It’s not who you play, it’s when you play them. For the first ~5 games, the way it is playing out, the Giants have been lucky in playing bad teams at (from our perspective) good times.
Speaking of luck, do not ever tell me that luck does not play a part in football. On that last game-winning drive by the Giants to beat the Cowboys, do you think we were lucky to have that ball tipped in just a way that Mario Manningham could stay with the deflection and still make the grab?! Obviously some of that was skill, but if that ball is deflected in any of a million other ways it is incomplete or worse. Crazed Giants Fan was correct to point out how the Giants got not one but THREE bounces that game. You need luck.
Kevin Gilbride spoke with the media on Thursday. Glenn Warciski stole my thunder with his commentary on this part of the Q&A below, but that won’t stop me from piling on:
Q: You look at the success the tight ends have had against the Chiefs’ defense. Do you look at that and say, “Yeah, we have a pretty good pass catcher, too. We can be successful as well?”
A: Yeah, I think you always do. You are looking at everything thing they do – both matchups physically and scheme-wise. And we certainly hope that Kevin will be a big part of our game plan. He always is and sometimes the reads will take us to a different spot but when we throw him the ball he usually catches it and does some things with it. The amazing thing to me is always – he can run after the catch. Looking at him you would not label him or categorize him as a good after the catch runner. He is. He almost makes positive yardage every time. So we certainly try to get the ball in his hands.
Pardon me for a minute. I need to grab the barf bag. Involuntary reflex of the stomach muscles. So let me get this straight: Kevin “always is..a big part of our game plan”…??? Kevin WHO? There is a disconnect in this guy’s brain synapses. He says Kevin always IS a big part of the game plan but that “sometimes” the reads will make them change. Yah, I think I figured it out, as soon as you get to the red zone the reads change and it is time to go somewhere else STUPID. What, he is going to get double teamed? LET HIM GET DOUBLED and then go somewhere else. That helps the offense SOMEWHERE. And if he is not doubled, you thow it to him even if he is covered because that is the NATURE of your TE in the red zone, that he is big enough to fight for the ball in the red zone and come down with it because of his size. Classic example- final game of the season in Shockey’s rookie year, Collins throws the ball to him in the end zone, jump ball with Brian Dawkins and the TE wins. TD.
It is pretty remarkable how Gilbride can throw all of this praise at the player and then ignore him. 2 receptions per game. Pathetic. This guy gets as many receptions as the insane pitchouts to Bradshaw and passes to Hedgecock! Gee, that is a great place to change your reads.
The reason why you have to criticize now is that you can’t all of a sudden do it when the Giants are losing- you have to be consistent and point to INEFFICIENCIES that can make this offense go so much better, WIN OR LOSE. Because when you play the better team, you lose. And we have a lot of better teams coming up. 24 points against the Bucs when you had the ball for ~43 minutes? This is not nitpicking, this is Gilbrown. How efficient are you going to be 2 weeks from now when Brees has the ball for 32 minutes? They’ve been going after Jacobs for tiptoeing around this week. Gilbrown is the professional tiptoe champion. He’s saving his play action pass to the TE in the end zone for the 57th minute of the Super Bowl. The only problem with that is that you’ll never get there unless your defense is there to bail out your sorry a** a number of times beforehand.
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