The Giants once again dominated the time of possession against the Eagles, holding the ball for over 35 minutes, and they again had a "healthy" balance of run and pass plays. They actually ran the ball 32 times in this game, 8 more times than the Eagles. They also lost the game 40-17, and were outperformed in every phase of the game. The one thing the Giants did more effectively than Philly was to actually run down the game clock, effectively taking care of that for the Eagles by taking way too long in their drives, and running an absurd number of draw and running plays while trailing by 24 points.
There is something fundamentally wrong with the Giants offensive philosophy. The defense also looked horrendous, and they have for long stretches of this season, but for now I'll concentrate on criticizing the 1940's style, "power football" that the Giants are employing on offense. Sometimes the play-calling and formations of the offense truly baffle me. They continue to try to establish the run early in games, and lately with very little effectiveness. I personally have nothing against running the ball, and all teams need to have some kind of balance, but the Giants take it too far. Most good teams (like Pittsburgh and New England) nowadays pass early in the game to take the lead, and then run, to run down the clock. The Giants run all the time, no matter the situation, which shortens the game and limits their number of possessions. They often dominate games in terms of yardage and T.O.P. and yet they struggle in the red-zone and don't put up enough points. Their slow tempo on offense also allows vastly inferior opponents to still have a chance to win, because they rarely jump out to big leads. (For example, they completely dominated Tampa Bay in week 3, didn’t allow a first down in the first three quarters and for about the first 40 minutes of the game were only up two scores.) The last three weeks, the Giants have fallen behind early and shown absolutely no ability to run an up-tempo offense. Maybe they overestimated the ability of their defense, but the lack of urgency or creativity from the offense boggles the mind.
It seemed like the Giants proved earlier in the year that they have an effective and at times explosive passing offense, with emerging young receivers, and a QB with a new hundred-million dollar contract. Perhaps not having Manningham this week hurt them, but for the rest of the year I would really like to see the Giants start off games passing in 3-wide receiver sets at a much faster tempo. Once they establish a lead, then they should unleash their running game to finish teams off. This is how modern football games are won, and if the Giants think they can somehow hide a deficient passing offense and consistently beat teams on the ground they will learn the hard way that they are wrong.
Keywords: football, New York Giants, offense
