Yes, the Best Defense in the League!

Since Saturday night, all I’ve been hearing is that Aaron Rodgers had an uncharacteristically bad day. Otherwise, they seem to say, the Giants could’ve lost their battle with the #1 seed and 15-1 Green Bay Packers. They outline each and every time Rodgers missed a pass or one of his receivers dropped a ball.

I say “bullshit.”

Rodgers missed the passes because he was out-of-synch all game long. The best passer in the world was only normal when he had pass-rushers up his butt all afternoon. His receivers got a little jumpy when they had defensive backs and linebackers growing out of their backs. Packer running backs found a lot of tough going and every Packer had to make sure they held onto that football.

Pressure. That’s what stopped the Packers. Relentless all-day-long hits and eleven guys paying attention, an offense the Packers kind of knew they couldn’t stop, a quarterback named Manning making all the throws and making all the right calls. The combination of all that was just too much for the green and gold, even at home.

There would be very few leaps into the stands that day.

I had called it exactly right. I had said that it would take the best defense in the league to stop Aaron Rodgers and all those nifty receivers, Finley and Jennings and Jordy Nelson and Donald Driver. And it did take some really great defense to do it. I think the Giants have the best defense in the league. Who’s better….the Ravens?

I don’t think so.

Not the guys from Baltimore, not the 49ers and certainly not the New England Patriots. The Giants are the best defense in the league. The 49ers will have something to say about that this weekend but it wasn’t the Niners defense that won their game against Drew Brees and the Saints, although for almost 3 quarters, they showed they were awfully tough.

In the final quarter, the Niners were getting picked apart. It was an almost miraculous performance by the Niners offense that saved the Niners day. Alex Smith and Vernon Davis saved the Niners. The Saints defense couldn’t stop a perfectly-thrown goal line pass to Vernon Davis. They couldn’t stop Alex Smith running with the ball. The Saints dared Alex Smith to beat them and so he did.

The Niners may beat the Giants but it won’t be their defense stifling Manning and those wide-outs. They may stop the run pretty well but the Giants should get their points. Hell, they may even be able to run the ball, though the wise would be wise to not count on such a happening.

Even Eli and all his weapons will have trouble penetrating that sure to be pumped-up Niners defense in San Francisco. But I think they eventually will. It’ll probably come late in the game, after having pressured that Niners secondary all day long.

The G-Men will eventually take the lead and hold it. Alex Smith and Vernon Davis won’t beat these Giants. The home field of that City by the Bay won’t beat them. After all, they’ve already come through that gigantic structure in Dallas and that frozen tundra in Green Bay. Those la-la Niners fans won’t shake them. It’s not likely anyway.

What might be likely is a bit of a Giants letdown. They’ve been through a lot of pressure themselves. This will be their umpty-ump must-win game in a row. And it’ll be the first time in these playoffs that they won’t be facing an acknowledged defense-killer at quarterback, no Romo, no Rodgers, just a guy named Smith.

And they’ve faced these Niners before. To a man, they think they should have won that game. That previous experience can do two things. It can build up confidence or it can lead to a little bit of complacency on the field. After all, it won’t be Rodgers guiding those Niners….just Alex Smith.

Our heroes will also be facing arguably the best head coach in the league. Jim Harbaugh doesn’t make mistakes. He’s no Mike Smith, the Falcons head coach, the 4th and 1 wonder. He’s no Jason Garrett either. He’s probably on a par with that Green Bay head coach who won 15 games this season.

Harbaugh will keep that team motivated. He’ll probably figure a way of getting to Eli. Harbaugh will likely find some chink in that Giants armor. It’ll probably be centered around the Niners running game and that horse Frank Gore.

But the Falcons had a horse of a runner in Michael Turner. He didn’t do much. And the Falcons had a great receiving corps…Julio Jones and Roddy White and that venerable Tony Gonzalez at tight end. That contingent scored zero versus the Giants. Sure, Mike Smith was a handicap but even the best head coach would’ve had trouble with the Giants that day.

The Niners though have some Smiths of their own, some formidable Smiths, not just Alex but also Aldon and Justin in that steely Niners front seven. Justin is especially scary. Anybody who witnessed him charging through that Saints offensive line won’t take anything for granted this weekend. The Harbaugh Niners are really tough and play really hard.

Unlikely as it seems to me, the Giants are currently the underdog in this matchup by 2 ½ points, no doubt due primarily to hosting the game in San Fran. The over-under is currently 42. That means the rest of the world thinks the Niners will come out on top by a score of 22 ¼ to 19 ¾.

I don’t think so. Yeah, I know all about the brilliant Niners coaching and their terrific kicking game and their stingy defense but the Giants ain’t chopped liver either. Harbaugh acknowledged as much the other day. He seemed to be of the same mind as Green Bay when they decided to on-sides kick in a tie game, that they would need an extra possession to win.

If the better team prevails, it’ll be the Giants game.

The Best Defense in the League?

What an NFL Wildcard Weekend!!

I had thought this past weekend might be one of those yawners that seem to happen now and then. The matchups certainly didn’t lend themselves to one’s thinking that it’d be great entertainment, especially not the Broncos-Steelers game. I’d been looking forward to the Giants-Falcons, of course, but the other games didn’t send me, except for maybe the Bengals against the Texans. I thought the Bengals had a great chance.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!!

The Texans were off and running early. JJ Watt, a lineman for Pete’s sake, made a reaching stab of a Dalton pass to the flat and that play pretty much was a harbinger of things to come. There’d be no Dalton dramatics, there’d be no stopping the Texans running game….it was a pretty routine win for the contingent from Texas. For one more year, it’d be a shame to be a Bengals fan.

That Saturday night, the Saints-Lions was on the schedule. Nobody in their right mind thought the Lions would be able to stop Drew Brees but they actually did pretty well through the first half before utterly crumbling in the second half. It was like a snowball rolling down the hill. But, if you like watching a good quarterback work, Drew Brees is one of the three quarterbacks in the league that can absolutely destroy a defense.

One of the other two, of course, Aaron Rodgers, is unfortunately facing our Giants this weekend. His Packers have lost just once this year and Rodgers has been a huge part of the reason. The man is as accurate as anybody who’s ever played. He rolls around in the pocket and will take off running when the opportunity presents itself. The man just rolls.

Yeah. That’s true. But what about the Giants defense? Won’t that pass rush get to Rodgers? I certainly hope so but that Pack OL ain’t chopped liver and I’m not so sure the Falcons OL had one of its better days against the G-Men. But, statistically, as I can recall, the Falcons OL was pretty high in the rankings.

What I’m trying to say is that, if the Giants defensive line is the best in the league, if they can get to any quarterback in the league, then Rodgers might find himself running around a bit more than he is used to. I’ve already heard the Giants have a puncher’s chance and that’s as good an analogy as any, I suppose.

The trouble is that even a Rodgers under pressure is going to be pretty damned good. He’ll roll around and get rid of the ball when he must but most of the time, he’ll just find those receivers in perfect stride. Or, if they’re covered, he’ll just do that back-shoulder routine that’s so impossible to stop. Rodgers throws to everybody and he throws on the run probably better than anybody. So, even if he’s running, that doesn’t help the opposition as much as you’d think.

When the Giants beat the Pats in early 2008, Brady was the QB and, at the time anyway, Brady was considered the best quarterback ever. As things turned out, the Giants did indeed get to Brady and the pressure affected him bigtime. But Brady is a statue compared to Rodgers.

The aforementioned Brady is still in these playoffs, of course, and his Pats should have another reasonably good time against the Broncos. All I can say about that one is Tebow, Tebow, Tebow, Tebow. Watching Tebow running that Denver offense, when it’s all working, is a thing of beauty. What’s he going to do? Well, he could run himself, he could simply hand off or he could run to the edge and pitch it, or he could just wing it down the field, that last being the least likely of all.

That is, until Sunday afternoon. After Sunday’s game, the defense will have to figure against the Broncs passing game as well. Tebow’s 316 yards passing and two touchdowns, and another one rushing, pretty much killed any thoughts that the Broncs were only 3-dimensional. Any more dimensions, of course, would be out of this world, by definition, and that’s exactly what most Broncos fans are thinking about their quarterback these days.

After the Giants crushing of the witless Falcons, I would’ve been happy with the day as it was. I didn’t really need a great Broncos game, even if the Broncs opponent was the hated Steelers, the hated Ben Roethlisberger, that stupid Kiesel beard, that bully Harrison, and Mike Tomlin just out-thinking and out-motivating everybody else on the sidelines.

The way Denver went about their business was special. That first half was especially good, watching the Broncos not only take the lead with a beautifully-thrown Tebow pass that went the distance, but then adding insult to injury by just piling up some more points. And when hated Big Ben took the Steelers all the way back to inevitably tie the game in regulation, one had to think the worst. But Tebow’s on-target dart to Demaryus Thomas on the first play of overtime was just great. There would be no Steelers victory that day. Tebow to Thomas took care of that.

Saving the best for last, the Giants game proceeded pretty much as I had expected. The game started slowly, both teams did nothing and then things heated up quickly. But I’d thought both teams would have some success through the air. I’d thought Falcons head-man Mike Smith would ultimately blow the game. As things turned out though, Smith took his team out early with badly-run quarterback sneaks while the ponderous Michael Turner watched from the bench.

And the Giants defense stopped everything the Falcons could muster.

But Rodgers will be doing the mustering this week and their head coach isn’t Mike Smith. The G-Men need to bring their best game. If they truly have become the best defense in the league, as it certainly appeared on Sunday, they could even win this thing.

Giants Embarassment

I’ve about had it with the Giants. That Sunday night display of clueless defense was just too much for an old cornerback. I mean…where was the coverage? I could understand a breakdown in coverage on a single play. On a bad night I could understand even a couple of mistakes. After all, these are supposed to be pros.

What a sad joke they are! What a poor excuse for a football team! Except for the offense, which, to their credit performed admirably all night long (except for Manningham), this team stinks out loud. Last night was not an isolated incident. This team’s defense has been horrible ever since Spagnuolo went to St Louis to coach the Rams.

We could have expected a period of transition, similar to the beginning of the Giants Super Bowl season of 2007, when the defense turned it around after three weeks of horrible coverage and awful losses. After all, a professional defense is a complicated thing. You’d expect that a few weeks would be needed to digest it.

But what you wouldn’t expect was what happened last night. Let’s review:

FIRST HALF
First Philly possession – 7 plays to a Brent Celek TD, big 32 yard completion to DeSean Jackson, Philly needed no third downs in the drive.

Second Philly score – starts with Jacobs fumble after Giants were moving the ball. Fumble scooped up and returned 60 yards for a TD.

Second actual offensive possession - Philly actually had to punt.

Third Philly possession – 12-plays, Philly settles for a field goal.

Fourth Philly “possession” – 72-yard punt return for TD.

Fifth Philly possession – 8 plays, 2 third downs, one went for 23 yards down the middle to Celek, one to DeSean Jackson for 44 yards. Vick scored the TD.

Second HALF

First Philly possession – The new guy in the defense (Jonathan Goff) gets an interception! Manning fumbled shortly thereafter.

Second Philly possession – Philly had to punt AGAIN (holy cow)

Third Philly possession – 60-yard TD to Jackson on first play after Giants score

Fourth Philly possession – another punt – WooHoo!

Fifth Philly possession – 12 plays, 91 yards, TD, McNabb passes to just about anybody wearing green, they were all open.

Sixth Philly possession – Philly just burning time – punt, meaningless possession

Every time Philly needed a score, they got one. Philly could score at will. The Giants were helpless. McNabb had all day to throw. Almost literally. The secondary couldn’t cover anybody. Again.

I’ve been saying all year long that this new defensive coordinator was not working out. Now I’m saying Coughlin isn’t working out. The man did nothing, through all the blown coverages, through all the losses, through all the embarassments, he’s done NOTHING, except to protect his horrible defensive coordinator.

I said several weeks ago the Giants wouldn’t make the playoffs with that defense. (It doesn’t take a rocket scientist after all). The only reason they have a chance at making the playoffs at all is that Dallas is faltering and has a tough remaining schedule.

But they were actually favored against the Eagles, a remarkable fact that indicates how over-rated the Giants really are. They are no match for the Eagles.

The Eagles have a coach who actually knows how to coach. When there’s a problem, he fixes it. He responds to changes in his environment. Reid may pass too often and forget about his running game but he realizes his mistakes and reacts. Coughlin just stands there looking confused and making excuses.

Maybe I’m being too hard on Coughlin. I wonder if this clueless DC was his choice. I wonder if keeping him is within his realm of empowerment…perhaps not, and, if not, I apologize.

But somebody has to take the hit for these year-long failures.
The G.M. has certainly done nothing, either to adequately replace the safety that went down or to replace the middle linebacker when he went down. Let’s give him some of the blame too.

But maybe he can’t spend any money. After all, the Giants haven’t sold nearly all the PSL’s they’ve needed.

So maybe it’s the fan’s fault. Ownership is punishing its fans for not buying up the seat licenses, for moving from mezzanine sections to the upper deck, for not drinking the tres cher Kool-Aid.

In any event, I’m through even rooting for this team. It’s tough to keep pulling for those who don’t even try to help themselves. The Giants are as bad now as they were in the sad years before George Young was hired, when the Mara brothers were fighting each other and neither one knew what he was doing.

And it’s not just the defense. The special teams have been almost as bad. At least two of the wide receivers look as if they’ve never played football before, Manningham and Moss.

About 90% of high school receivers know how to drag a leg after making a catch near the sideline. Manningham is uncoachable, apparently. Either that or the coach(es) don’t know how to teach. Sinorice Moss just never picked up route-running or anything else.

Okay, I’ve said enough about that sorry organization.

In lighter matters, the Jets looked really solid yesterday. I know the Bucs aren’t very good but the Jets beat them slowly and inexorably to the end. Their second-string QB didn’t take any chances and the running game under Thomas Jones wore those Bucs down. Their defense was unbelievable. In fact, statistically, they have the best defense in the league.

They get Atlanta next at home and the Falcons haven’t shown much; they’re all banged up. Then they get two ridiculously tough opponents, the Colts and the Bengals, but both those teams may be coasting by the time the Jets come to town.

But, even then, they could easily miss the playoffs as there are so many other teams in the hunt.

But, playoffs or not, I like the Ryan-led Jets. Ryan has made mistakes but he’s admitted them and then taken action to change things for the better.

The Giants simply have not.

A Disappointing NFL

Disappointing. That’s what this year’s NFL season has been thus far. There are just too many bad teams, very bad teams, to be honest.

Let’s take this past week’s slate of games. The Jets beat Oakland 38-0. The Chargers beat the Chiefs 37-7. The Colts took the Rams 42-6. The Pack killed the Browns 31-3. The Pats trounced the Bucs in London, of all places, 35-7. The Bengals walked all over the Bears 45-10, but it was somewhat of an anomaly, the Bears just having a very bad game. The Skins only lost by 10 to the Eagles but they were never really in the game.

So… of 13 games on the schedule (6 teams had byes), there were 7 totally boring games. The losers were never in it, not for one moment. There wasn’t even any anticipation of the game being close. Worse still, of the 6 teams on byes, 3 of them are awful, Detroit, Tennessee and Jacksonville. If they had played, it would have been a bleak Sunday indeed.

Why is the disparity so bad this year between the haves and have nots? It’s ownership in most cases, and not in a financial sense so much as in an intellectual sense. The bad teams have made bad decisions, on players, especially quarterbacks, and also, and maybe even more importantly, on managers and coaches, and thus on game plans. They’re bad, and they don’t have good prospects for ever being good, not soon anyway. Maybe in the next life.

Take the Skins, please. Dan Snyder’s been the owner for quite some time. His tenure has been marked by frequent changes, in head coaches, in players, and their quarterback is awful. Jason Campbell’s only gift is height.

The Raiders are next in line for some bashing. Al Davis is behind the times. He’ll never catch up. Every year, he drafts the fastest player he can and hopes for the best. His head coach just beat up one of his assistants. His quarterback is the worst in the league, Jamarcus Russell. He too is tall and beefy…..and that’s about it.

The Tampa Bay contingent let their good head coach go and elevated a fellow who turned a good pass defense into a sieve. The QB they’re playing now, Josh Johnson, runs around a lot, and yes, pretty much like the proverbial chicken with his head cut off.

Detroit is perhaps the poster-boy for horrible ownership and management year after year. There may be hope for the Chiefs, who will slowly recover after years of Herman Edwards’s tutelage. Tennessee will come back too, but will Vince Young really be their savior at that all-important quarterback spot?

There may be hope for the Jaguars but their long-time head coach, Jack Del Rio, will never win any contests for coaching acumen. The Rams too can have hope for the future; it’s just the immediate present that will be extremely challenging. Even the Bills may eventually right themselves, but I don’t know precisely why I feel that way, maybe because they always wind up being at least mediocre.

You hear a lot that any team can beat any other on any given day. That point is proven too, but only every once in a while, most recently by the Eagles losing to the Raiders. Every once in a blue moon, even a good head coach seems to lose his mind in the heat of a losing battle. In that particular game, Andy Reid forgot he had a running game (once again) even though he was facing a team with no run defense. Color him hard-headed.

What’s most upsetting to me are those franchises who spend big money on bad quarterbacks, or those who year after year will draft a wide receiver with their number one pick. Other franchises will ignore their obvious problems. Some teams never field a decent pass defense; others can never stop the run, year after year. It’s friggin’ inexplicable. But troubling.

The Giants fix their problems right away. So do the Jets. They’ve been right on their big acquisitions at quarterback, and at most other places too. Both Coughlin and Ryan are good coaches with good staffs. Every week, New York fans of either the Green or the Blue can feel that their respective teams will be in the hunt. Problems that develop, such as the Giants pass defense or the Jets offensive headaches of the moment will be addressed.

Football is unique, of course, with respect to the number of injuries that occur every week, and some are very serious injuries to key players. The Jets, for example, just lost Kris Jenkins and Leon Washington for the season. Those two can’t really be replaced. Their effects will be reflected in the final standings.

Oakland couldn’t take advantage of the Jenkins loss but other teams almost surely will. The Jets were also smart enough to protect their young quarterback and rely on their running game. They were also quick to pick up another defensive lineman; not all teams would have been so quick to assess their reserves and react. It’s a very good sign of their commitment to winning.

The Giants’ pass defense problem is more problematical. Injuries in the secondary are playing a part but their linebackers don’t really seem to have the speed or coverage ability that will be needed against the better passing teams. Their last two losses to the Saints and Cards were entirely predictable but they’ll still prevail against lesser squads.

The Jets have to face Miami again next week while the Giants have the Eagles on tap. Neither game will be a gimme by any means. The Jets were victimized by the Fish not too long ago while the Eagles are one of those strong passing teams, one of those teams quite capable of ringing the G-Men up for a few to several touchdowns.

How both teams react to these challenges will be quite telling, I think, both to guage their intellect and character.

Steelers - Defense and Character

In handicapping this Super Bowl, I’m reminded of that scene from the Hannibal Lecter movies, where Hannibal’s being interviewed by the young Ms. Starling. Hannibal asks the green FBI agent something like “what is he at his ESSENCE, Clarice”? And after she makes two or three dismal guesses, Hannibal says sumthin’ like “NO, Clarice, he COVETS”.

What is Arizona at its essence? THE PASS! Kurt Warner behind a nice big offensive line throwing to the likes of the finest receivers in the land, Larry Fitzgerald and the tough, sure-handed Anquan Boldin, the guy with plates in his face and just keeps coming. And, if you cover them, there’s this troublesome rookie named Breaston.

Yeah, late in the season and in the playoffs, they took the wraps off Edgerrin James and ran the ball, but it was strategic-type running, done only so that they could go back to what they do best. PASS!

And yeah, they score via the run sometimes, with that big bruiser Hightower. They’ll use him on a third or fourth and one. And then, when it’s first down time again, they’ll ordinarily go back to the pass. Once again, in the playoffs, they did some different things with James, but they usually ran after they had already killed their opponent with the pass.

Incredible as it seems to me, their opponents in the playoffs seem not to have respected their passing game enough. A simple thing like double coverage, nobody really did. Even when Boldin was hurt and there was just Fitzgerald and Breaston, Carolina and Philadelphia let him run free against, usually, a tiny little cornerback.

As timing is so important in the passing game, you’d think one of these teams would have checked these big guys at the line. But no, nobody did. And yeah, I know they put these guys in motion so it’s harder to give them a shot at the line of scrimmage, but, still, there were plenty of opportunities to jam these guys and nobody did.

Another way to stop the pass is via the rush, of course. With Warner, getting a guy in his face is most effective, so he has to scramble, usually with just one hand on the ball, extended, looking downfield. But nobody really seemed to focus a rush up the middle.

Atlanta was just overmatched to my mind. Nobody expected them to win and they didn’t. Surprisingly though, they made the score respectable. Carolina “Delhommed” itself to death while trying to execute the stupidest game plan ever devised by anyone against any team. Oh, and this just in, Carolina just hired a new defensive coordinator.

And Philadelphia? They came as close as anyone to beating them but let themselves fall hopelessly behind before charging back and then fizzling. They weren’t able to stop the pass or run. They blitzed quite a bit too, but they were wild, chancy blitzes, hoping against hope Warner wouldn’t find the open guy. He did.

Okay, Clarice, what is the Steelers ESSENCE? DEEE-FENSE!! Yeah, they run the ball, and yeah, they have Big Ben running around, usually on third and long, finding a receiver. But they’re all about defense. The single most consistent thing about the black and gold is that defense.

Zone blitz? Ever hear of it? Of course you have, everybody has. You couldn’t NOT hear it if you tried. Dick LeBeau? Same thing. Steelers and LeBeau, it’s like love and marriage, ham and cheese (I do go on); you get the idea. Yeah, Mike Tomlin might be quite a coach and a hell of a motivator, but the guy who makes every defensive call is Dick LeBeau.

In the zone blitz, you never know who’s coming, but the great thing about it is there’s ALWAYS somebody back. And that “somebody” a lot of times is going to be one of the finest defensive players in the game, a guy named Troy Polamalu.

Ever hear of him? Of course you have, usually in the same breath as “Reed, Harrison and Polamalu”. While they’d make a hell of a law firm, they make even better defense. That Harrison and Polamalu are on the same team makes things even scarier for the Cards, and hopeful for the Steelers.

A few things make me nervous about this game though. One is that a defense almost never can win the game all by themselves. It needs to rest. That goes for any defense. If all a defense gets is pressure and more pressure, it will break.

That’s why Big Ben will be so important in this game, along with Hines Ward, Santonio Holmes and Willie Parker. Parker might be the most important piece of all in this chess match of a game. Parker’s got to take some pressure off that passing game.

The second thing is that the game pits Tomlin against Whisenhunt, the guy he beat out for the head coaching job in Pittsburgh. There is a revenge factor there, yes, but, even more important, don’t you suppose Whisenhunt knows all about the zone blitz? Ya think he’s heard of Dick LeBeau? Whisenhunt has the advantage of knowing all about the Steelers, offense, defense, and special teams.

The third thing that bothers me is that the Steelers seem to have a little trouble against really good quarterbacks. They’re 0 and 2 this year against the Mannings, for example. They’re 0 and 1 vs McNabb. They only lost one other game, against Tennessee, in a meaningless game.

But I have even more concerns about the Cardinals, and it has to do with team character.
This Cards defense especially has quite a history of lying down. The Steelers never lie down.

The Steelers will get their junk touchdowns. The Cards will score but the Cards won’t be able to run. There will be some three and outs, which will put even more pressure on Warner. The Steelers will take the lead, and when they do, they won’t fold. They are, after all, the Steelers.