Fox, they sent it overnight express with insurance.
But as the season ends, it’s worth taking a look at how the units fared overall during an 8-8 season in which they started 5-0 and would up losing eight of the last 11 games.
OFFENSE: C
Remember way back when wide receivers were a concern? It was just a few months ago. Steve Smith and Hakeem Nicks managed to set those fears aside with a little help from Eli Manning, who threw for the most yards of his career this season. Overall, the passing game wasn’t the blight and burden that so many expected. There were certainly times when it was imperfect, but it never held the team back. Not so much the running game, which hasn’t had a 100-yard individual rusher since Week 5 when they were 5-0. Coincidence? Probably not. Brandon Jacobs never had the same bulldozer mentality that he showed in the previous two years and went the entire season without a 100-yard game. Ahmad Bradshaw, meanwhile, spent most of the year with two flat tires as his feet and ankle injuries slowed him down. Their 1,837 rushing yards were the fewest in the Tom Coughlin era. Although they were essentially blanked in the last two games, the Giants did manage to score 402 points this season. And the Chargers loss aside — when it was unable to convert a turnover into a game-sealing touchdown and had to sit and watch the defense give up the winning points — it was never really the offense that cost the Giants games this season.
DEFENSE: D
Those first five games were pretty impressive. But as soon as the Giants faced a team that knew what it was doing in the Saints, the defense was suddenly exposed as bottom-feeders that had been fattening up on the Bucs and the Raiders and the like. The defense allowed two game-winning drives of 80 or more yards this season in which it never even forced a third down (the Chargers and the Eagles), gave up way too many big plays (to DeSean Jackson alone!) even after sitting wayward safety C.C. Brown, and was the worst red-zone unit in the NFL by a wide margin. They simply couldn’t keep teams out of the end zone, and as a result allowed more points than any Giants team ever to play a 16-game schedule. There were injuries — Kenny Phillips, Antonio Pierce, Aaron Ross — but the Giants’ much-lauded depth at the beginning of the season vanished. New additions Michael Boley and Chris Canty were limited by injuries as well and Rocky Bernard was nonexistent.
SPECIAL TEAMS: C
Both kickers had up-and-down years as Lawrence Tynes (27-for-32) finally found a groove after starting the year with a series of short misses and Jeff Feagles had some poor showings trying too hard to keep the ball away from opposing return threats. The Giants’ coverage was so bad that the team often used “mortar” kickoffs just to allow the opposing teams to start somewhere between the 30 and 40 rather than risk a big return. Domenik Hixon had a big return game against the Saints, but did little after that returning both kickoffs and punts.
COACHING D:
Forget Xs and Os for a moment. Tom Coughlin tried to rally the spirits of the players this week and implored them to play for their pride (if not their jobs) against the Vikings. His message apparently fell on deaf ears because the team was listless and deflated from the opening kickoff on in Minnesota yesterday. It was the second straight week they turned in such a clunker, an alarming trend for a team that so often cites “Giants football” as the goal. Offensively the Giants turned into more of a passing team than they would have liked to be, in part because of the inability to run effectively and in part because of the defense giving up so many points that they had to play from behind. Defensive coordinator Bill Sheridan was apparently a game-plan guru, devising systems that could stop any team in the NFL. Unfortunately his messages never reached the players for one reason or another and he’ll likely pay the consequences with his job.
