The Seattle Seahawks have one more game to play before their early bye week break. On Monday night they will be visiting MetLife stadium to play the New York Giants in a primetime matchup.
To learn more about this week’s opponent, we asked Giants Wire editor Dan Benton a few questions. Here’s what he had to say about the state of the G-Men.
Daniel Jones signed a 4-year, $160 million extension this offseason. How's that going so far?
As far as Jones himself, it’s going as planned. He’s the hardest-working guy on the team, has elite athleticism for a quarterback and can make any throw on the field. He’s everything you objectively want in a quarterback contrary to the narrative that continues to spread through people who got it wrong about him coming out of Duke.
People may celebrate the Giants’ failures because they need to be right about Jones but all it really does is display how little about the game of football they know. Hard to succeed with terrible players around you, but I’ll address that further in the next answer.
How much of the Giants' 2 losses is their own fault vs. facing brutal opponents?
The opponents were tough, no doubt. However, no team in the NFL can succeed when you lead the league in combined drops (passes and interceptions) and missed tackles. It doesn’t help when your pass protection grades out as the worst in football and among the worst in years, your wide receivers create zero separation and your highly-touted tight end doesn’t make nearly the difference many expected.
Injuries are again piling up, hitting some of the best players on the team (Andrew Thomas and Saquon Barkley), and the coaching, after a wildly impressive first year, has completely fallen off. The special teams unit has been a disaster, the pass rush is non-existent, the defense hasn’t generated a single turnover despite many opportunities, and the fire just doesn’t seem to be there.
The scrappy Brian Daboll team people got to know last year seems to have vanished this year. You’ve got captains talking about how their league-worst tackling isn’t an issue and that really sums up the vibe around the team right now. If not for Daniel Jones singlehanded bringing the Giants back for a historic win in Week 2, there’d be literally nothing positive to speak of.
Brian Daboll seems to know what he's doing. What will be his biggest challenge this season?
I’d say for Daboll, it’s keeping his team focused and fighting. They got punched in the mouth in Week 1 and just crumbled. They came out dead in Week 2 and as mentioned previously, if not for DJ throwing them on his back and carrying them to a win, they’d have nothing positive going on. Then, a week ago, the aforementioned focus just evaporated. Countless avoidable penalties killed them on defense and the missed tackles, which is all about effort, doomed them. Frankly, none of this reflects well on Daboll or his coaching staff.
What would you say is this Giants' team greatest strength?
The Giants, admittedly, aren’t strong in a single area. They’re a mess across the board and nothing really leaps off the film as something positive outside of the effort made by Daniel Jones on the offensive side of the ball and Dexter Lawrence on the defensive side of the ball. Big Dex is completely dominant on the inside but it’s lost in the wash of poor defensive play. Meanwhile, Jones excels when making plays with his legs but teams, knowing the Giants can’t pass protect, are just leaving a spy on him to prevent him from taking off.
And what is their biggest weakness?
Pass protection and you can put that on repeat. The team’s starting five is regularly beaten with 3-man and 4-man rushes. Defenses don’t even have to stunt or blitz… Just walk right through the blocker and to the quarter. You or I could snag a few sacks against the Giants. Last week, Evan Neal led the Giants with a pass protection grade of 48.2. No other lineman had a grade above 23.0, three had grades below 12.0 and two below 4.0. And no, that is not a typo.
Prediction for this week's game?
The Seahawks are dominant on prime time and the Giants are, well, not. Hard to believe that changes any time soon. I do expect the Giants to score some more points with Andrew Thomas and Ben Bredeson back, but it’s not going to be enough. Seahawks 30, Giants, 26.
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