New York Giants: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly vs. Cincinnati
The New York Giants have gone through 11 training camp practices so far, including the last two against the Cincinnati Bengals, their 2015 preseason opening opponent to whom they lost a 23-10 decision on Friday night.
Yet given how poorly the Giants' first-team offense and defense played against the Bengals, it looked as though the Giants were playing together for the first time.
The Bengals crushed the Giants in several statistical categories, including first downs (20-13), total offensive yards (432 to 224), net yards rushing (225 to 106) and time of possession (35:15 to 24:45).
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“We need to be a little sharper. We didn’t do that well on third downs, had some negative plays,” said quarterback Eli Manning, whose offensive unit went three-and-out on three of its first four drives.
“We definitely have room for improvement. That’s what preseason’s for: To figure out what you have to improve on and go do it.”
The Giants certainly have a lot of figuring out to do—that’s for sure. So with that said, let’s have a look at the good, the bad and the ugly.
The Good
There were several players who stood out for all the right reasons in this game. I won’t list all of them here, but there are four who deserve a mention.
Let’s start with the offense.
For those who have projected the Giants to keep three running backs and one fullback—and I’ll admit that I was one of them—you might want to rethink your roster numbers if both Orleans Darkwa and Akeem Hunt continue playing lights-out as they did this week.
Darkwa, whom the Giants picked up off the Miami practice squad last year (and someone I wrote about last year), finished as the Giants’ team leader with 52 yards on nine carries and scored the Giants’ lone touchdown.
Meanwhile, Hunt, the rookie out of Purdue, returned two kickoffs for 94 yards, including a big 70-yarder that the Giants unfortunately couldn’t do anything with.
Hunt also finished tied for second on the team in rushing with quarterback Ryan Nassib, both men recording 18 yards on three carries.
Looks like we have a competition at this spot here after all.
Now let’s switch to the defense. Second-year defensive end Kerry Wynn, who opened quite a few eyes last year with his smart and disciplined approach to playing the run, continued where he left off.
Wynn finished tied for the team lead in tackles with six, sharing the top spot with safety Bennett Jackson this week.
In an ideal situation, if a team’s defensive linemen are making the stops, that’s a good thing. Wynn certainly delivered this week, and he added one quarterback hit on top of things.
Lastly, four-year veteran cornerback Trevin Wade, who has flashed in camp on several occasions, had a solid showing this week. Wade only recorded two tackles, but he came up with the defense’s only pick of the night—a 61-yarder that he nearly took to the house. He also recorded three passes defensed.
With the injuries to Prince Amukamara, Jayron Hosley, Trumaine McBride and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, the Giants need guys to step up at this position. Wade did just that and could very well find himself on the 53-man roster when it’s all said and done if he keeps this up.
The Bad
There were two things that stood out as being bad.
The first was the 53-yard missed field-goal attempt by the normally reliable Josh Brown. Sure, the points ended up not mattering given the 13-point margin of defeat the Giants suffered.
However, it was still not a good start for Brown, who last year had his best season as a pro by converting 92.3 percent of his field-goal attempts.
Brown, who did convert a 41-yarder, is 34-of-51 in regular-season games on field goals of 50-plus yards. The good news is that the miss doesn’t count, though it will be interesting to see if he has any further difficulty with long field-goal attempts.
The other bad thing was the play of the first-team defense, two areas in particular.
First, some guys up front weren’t consistently shedding blocks—defensive tackle Markus Kuhn, for instance, was caught in the wash on a 10-yard run by running back Jeremy Hill on the Bengals’ second play from scrimmage.
If the defensive front isn’t getting off blocks and the linebackers are hovering a bit in coverage, that usually leads to nice chunks of yardage for the other team.
Not surprisingly, five of the Bengals' running plays against the Giants’ first-team defense went for five or more yards, with the linebackers making four of the tackles on those plays.
The other bad thing from the defense?
Yup, you guessed it. The return of the big play.
The starting defense was on the field for 13 plays. Of those, four went for double-digit yardage, including the Bengals’ first three plays in a row that went for 12, 10 and 16 yards, respectively.
Ouch!
The Ugly
OK, seriously now, this injury situation is starting to get ridiculously old.
Yes, football is a violent game, and yes, people are going to get hurt. But when it comes to the Giants, it seems that the injury bug tends to go after a specific unit on the team, and this week was no different.
The Giants, who were already without cornerback Amukamara (groin) and whose other starting cornerback (Rodgers-Cromartie) has been dealing with a groin issue, lost four other defensive backs in this game, with at least one potentially done for the season.
The list included cornerbacks Hosley, who underwent a test on his neck and who also commenced the league’s protocol for concussions, and McBride, who aggravated an already-tender hamstring in this game.
The safety unit, already a group on thin ice given the lack of experience, also took some potentially damaging hits to its depth.
Second-round pick Landon Collins injured his knee, though after the game, he told reporters he was fine and that he could play tomorrow if there was another game (don’t they all say that after an injury?)
One of the most serious of the injuries, though, appears to have been suffered by fifth-rounder Mykkele Thompson, the promising young rookie whom head coach Tom Coughlin said suffered an Achilles injury.
Thompson had to be helped to a waiting cart after his injury, unable to put any weight on his right leg. Coughlin told reporters there is concern that Thompson may have suffered a ruptured Achilles, which would be a season-ending injury.
So if you’re keeping score at home, that’s one head injury and three soft-tissue injuries in this game alone.
Not good, my friends. Not good at all.
Speaking of “not good,” yes, I’m sorry to offer the opinion that the starting offensive line was as poor as initially advertised, especially the right side that consisted of John Jerry at right guard for the injured Geoff Schwartz (ankle) and Marshall Newhouse at right tackle.
Just to back up a bit, the biggest recurring problem with the offensive line wasn’t so much blocking straight ahead—it seemed to do fine with that. Rather, the O-linemen appeared to have their struggles when they had to block on angles.
But let’s go back to the right side of the offensive line. As I noted for Inside Football, the first-team offense ran 15 plays and mustered up 38 yards of offense with zero points.
Two things in particular stuck out about the right side of the offensive line. The first was Newhouse struggling against his man. Newhouse simply cannot handle speed, and he was turned to the side much too often in his short stint this week.
Newhouse also appeared to be one of the major culprits who was blown up by the Bengals defense on a screen pass to running back Rashad Jennings that went literally nowhere.
Jerry? Last year, according to Pro Football Focus, he was the worst run-blocker on the Giants offense, and little seems to have changed in that regard.
Head on, Jerry seems fine. But have him block on an angle, and it sometimes looks like a game of pat-a-cake out there.
Final Thoughts
Lest anyone think that the sky is falling in Giants land, it’s not. Preseason outcomes don’t mean a thing, and if they did, then the Giants should have been crowned champions last year after finishing 5-0 in the preseason.
With that said, preseason is an opportunity for coaches to evaluate, and this game certainly yielded a lot of teaching points for the coaches to go over in the coming week.
The question, as has always been the case, is do they have the personnel they need? The injuries are concerning, and we don’t know yet how much, if any time, the injured guys are going to miss.
Come next week, I do believe the Giants will be better than what they showed this week—they have to be. So long as they continue to raise the bar each week and pick up some momentum, they should be OK moving forward.
Whether it’s with the guys they have on the roster or with a guy or two still to be determined remains to be seen.
Patricia Traina covers the Giants for Inside Football, the Journal Inquirer and Sports Xchange. All quotes and information were obtained firsthand unless otherwise sourced.
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