Despite Struggles, Giants Show Winning Touch

It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t pretty, but the Giants’ 26–23 overtime victory over the Cincinnati Bengals yesterday was a hard-fought win that has the defending champions looking very much like a team that can get back to the Super Bowl.In fact, it was a win that answered the two biggest questions facing the Giants heading into the season: Can their passing offense make up for the absence of the traded tight end Jeremy Shockey? And can their passing defense make up for the absence of the retired defensive end Michael Strahan and the injured defensive end Osi Umenyiora?Shockey’s replacement, Kevin Boss, spent the first two weeks of the season hearing about how he hadn’t caught a pass. But he won’t have to hear that anymore. Boss — the tight end who became the starter for the Giants’ playoff run last year when Shockey broke his leg, and who became the starter for this season when Shockey left for New Orleans — caught three passes for 51 yards, including a touchdown with 1:50 remaining in the fourth quarter. Even when he doesn’t catch passes, Boss makes a big contribution to the Giants’ offense, as he’s one of the best blocking tight ends in football. But his ability to get involved in the passing game makes the Giants’ offense even better.And Strahan and Umenyiora seemed like distant memories yesterday, as the Giants’ defense battered and bruised Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer all day long. The Giants finished the game with six sacks, all from surprising places: two from defensive tackle Fred Robbins and one each from cornerback Corey Webster, defensive tackle Barry Cofield, and defensive ends Mathias Kiwanuka and Dave Tollefson.The Giants led the league in sacks last season with 53. Incredibly, even without Strahan and Umenyiora, they’re well ahead of last year’s pace. With 13 sacks in three games, the Giants are now on pace to finish the season with 69. The NFL record for sacks in a season is 72.Despite that impressive pass rush, however, yesterday’s win did show some weaknesses in the Giants’ defense. For starters, the secondary needs to get better at stopping intermediate-range passes to wide receivers. Palmer threw 15 passes to T.J. Houshmandzadeh, who caught 12 of them, for 146 yards.With Giants safety James Butler struggling in coverage, Houshmandzadeh rarely had trouble getting open, and Palmer — who was off to a terrible start through the first two games of the year — was outstanding, completing 27 of 39 passes for 286 yards, with a touchdown and no interceptions.While Palmer had no trouble at all finding Houshmandzadeh, Eli Manning struggled all day to connect with his favorite receiver, Plaxico Burress. In regulation time, Manning threw six passes to Burress, but Burress caught just one of them, for six yards. It wasn’t until overtime, when Burress had a pair of catches, that he and Manning finally looked like they were on the same page — and even then, Manning badly underthrew Burress on one overtime play when Burress got open over the middle for what could have been a big gain.But while the Giants have plenty to work on, the final result was a game that showed they’re a resourceful team that can win even when they don’t play their best games. Even the Giants’ penalties weren’t all bad: At one point in the fourth quarter, middle linebacker Antonio Pierce noticed that the Giants only had 10 players on the field, so he intentionally jumped offside, costing the Giants five yards, but sparing them from burning a time-out in a close game or giving up a big play when undermanned.The Giants’ running game was also resourceful. The Bengals’ defense made no secret that stopping Brandon Jacobs was their top priority, stacking the line of scrimmage to stop him every time he was on the field. Jacobs did his best under the circumstances — including running for a 1-yard touchdown on a play where he showed incredible agility for a 264-pounder by jumping over the pile and sticking the ball over the goal line — but for the most part, the Bengals simply wouldn’t allow Jacobs to beat them.So the Giants ran out of passing formations, giving the ball to running back Derrick Ward on draw plays when the Bengals had their nickel defense on the field, and the result was that Ward was the game’s leading rusher, with nine carries for 80 yards.Still, for all that resourcefulness, the Giants needed overtime to beat a winless team at home. It wasn’t until after the Giants and Bengals traded punts in the fifth quarter that Manning finally found Amani Toomer for a 31-yard pass, which set up John Carney’s game-winning 22-yard field goal two plays later. For as much as the Giants struggled at times, the win gives the team their first 3–0 start since 2000. They went to the Super Bowl that season, and there’s no reason to think they can’t be there this season, too.Mr. Smith is a writer for FootballOutsiders.com.

Despite Struggles, Giants Show Winning Touch

Despite Struggles, Giants Show Winning Touch

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