A Closer Look at the Giants’ Defensive Ends through Week 3

The Giants have been using a rotation of 3 Defensive Ends for Weeks 1-3.  Osi Umenyiora, Jason Pierre-Paul and Justin Tuck are all seeing a lot of snaps.  In fact, the number of snaps each has been seeing has been fairly consistent in each game this far. 

Obviously player performance has been a little lop-sided.

Jason Pierre-Paul is a monster.  And you do not need to be grading him out to know this.  Still, it is informative to see how the numbers bear out his playmaking.  He is simply winning his battles vs the opponent who is assigned to him while Tuck and Osi are not.  Our grader asks aloud if Tuck is playing hurt once again because it certainly looks like it to him.  And he would know, having watched film of every single one of the 118 plays he has seen since the start of the season.  Re Osi, he is seeing more action on passing downs than not.  That has meant a lot of the "Nascar Package" where the Giants use all 3 DEs (Tuck, Osi, JPP) to get pressure on the QB.   

The bottom line is that Tuck and Osi are not playing at the Pro Bowl level that Giants fans have grown accustomed to seeing over the years.  Osi's return from injury late in the 2011 season and Tuck's ability to battle through injury to play at a higher level, were part of the reason why the Giants were able to make a Super Bowl run.  If these two players are able to attain that higher level of play that we know they are capable of, the sky is the limit. We are still cautious about Tuck, despite his +3 grade last week, because he still looked physically limited.  When Tuck is healthy and 100%, we won't be seeing 0, -3 and +3.