Late Giants Recap

I’ve been awesome at this so far this season. Between DVRing the game while at work and moving back into college, hammering out game recaps has been a little bit tough. I should be set now though with no more job and being settled in. As for that game, this would have been a good game had it gone as it did with startrs in and something on the line. If you just look at the box score, the Giants got the early lead, the Steelers stormed back to take a commanding lead and held off the Giants’ comeback in the 4th.

FIRST QUARTER

Sepulveda makes a pedestrian kickoff and someone decides they don’t like so they kick it off again from five yards back. Penalty? No idea. Danny kicks it again Jeff-Reed-style to the 13. That’s to the 8 without the penalty.

Much like Detroit, New York’s first play was a run away from Polamalu. Wise call. A few plays later, Ike Taylor and Hakeem Nicks break into a hockey fight. Shove, shove, drop the gloves. The awkward pairing of James Harrison and Troy Polamalu breaks it up and both fighters are ejected. Rhett Bomar (?) attacks Ike Taylor’s absence on the next play, but Dick LeBeau knows that trick and some triple-coverage action shuts that down. 4th down.

Antonio Brown’s first punt return is unspectacular, and the Steeler offense marches onto the field, led by Big Ben.

Awesome to see Ben’s screen-pump-draw-handoff. Missed that. The Giants give Heath Miller as much credit as the national media, in that they don’t even cover him. First down. They realize that was a mistake and put a DB on him, so Heath out-muscles him for the next catch.

Shame, though, since Heath got smoked on the next play and Justin Tuck dropped Antwaan Randle El 15 yards in the backfield. Hard to recover from 3rd & 21. Punt. Somewhere someone is frustrated with Bruce Arians, not realizing El was probably taking that reverse to sling a ball to Mike Wallace in the end zone.

A free-rushing Timmons drills Bomar after he gets a pass away. Amazed that wasn’t roughing. Farrior shows up in the backfield two plays later, and Aaron Smith of all people finally drops Bomar for a sack. Great series for the defense. Brown almost makes a big play on the punt return but gets tripped right as he’s about to shift gears.

Someone on the line misses an assignment and now it’s Osi Umenyiora stopping a play deep in the backfield. Note that Ben hasn’t been hit yet. Blockers are at least protecting him. On the next play, Ben does his thing and eludes some pressure, but it looks like he forgot that no one can overthrow Mike Wallace. He drops it short and Corey Webster is there for the pick.

Bomar somehow escapes two or three sacks before scrambling for a first down, just barely. Two penalties later, B-Mac blocks “the other” Steve Smith out of a catch. Fans boo because they don’t know you can jam a receiver within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage. Polamalu misses a rare tackle, but the defense recovers and the Giants punt.

Antonio Brown has a couple of nifty moves in his arsenal. Mendy and Redman split time on the next drive and they make use of it. Nice running across the board.

SECOND QUARTER

Isaac Redman converts a 3rd & 1 with a dominant north-south plunge, and Mendy dances in the backfield for a loss. Eerie how much you expect those things from both players.

John Elway Ben Roethlisberger rolls out and slings a pass across his body right into Shannon Sharpe Heath Miller’s hands. Falls forward. Hines Ward Antwaan Randle El nabs a deep pass out of the air at the goal line.

You know that move you pull with your dog, when you pretend to throw his ball and he runs out into the yard even though you never let it go? Ben does that to Barry Cofield, but can’t escape the sack as he trips mid-scramble. Eventually, Reed comes out for the points of the game. 3-0.

Sepulveda’s kickoff is again unimpressive. Frank Summers shed a blocker and made the tackle. He’s going to need to do that if he wants the team to save a roster spot for him.

“The other” Steve Smith makes a fairly incredible play over Bryant McFadden’s head. Ahmad Bradshaw has a couple of nice runs that made the Steeler defense only look good, not great. LeBeau doesn’t want just “good” defense. Bryant McFadden loses his outside containment and Bradshaw runs around him into the end zone. 7-3. You can bet McFadden will be getting hounded in practice this week.

Awesome shot of a cat that found its way on the field coming out of a commercial break. The kick return team actually blocks some people and Brown gets a decent return out of it. Ben Roethlisberger puts on his baseball cap and Byron Leftwich takes the reins of the offense.

Pouncey at center, Lefty at QB, Spaeth at TE, and Redman at RB. They can’t get it done, 3-and-out.

On the ensuing punt, the returner makes a sick cutback and runs downt he sideline with the kicker to beat. Dan Sepulveda is no ordinary kicker. He drives into the guy blocking him, getting his jersey held the whole way, and still makes a solid tackle to save the touchdown. Jeff Reed would have already been on the sidelines sipping Gatorade.

The second team defense follows Sepulveda’s lead. Giants punt it right back. Leftwich comes out again. On 3rd & 7, he hits Mike Wallace on a perfectly run out-cut. Nice to see Wallace succeeding at those intermediate routes. If he can only go deep, he’s easy to defend. But once the defense sees him catch those underneath passes, they can’t just go deep and defend him and he becomes a multidimensional threat.

But don’t forget that he is still a lightning-fast deep threat. He burns his DB like a match, as he is obviously guarding against those middle-routes, and Leftwich tries his hardest to overthrow him. He lauches a supersonic missle to the end zone and Wallace slows down to let it catch up to him. Bank. 10-7.

On the Giants’ ensuing drive, William Gay looks like he’s never tackled before. Oh, wait. He hasn’t. Huge run. For some reason the Giants keep going to the middle of the field in a two minute drill. Joe Burnett almost steals a jump ball that sails out of bounds.

And then he steals a jump ball off of Mario Manningham’s hands. Great reaction play. Offense sets up inside the 50 with 0:53 left.

Lefty pulls some nifty moves to pick up a first down. Pouncey is always ahead of his runner blocking downfield, even on broken pass plays. Randle El snags a ball at the 1 and Leftwich fakes a spike and tries to sneak it. No dice. 15 seconds. Fade to Randle El, dropped. DB was all up in his business there. The defense stuffs a last ditch run attempt. No clue why Moore was in there instead of Redman.

HALFTIME

It’s preseason, who cares.

THIRD QUARTER

Brown trips on his return. Feels a lot like Logan did last year; if he could just get that second gear going he’d be gone. And taking over quarterback duties for the night, fan favorite Double D.

Isaac Redman injured. Craaaaap. Emmanuel Sanders picks up a huge catch. Dixon is looking sharp in the pocket. No question Arians drilled him for scrambling too much.

Practice squad staple Justin Vincent takes over for RedZone Redman. Dixon tosses the defense a wicked pump fake and hits Sanders on a nice looking screen pass.

Redman re-enters. Preseason MVP is safe, and in MVP form as he busts into the second level, spins off one tackler, and carries another ball into the end zone. 17-7.

Pinned deep by a penalty, Rhett Bomar slings a screen pass. Will Allen reads it like a map. Smash. Punt. Antonio Brown runs out of moves and gets swallowed up, but he at least picks up a first down on a screen pass on the next drive.

Justin Vincent storms through a gigantic hole for almost 20 yards. Dixon looks as cool as a cucumber (apologies to whoever called Superbowl X) in the pocket, but on a botched handoff, Dixon and Vincent take off down the sideline. Double D makes a savvy decision to let Vincent run ahead of him and take out a defender. D almost tightropes it into the end zone.

Dwayne Wright enters the game, so it’s just about over. It’s hard not to feel bad for whoever is running this late in the game. They have almost no shot at making the team, but you know they’re recording this game and saving it forever because it will be the closest they get to 15 minutes of fame. I’m glad I don’t have to be the coach or GM that has to tell these guys the bad news when the roster deadline comes.

Reed is back to handling kickoffs. Sepulveda didn’t look a whole lot better. Nothing happens the rest of the third.

FOURTH QUARTER

Rhett Bomar is a nifty runner, for a QB. He and his offense slowly manage to work their way into the red zone. After a few runs closer and closer to the goal line, Joe Burnett takes a phantom penatly and give them a new set of down. Bomar tries the Kurt Warner “trip over my own feet” handoff to no avail. Anthony Madison gets flagged for interference, which is a dumb call. The ball was 25 feet in the air and the receiver stopped with Madison chasing, pretty much forcing them to collide.

It takes the Giants somewhere around 14 downs to get in the end zone, but they finally do. Tomlin challenges for a fumble, no dice.

Stefan Logan makes a final stand to keep his roster spot. And he does get a nice return, but it gets called back on a hold.

Ben mentions in an interview that the Steelers’ center is responsible for a lot of protection calls. Am I the only one who remembers a season or two ago when the press was making a big deal about Ben taking over making the protection calls?

Edmund Nelson starts getting excited for a Steelers wildcat package between Randle El, Ward, and Dixon (the former two being college quarterbacks). Don’t get ahead of yourself there.

Stevenson Sylvester busts into the backfield for a nice-looking sack late in the 4th, then gets a hand on a pass on the next play. Nice series for the kid. Tynes hits a field goal. Logan has another efficient return.

With five minutes left in the 4th, the Steelers are in grind-mode. They have to punt and Edmund Nelson remarks how nice it would be if he downed it at the half yard line. As it so happens, the ball bounces off the returner’s knee and out of bounds…at the half yard line.

Nice call, Ed.

Someone literally named Tim Brown catches a ball out of bounds. Logan muffs a punt but recovers. Three minutes left. Run, run, run. Indeed the Steelers grind it out, but Tom Coughlin apparently thinks this game matters and plays the clock like he’s trying to get the ball back. He spends his timeouts around the two minute warning to force as many “run-into-the-middle-of-the-defense” plays as possible.

Fine, Tom. You go ahead and take this game seriously. Long story short, his plan doesn’t work. Steelers win, 24-17.