Biteymax's Next Day Non-Emotional Thoughts

Good morning and welcome to the 2021 Giant’s Football season! As many of you remember I started these threads last year to decompress after a loss and level myself after a win, for now I’ll be doing the same thing this year.
As always, I invite you guys to comment on my thoughts or add your own for discussion.

Starting by giving credit where its due. The Broncos and their coaching staff which includes our last HC Pat Shurmur did a fantastic job of putting together a game plan and executing it. Give our opponent some credit for coming across the country and playing well

Shurmur’s game plan may have seemed, well… boring, but if you think about it the plan worked for 2 reasons
o It emphasizes his QBs strengths (short, quick passes and managing the game)
o Attacked our defense at its core strength from last year which is “bend don’t break”

Elaborating on the comment about our defense: Last year our defense was very good but not perfect. Where we were very good, if not elite, was holding opponents from making big plays and keeping opponents from scoring once we got to the red zone. Shurmur looked at this and realize we are built to give them 5 yards but not 15 and just kept taking the 5 yards, this fits with Bridgewater’s skill set. Pairing with this is the fact that our offense just isn’t good enough to come out and respond with a quick score or even build a lead. It was a very boring strategy for this Bronco’s team, but it was probably the right one

Coaching aside, the Bronco’s players executed. The execution of a plan is exponentially more important than the plan itself….

Onto the Giants. I’d like to spend some time talking about main concerns (taking these from actively reading BBI) we had during the off season:

o Offensive line, all positions except Gates
o Jones turning the ball over
o Pass rush
o Offensive play calling

Offensive line - Was the best of the 4. Despite Solder getting absolutely embarrassed by Von Miller on the first drive (which helped to set a bad tone) this group banded together and managed to play what I’d call an OKAY game. No more than that. I believe the stats were 2 sacks, 2 QB hits, both by Miller. Not bad at all from a pass blocking perspective. Jones had time to throw. What was interesting was the run blocking was poor and we never really established a run game. Odd because they were able to run block last year even when giving up sacks.

Jones and the turnover - If you just looked at it at a 100ft view 2tds and 1 turnover isn’t horrible, but it was the when and how. Marching down the field down 17-7 in a situation where you could make this a 1 score game with ample amount of time to finish a comeback if you score, you cannot fumble because you tried to put your shoulder down and run through guys. If this was 4th and 1 and you either get that yard or turn it over anyway, then fine, try that. It wasn’t, he should have slid and went to a manageable next down

o Throwing the ball, he was okay, no more and no less. Some are going to point to some balls he threw into heavy coverages but by and large they were late in the game when we were 2 scores behind, I have no issue with a QB trying to force something in that situation
o Also, worth noting he threw 1 deep ball and it was a nice one but we never went back to that

Pass rush - We had some opportunities getting to Bridgewater but didn’t finish and could have had more than 2 sacks, but we didn’t do a good job getting there when needed or making him feel uncomfortable on 3rd down. We blitzed the middle often, but the Denver OLine did just enough to slow us down knowing Bridgewater was going to get rid of the ball quickly. We must find ways to make opposing QBs more uncomfortable…

o Worth noting, on the 4th down play on the Broncos first scoring drive I think Dexter Lawrence was very clearly held and it should have been called. This obviously would have been a big momentum change in the game

Offensive play calling - In short, it was what we thought it was. Bland, conservative, not scheming players to get open but instead relying on them winning one on one battles. Where all of us were hoping to see a different offense then last year I’m not saying it won’t happen, but I am saying we didn’t see it yesterday

o Garrett called his signature “reverse the first time we get inside their 40” and the Broncos clearly new this was coming. It is now predicable
o I don’t have access to an all 22 nor do I go through and do play by play analysis but 2 back-to-back plays late in the game really stuck out to me. This coming from the drive in late Q4 where we got stopped in the red zone
 3rd down. Fade to Rudolph who was well covered. Jones just threw this out of the end zone
 4th down. Throw to Golladay front pylon which got broken up. They showed an angle of this play going down the end zone line. ALL of our receivers ran the same route which was run in the end zone and turn around (sticks)…..
 2 plays where scoring is a must, no scheming anyone open, putting all the responsibility on WR’s to get open on their own while using predictable routes. Doesn’t cut it


These are some other quick takes I had watching. I’ll keep these short because the rest of this is rather long:

• My best description to yesterday’s overall performance is “Flat”. Talking about the Broncos I made the comment that the execution of a plan is more important than the plan itself, we need to show some urgency and we need to execute

• I know Toney played very little in the preseason but in the short time he was on the field it seemed so obvious the Giants were going to force the ball to him via some trick play. They either should have not played him or made him run some standard routes

• Andrew Thomas looked like a completely different player than he did against NE. He wasn’t going against Chubb but Green started for them all last year. Remember Uche from NE wasn’t exactly a pro bowler either

• Ojulari did record one sack but other than that had a rough outing. Late in the game he had back-to-back plays where he had a roughing the pass rusher then was washed out of his assignment allowing Gordon to score a long TD. He’s a rookie, he can get better

• Sterling Shepard looked like our team’s best player yesterday

• Judge and co. did not have a good game. Team was flat, Broncos seemed one step ahead of us and the challenge of a scoring play was odd to say the least

Conclusion: Its game 1, weird things happen in the NFL on week 1, maybe this game won’t be indicative of what the rest of the season is going to look like, maybe it will be. The good and bad news is we have a game Thursday night against a division opponent, if we can get it together and win all of this will be forgotten, if we lose prepare for the BBI avalanche. I’m not going to get into exactly what we need to do to beat the WFT but it involves better execution and playing more aggressively; we did not dictate the game to the Broncos, the brought it to us, we need to bring the game to WFT.