1) The news from late Thursday about Canty’s injury logjam being broken cannot be overemphasized for how important it is to the Giants. I went to grab it from another link, thinking it would get more coverage the following day. No, it did not. Yes, the Saints are coming and it is a big game. But this news of Canty getting “over the hump” is the biggest news of the week and many did not even carry it.
CANTY IS COMING BACK.
Closure on the injury front? Perhaps. Now we can talk about BOTH Canty and Boley getting back, not whether they will be back. The importance of this news is magnified by Jay Alford being placed on IR. Canty was brought in to keep the DL loaded and deep. With Canty disappearing off radar, it could have gotten ugly down the stretch as the season wore on. With his disappearance and week after week of silence, the possibility of him being lost for too much time down the stretch started entering in. Glad that is off the table. With Phillips out, we cannot stress enough how important it is for everything else to go smoothly. This defense can get fun down the stretch now.
2) Injury Update: Boss, Bradshaw, Ware, Manning and Hixon looking aok for Sunday. Ross, Boley, Canty out.
3) The “experts” take the Saints. 6/8 is respectable consensus, but not out of whack with the moneyline odds, so that is not divergent. The moneyline here is 64%. 75% of the geniuses have the Saints, not out of line with 64%. You’re looking for ~3 out of 8 or 7 out of 8 to tell you to the go the other way. Yes, this is a contrarian tool. In general, look for when everyone is on one side (filtered by whether they are picking to simply win or whether they are picking against the spread, two entirely different propositions). The larger the sample size the better. So if, as an example, we had 7 or 8 out of 8 on the Saints, you’d want to check another paper for where their consensus was to check for confirmation. I like using the NY Post, with the Blezow, Charleen, Hondo, etc.. tabbed up in addition to the 6 on this list. When the Eagles were -1 over the Saints, Wonder and Ultimatenyg correctly spotted the trap in Week 2 BEFORE the Saints were on most people’s radar. Everyone was on the Eagles bandwagon and few liked the Saints, especially on the road (where they were very poor in ’08). So you look for lots on the Eagles for confirmation.
4) The Saints have allowed 4 sacks this year. Pretty impressive. The Giants have allowed 3. (Playing cream puffs will make your numbers look good, but even this number is impressive.)
5) Gilbride Q&A:
Q. Along those same lines, is Ahmad Bradshaw just in a groove?
A. He is playing absolutely great football. He is making guys miss sometimes, even if it’s not blocked the way you want it, sometimes it is the luck of the draw, you have the right play call when he is in.
I guess Gilbride has the right lucky play calls in when Ahmad is in and the unlucky incorrect ones when Jacobs is in. At least he recognizes that Ahmad is playing great. Maybe by the end of the season he is going to figure out that you can throw him more than one screen every 5 games.
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