Errors, errors, errors

The thing that jumped out at me about last night's game was the constant stream of errors made by the Giants. This obviously applies to the offense, but the number of errors on special teams and defense also jumped out. And I don't mean errors as in getting beat by an opponent. The Lions players get paid, too. I am talking about just plain old mistakes.

Outraged discussion on BBI this morning hasn't been touching on what was riling me up in the Lions game, which was the seemingly endless string of missed tackles by the defense. It was getting to the point where I was pleasantly surprised when we hit one of the Lions and they went down. Defensive errors, errors, errors.

Then we come to the special teams, where I count three big mistakes: the punt TD return being the biggest, but then Rosas' kicking out of bounds on the kickoff and then there was Eli Apple's offsides on the first XPT from the Lions in the 1st quarter.

The errors on the offense hardly need to be covered. If it wasn't a blocking scheme breakdown, one (two?) of the OL was getting beat one-on-one, then it was Eli making a mistake, or Marshall dropping a pass. Or how about that short out to Vereen early in the 4th quarter when the Giants absolutely needed to have a first down and Vereen runs his pattern a half yard short of the first down marker forcing a punt?

Errors, errors, errors. Every unit - and the coaches, too. That made me think about how McAdoo pared back the playcalling last season to a reduced set of formations and plays, something everyone here was complaining about. I am guessing that a) the players aren't learning the playbook well; 2) the practice sessions aren't efficiently teaching the team to run the plays consistently correctly; 3) the coaches aren't succeeding in teaching the players and corecting their mistakes.

I know this is the NFL in 2017 and team execution has deteriorated, but what we're seeing is below average. Did you see any Lions defensive players miss any tackles? There must have been a couple but everyone was deriding their defense in the lead up to this game and all I saw was wrapping, tackling and the Giants players do down. meanwhile, the Giants couldn't seem to execute a play without mistakes.