We spoke to a few people about the Chargers this weekend, but after a few minutes on the subject of their team the discussion immediately falls back to the what the Giants will bring.
Essentially, the Chargers are a known commodity. Lots of weapons on offense. The Chargers have an aggressive vertical attack. They have players like Rivers, Gates and 6’5″ WR Malcolm Floyd (all three of which Wonder praises). Sproles and Vincent Jackson are also threats. (For equal measure, let’s not forget negative Norv.) On defense they are just as vulnerable as the Giants.
A few days ago we noted the gradual erosion of dominance by the SD offensive and defensive line. But we also noted the vulnerability of the Eagles OL… and look what happened there! The bottomline is that the volatility (5-0 to the moon, 0-3 to hell) of the Giants will have a much bigger impact on the game than the play of SD.
You need to be a psychiatrist right now to have a clue whether the Giants show up this weekend. Wonder: “The final score could be 31-13 and the Giants could be on the winning OR losing end of that.”
Do you know what we get from the Giants on Sunday?
If there was anything we learned from last weekend, it was that coaching and execution can make a good team play great, while lack of coaching and lack of execution can make any team terrible. If the Giants get good coaching and good execution, they can win this game. It would be an important start. And at 6-3 with a bye and some players getting healthy, the sun could come out. It does not have to be an 8-8 death watch.
Here are a few things this team needs to do this weekend which CAN HAPPEN:
1) Look for Eli to stop performing Ph.D. dissertations at the line of scrimmage before he snaps the ball
2) Expect Gilbride to run the ball more to simplify the game
3) If Boley or Canty come back, it will be 10-15 play token appearance w/o impact.
4) Expect the Giants defensive players to help each other out and swarm to the ball.
5) Hope and pray Rivers’ timing is disrupted on their downfield vertical game, because you know they are going to throw that ball and test Can’t Cover.
Prediction: You must be joking.. anything is possible.
Separately: Phil Simms is doing the Giants-Chargers game this Sunday. That means we will get extra color about the team when he speaks to Francesa Sunday morning. And of course we will get some of his typically candid observations about the team during the game.
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