Missing Kenny Phillips

How Kenny Phillips Loss Will Affect the Giants

Antony

When Kenny Phillips went down, so did the Giants. Injuries sometimes destroy teams, which is what is happening to the Giants. He was the perfect fit for the Giants. Losing him will hurt the New York Giants countless ways on defense. With his outstanding athletic skill, there was no player the Giants had to get Kenny Phillips ready for: the other team had to get ready for him. The Giants have no one who can replace him, they can only fill in for him. Also since he was an up and coming star in the league and a possible pro bowler, the Giants lost a lot of talent. Without Kenny Phillips, the Giants will all have to step up their game. Not one player can replace him. Everyone has to play better.

Whenever the Giants played a team with a very strong or fast tight end or extremely quick running back, the Giants barely ever needed to worry about what to do. They had Kenny Phillips who could cover whoever needed to be covered. “At 6-2 and 210 pounds, Phillips has great size and will not need to work on anything… to be a perennial pro bowler. He is extremely aggressive and quick and will use those skills in pass coverage and covering the run.” His 40-yard dash time is a 4.40 seconds, which is great for a receiver and which for a safety is just plain amazing. Whenever the Giants played the Eagles, Cowboys and Redskins, Kenny Phillips covered all 3 of their possible pro bowl tight ends and running backs and did fine. He did fine against some of the best players at each of those positions in his ROOKIE year. When Kenny Phillips plays against Jason Witten, Kenny has a huge advantage in speed. Jason Witten can’t run by or separate from Kenny on his routes, so it is extremely hard for Jason to be able to get the ball at all during the game, and if he does, Kenny also has an advantage in strength so he should have no problem taking Jason Witten down. When Kenny doesn’t cover Jason Witten, he covers Felix Jones. When he does, he has an enormous advantage in size and strength so is he comes near Felix Jones he would tackle him right away. That gives Kenny a huge advantage. That was Kenny’s last game of the season. Before he got hurt If he had been kept playing, offensive players and coordinators would have been scared to play against him. His athletic skills let him cover any tight end, running back and even a receiver.

When a star player gets injured, one person can’t replace him, so to replace him successfully, the whole team has to step up. That is the case with Kenny because he was one of the best safeties in the league. The problem with the Giants replacing him is that they barely have any safety depth. Before the injury, they only had 3 safeties on the team including Kenny. Because of the injury, they had to pick someone up off of free agents. Any one left on free agents now is not good and shouldn’t even be a back up because if they were, they wouldn’t be on free agents. Aaron Rouse shouldn’t even be on the Giants since he was cut from a team worse than the Giants. Why would the Giants pick him up? The answer is because the Giants have extreme depth issues at that position. Since they only had three safeties and one went down, they had to pick up one. Obviously since the talent is poor in free agency, the Giants had to be very desperate to pick up one. He was drafted so high for a reason. Teams don’t draft people round one just to do a decent job. Kenny was picked to make a difference. Any other safety the Giants have now or could pick up has no chance at being close.

Kenny Phillips not only played amazingly and had great potential but he also fit the Giants perfectly. He knew the playbook extremely well and the coaches knew how he played. The coaches made plays around Kenny’s ability and skill. If they are to have another player, he would not know the playbook as well and the plays wouldn’t fit their ability as well. That doesn’t allow them to use those plays and if they do use them they won’t use the player well. By getting rid of a lot of playbooks in week two or three of the season, the team limits itself and that would put a lot of pressure on the defensive coordinator to design new plays instead of planning against opponents. With coordinators designing plays in the middle of the season, they don’t get to test them. For example, when Plaxico Burress was suspended, the offensive coordinator had to come up with new plays. Obviously those plays didn’t work. There is no one that will be able to replace him the right way due to his great knowledge of the system all of the audibles, and the plays that were designed specifically for him.

Kenny Phillips had great potential. He was a possible pro bowler for this year. When many predicted he would be a pro bowler, it showed people his talent and potential. Last year he made a lot of great plays with the Giants defense. He didn’t allow big plays; this year he will make big plays. He has had great numbers so far this year. In his second game he had 2 interceptions against Tony Romo and the great Cowboys offense.  That game was his starting out performance. After that game, he was going to have a great rest of the season and career. But obviously his injury could even hurt his career. Last year Ed Reed one of he best safeties of all time had eight interceptions in one game. Kenny Phillips had two. Back then there was no mismatch when the Giants played the Cowboys. Kenny and Jason Witten or Felix Jones was about even. When the Giants played the Cowboys two weeks ago, he had two interceptions when covering Jason who had only 33 yards. On Kenny’s interceptions he had more yards then Jason Witten did on his receptions. That doesn’t sound that great at first but you have to keep in mind the quarterback was throwing to Jason Witten not Kenny Phillips. When he was coming out of college he had no hands. He was all about athleticism. With his hands now he could be one of the best safeties now. Based on pure skill he made a huge difference to the Giants and every team they play.

Without Kenny on the Giant’s defense, it will be tough to fix but everyone can help. When stars go down, no one can replace them but everyone can play better. Last year when Osi went down everyone had to play better. Luckily for the Giants they had another great player to replace him. Even though they had a pro bowl potential player to replace him and a great defensive line to help Mathias, they still couldn’t make up for Osi. That was true even though everyone played better and Mathias still played amazingly, they could never replace him. The same will be with Kenny except they have no one good to replace him with. The worst part of his injury is that it could be permanent. all Giants fans can do is hope he will be back next year.

  This is my first sports article so any tips/ advice/ comments/ anything will be greatly appreciated.