The score was not indicative of how one-sided this loss was. The Giants got their butts kicked.
The bloom is off the rose. Good. Plenty of work for this team to do. We specifically wanted to see how the LBers would handle Forte and the verdict was not good. Carl Banks singled out Blackburn on the 33 yd TD run, where our backup MLB (Pierce out for game) was roasted on the play.
Cross and Banks had this team’s flaws noted well. On Defense, lack of lane integrity meant the Giants got gashed up the middle, taken to school. And that same lack of lane integrity on pass rush meant Cutler carved up the Giants when he ran out of time, quickly going out of the pocket and buying plenty of time to reset plays and kill the pass defense. These are the fundamentals Cross and Banks highlighted as being absent. On offense, McKenzie and Diehl made enough mistakes (2 sacks and 1 penalty) to essentially kill 3 drives. Manning did not have time to throw. Ugly.
Woodson hit Nicks on a 55 yd pass play, but could not finish the drive with a TD. Considering he could not help the team finish the previous drive either, this is not going to help his roster chances.
Jay Alford was carted off the field. They said it was a sprain but it looked worse. Let’s get more confirmation in coming days on that one.
Some positives:
1) Manningham is going to create opportunities with his separation.
2) Tollefson saved a TD and created a FG, so 24-0 instead of 17-3 at the half w/o him
3) Bradshaw behind the 2nd team OL once again looks like he can break it whenever he touches the ball
4) Jacobs looked great behind the sloppy first team OL
5) Ware looked good
Do you want excuses or not? The Giants played poorly. Coughlin wanted to have more than 5 days in between preseason games and the team seemed disorganized. No need for panic. It’s preseason. The Giants won the Super Bowl after getting ripped apart for 80 points in the first two regular season games. Back to fundamentals. Blocking and tackling. Keeping your lanes on the run, keeping the edge contained on the pass rush. It will be nice to get guys like Snee, Seubert, Pierce, Tuck, Bernard and Canty back.
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