Washington is a good team. The Giants were lucky to keep it close until the game was put out of reach in Q4. Significantly, the Giants were beaten at the LOS on both sides of the ball. That’s a serious problem.
We keep talking about Andrew Thomas. It’s not like one Offensive Tackle is going to cure all of the OLine’s ills, but his absence was felt often. There was constant pressure; the left side gave up more.
What was particularly dismaying to me was that Kafka was AWOL in the wake of so much obvious DL pressure. Not only was there pressure, WAS also blitzed many times on 3rd down.
HELP YOUR OFFENSIVE LINE.
We have said this too many times to count- when the DL is getting too much pressure, you playcall:
Flares
Screens
Draws
Slants
Design rollouts
Max protects
How many screens were called today (after liberally calling/practicing them during preseason)? Zero. Notice how Wilson was able to actually run the ball on what were unplanned QB ‘draws’ when he tucked the ball down QUICKLY after getting too much pressure.
QB Draws are not scrambles. Flares are NOT checkdowns. There’s a huge difference between a QB draw and a late scramble. In the flare & draw, defenders are (still) backpedaling. The timing is crucial to why it is advantaged, or not.
Wonder’s take was interesting. “This outcome was actually good for the Giants. I was never excited about Wilson. What we saw today, in terms of what was given to him, is not his game. I liked Winston and thought that was enough. I want Dart in there as soon as possible so if this gets to that outcome, then great. I believe Dart has football presence and he needs snaps/experience. Everyone knows he’s the future, so let’s just get him in there.” When I asked Wonder about (Dart) playing behind a crappy OL, he was not worried about that. “Just get him in there and get him up the learning curve.”
A quick word about the Defense. Most of it was bad. They settled down in the second half but much of that was fortunate from some errant passes and drops. If WAS executes at the end of the half it could easily be a blowout. The secondary was porous outside of a couple of plays by Flott and Phillips. Daniels puts so much pressure on your DL in its rush discipline, yet they still managed 3 sacks; maybe that’s a good sign.
September football is not indicative of the entire season. Yet the Giants LOS interior (besides Lawrence) is soft everywhere and I don’t see how that changes. Gholston on the outside looked lost. If execution is crisp we can see better football. Let’s see if coaches and players can tighten things up. Otherwise we’ll be seeing Dart before too long, which may not be a bad thing.