The Oline was much improved (long review of some run plays)

The Giants’ offensive line bounced back from their worst performance of the year (probably longer than that) and turned in a solid effort. Actually against the Packers the interior of the line had decent games. Pugh, Richburg, and Jerry all played pretty well overall last week. The trouble was that both Flowers and Hart were simply dreadful, in run blocking and pass protection.

This week Pugh had another excellent game, he is having a great year. Jerry had a solid game (very good in pass protection, but a little weak on run plays). Jerry’s run blocking has looked a lot better this year and even though this wasn’t his best run blocking game, it was better than what we usually saw last year. Richburg struggled a bit in the game, with a few issues in pass protection and he wasn’t nearly as good in run blocking as he was a year ago. I’m starting to get concerned that his play is not as good as it was a year ago. I don’t know if there is an injury or another explanation, but he is definitely not playing as well. The real headliner for me was the play of Bobby Hart. He rebounded and had a good game in both run and pass protection. It wasn’t perfect, or as good as Pugh, but if he can play like this consistently he should keep the starting job through the end of the year. Flowers had a decent. He was much improved from last week, but there were still a lot of things that really need to be cleaned up.

They really didn’t have very much success running the ball, but the O-line really didn’t have an awful game in run blocking. The tight ends and the running backs were at least as much to blame. Donnell and Tye both struggled, though they had a couple decent plays blocking. Here’s a review of a couple of the more successful run plays. When you gain 38 yards on 17 runs, there’s not going to be an awful lot of successful plays to look at. The good news is the pass protection was better, but review pass protection successes aren't as interesting.

2-6-BAL 23 (11:36 in the 3rd): 4 yard run by Rainey.

Pugh (yellow circle) is pulling to the right. Hart (red circle) and Jerry (green circle) double team Guy. Donnell is blocking Smith on the outside. Richburg and Flowers do a good job of getting blocking their men to the left (white circle). Jerry and Hart do a good job of pushing Guy backward, though Jerry has fallen off the block on and fallen to the ground. Hart keeps pushing him back until he is 3 yards down field and with his back to the ball when Rainey is running by. Donnell also has done a good job of sustaining his block and moving his man downfield. You can see in the 4th frame Rainey (gray circle) hesitates and does a stutter-step in the hole. I don’t know why he does this, but it slows him down and makes it easier for LB Orr to eventually make the tackle after a 4 yard gain. Typically on this play you would expect Jerry to continue to block Guy while Hart moves to the second level to block Orr. Since Jerry is falling down, Hart can’t do this. It’s possible Jerry was trying to move to the second level an block Orr, but this would seem a more unusual play design. Either way, I don’t throw to much blame on Jerry since he was part of the effort to move the DE 3 yards downfield at the point of attack. Overall a well blocked play. You can see Richburg doesn’t sustain his block throughout the whole play. But he holds it long enough for Rainey to hit the hole, even with his unnecessary hesitation. Also, because of where Hart is, it’s really not possible for Williams to make an attempt at a tackle.

2-5-NYG 16 (5:23 in 3rd): 4 yard run by Perkins.

This looks like the same play. Again Pugh (yellow circle) is pulling. Richburg (brown circle) is blocking Jernigan, and Hart (red) and Jerry (green) are to double team Urban. Likely the Hart is then supposed to move on to the second level and seal LB Orr to the inside. Looking at the first frame it looks like a great play call with a chance for a big gain. The Ravens are again in a dime package and DB Levine has come up into and is in front of LB Orr on the right side of the defense. It looks perfect for a run to the offense’s right.

Unfortunately the blocking doesn’t start out well. Flowers seals his man from the play on the backside, but Richburg allows Jernigan to swim past him. This means Jerry is forced to help block Jernigan rather than helping Hart with Urban. You can see in the 3rd frame there is a mess of bodies right where Perkins (white circle) is running. Richburg’s number 70 is sticks out in the pile clearly showing he is in no position to help block. Jerry is blocking Jernigan, but it’s not long before he is no longer able to provide any real help in this regard. Pugh hits Levine right in the hole and drives him back. Hart is able to push Urban a couple yards back by the time Perkins gets to the forming hole. At this point, Hart is essentially blocking Jernigan and Urban. Tye was able to block Judon well enough to give Perkins a little crease, but as Perkins runs by Judon sheds the block and grabs a hold of him. LB Orr fills the gap and helps stop Perkins’ forward momentum. The play is basically done now, since Judon has a firm hold on Perkins and his momentum has been stopped. But, Hart is able to shove Jernigan down field and as he turns blocks Orr away from Perkins so he can no longer assist with the tackle. Like I said, Judon has control of Perkins at this point and he’s not gaining anymore yards, but I like to see Hart taking every chance to block a guy away from the ball carrier. Eventually extra effort like that will help gain yards.

1-10-NYG 25 (6:42 in the 1st): 2 yard run for Jennings

Jerry (yellow) is pulling to the left. Hart seals Smith, and Richburg has Williams blocked. Flowers and Pugh are double teaming Jernigan, and they demolish him. You can see in the last frame they have driven him back 2 yards and in the process have walled off LB McClellan from the play. LB Orr also looks like he might get caught up in the wash a bit. Sadly, Donnell (black circle) has gotten manhandled by Suggs and there is now basically no hole for the pulling Jerry to run through. Jerry ends up helping block Suggs and Jennings squeezes through for a short 2 yard gain. If Donnell can block Suggs here there is a lot of room to run. The O-line (minus Jerry since he had to pick up Donnell’s man) all did a great job.

3-5-BAL 39 (13:00 in 3rd): 2 yard run by Jennings.

To me this looks like an example of bad vision and decision-making by Jennings. Perhaps looking at the coach’s film would show something else, but this looks to be on Jennings to me. The Ravens have 5 men at the line of scrimmage and their LB blitzing up the middle. Here are what the assignments look like to me. Hart is to block down on the DE leaving the OLB to be picked up by the Pugh who is pulling. Jerry is to block the blitzing LB. Richburg is blocking the NT. Flowers is block the LB who is lined up more like a 3-4 DE over top of him. This leaves Suggs potentially free on the back side as the run is going to the right, and Adams will be following behind Pugh as the lead blocker.

LB Orr who was lined up over Flowers loops around to his left a little which makes it difficult for Flowers to block him. He takes a couple steps toward him, but then decides against continuing to pursue him as he turns back toward Suggs to possibly block. Suggs has looped pretty wide and so has taken himself out of the play and Flowers ends up not blocking anyone. It would have been great if Flowers could have blocked Orr, but I’m not sure what his assignment would really be here. The end result is Flowers and Suggs are both out of the play, which is what you would want to happen if Suggs had taken a more direct route toward the ball carrier. Jerry and Richburg (together in the red circle) do well to block their men to the left. Hart (white) blocks his man and Pugh connects with the OLB leaving a nice size hole to run through (highlighted by the red arrow). Instead of going this way Jennings hesitates with a stutter step and then chooses to follow Adams and towards more defenders. Adams makes initial contact with Orr, but isn’t able to get a very good block on him. Jennings is tackled by Orr and safety Weddle who has as come in to help. The other safety was playing very deep and Weddle was on the defenses right side as he came up in run support. He would have had a difficult time getting in on the play if Jennings goes right of Hart. Hart also was blocking Jernigan to the inside, you can see from where they were initially lined-up this was by necessity. It would have been very hard for him to get to Jernigan and move him to the outside. Jernigan also ends up helping with the tackle.

Again, I don’t have the coach’s tape, but I have to believe this would show the same thing. It looks like Jennings should have been able easily get a read off of Harts positioning and go to his right. There really was just not room to follow his lead blocker Adams, even if he made a good block. This doesn’t even mention that Weddle was coming up in run support and the safety on the offenses right side had lined up deep and dropped back even deeper right with the snap.

So in these four runs we had 1 that was blocked well and got a modest gain and gave Rainey an opportunity to get a larger gain if he could beat one guy. A second one that had some Oline failings, but still resulted in a chance for a nice gain. A third where the Oline had it blocked very well and the TE's failure doomed the play. And the last one showed where the line had it blocked well but Jenning didn't read the play well.