Purple Path Forward - Week 16 The New York ******** Giants
Dec 21, 2022 22:20:56 GMT -6
Funkytown and Josey Wales like this
Post by MidwinterViking on Dec 21, 2022 22:20:56 GMT -6
You thought you saw an anemic passing offense last week? Daniel Jones looks at the Colts passing offense and says “You call that floundering? Hold my wine cooler”.
If you thought the Colts were dependent on Johnathan Taylor, the Giants are way more dependent on Saquon Barkley. The only difference is that Saquon is occasionally able to carry the Giants to wins. There is a very direct link between Barkley’s performance and the Giants winning:
There were only two exceptions to this trend.
In Week 2 the Giants beat the Panthers despite a pedestrian 88 yards. That doesn’t count because everyone was beating the Panthers back then.
In week 3, the Giants lost to the Cowboys despite a good but not great day from Barkley.
Other than that, as Barkley has gone, the Giants have gone. It’s not just running the ball, Barkley’s run after the catch represents a large percentage of the Giants passing offense. So it’s really very simple, take the bike out of the Bark’ and the Vikings will have a walk in the park. That’s real NFL analysis there, and you can’t unread that pun.
It should be just that simple, but then I went and looked at the Giants defense. At first, the Giants defense stands out in terms on not standing out. They are lower part of the league in terms of yards allowed but not so low as to look like a tasty matchup. They are mid-pack in points allowed. The only thing that really stands out is that they allow a really high yards per rush. Looking deeper, there is some extreme weirdness with this Giants defense:
They allow a really high yards per rush, but at the same time, they apply one of the highest pass pressure rates in the league. Does this pressure result in a good pass defense? Again, I don’t know:
This is weird too, they allow a relatively low completion percent, but when they do allow completions, they give up big completions. I think this is more of a coincident, but the Giants have not won a game when an opponent completed more than 65% of their passes, and they have not lost a game when an opponent completes less than 65% of their passes.
This sort of analysis is what I normally do to decide which games to watch. I started with the recent Washington vs. Giants game; that was not an entertaining game, I want my time back. The only thing I learned is that the Giants are methodical and conservative on offense (i.e. boring), which I already knew.
Based on stats, game flow and team composition, I think the Seahawks provided the best template for the Vikings to beat the Giants back in week 8. This game was difficult to find defining plays (which is why there are more charts this week than game pictures). But this one captures most of the tricks to beating the Giants.
1) Assume that Giants will bring more than 4 pass rushers – they have the highest blitz rate in the NFL by a wide margin (40.7% of the time, vs the 2nd place Packers at 35.8%).
2) Take the easiest pass and make the next down easy. This will keep the run game going.
3) Remember mistakes will open you up to the pass rush, they blitz enough that a deep receiver will eventually be there.
Here is a second example, this play initiated a touchdown drive and has all the same markers. Seahawks prepare for pressure, Geno Smith buys time and take the easy throw. This time Maquise Goodwin took the simple pitch and catch up field for 16 yards against a defense stretched because of the pressure.
Finally, one last thing the Seahawks did well, holding Saquon Barkley in the passing game. It’s not complicated, the Giants usually just toss it to Barkley out in the flat; the defense just has to commit to putting a man covering Barkley behind the line of scrimmage. This screen to Barkley was sniffed out and ended a drive. The Vikings should learn from this, the rest of the Giants passing offense is anemic enough, they can afford to use a player to take away Barkley.
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... and neither is this Chris guy.