Giants v. Browns - Week 3 Reaction
It sure wasn’t pretty - but when you’re the laughingstock of the league, style points are both hard to come by and completely unnecessary. The bleeding has stopped, jobs have been (temporarily) saved, and the circus finally ended its 2-week residency in North Jersey to return its rightful place in Cleveland, Ohio. For the first time this season, your New York Football Giants have won a football game.
This afternoon got off to a comically bad start for the G-Men. Eric Gray aka “Muff Daddy” fumbled the opening kickoff and Deshaun Watson found Amari Cooper for a 24-yard score just 6 seconds into the contest. By the time I finished preparing my signature Sunday cocktail containing roughly 3 parts bleach, 1 part vodka, the Giants offense had already gone 3 and out - and Danny had just delivered his latest dime to the opposing team.
Just as I was raising the martini glass to my lips, a yellow “flag” symbol flashed across FOX’s scoreboard. Much like his political namesake, Governor Greg Newsome had given the broken, stinky, bum Giants a new lease on life - by committing an egregious roughing the passer penalty to wipe away the would-be turnover. From that moment on (well…at least in the first half), the Giants finally lived up to my delusional pre-season expectations.
The basis of my 10-win fan fiction centered around a dominant defensive front and enough improvements on the offensive line to allow our middling quarterback to successfully force feed Malik Nabers. Nabers was unbelievable in this game as his number was called in virtually every crucial situation. 1st and 10? Easy 6-yard pitch and catch. 4th and 1? End around to move the sticks. And most importantly - goal to go? How about a pair of leaping touchdown grabs to not only neutralize the initial Cleveland burst, but to give the G-Men a 14-point lead heading into the half.
As much as I wanted to dig deep into the SAT-prep book for superlatives to describe the rookie’s impact, I’ve simply settled on alpha dog. “Leek” not only has the elite talent, but the swagger and aura to match. Not since the late, great Odell Beckham Jr. have the Giants had a playmaker of this quality (that means you too bird-boy). He has completely transformed an anemic offense into one capable of sustaining long drives by challenging defenses at all 3 levels.
Through 3 games, Nabers leads the league in receptions (23), is tied for the league lead in TD’s (3), and is 4th in receiving yards (271). After picking in the top 10 for seemingly all of the last decade, it appears we’ve finally secured a true, blue-chip prospect to build around - as this team hopes to continue its long trek toward relevancy in the coming years.
While the OROY frontrunner will surely dominate the headlines, the Giants 3 Touchdown drives would have stalled without the help of some perfectly executed screens. Daboll definitely deserves some credit for installing a quick passing gameplan to neutralize the Cleveland pass rush, but I have absolutely no idea how/why Stefanski and Schwartz allowed DJ to get the ball to his RB’s in space so easily, and so frequently. It really makes you wonder how this dink and dunk gameplan was so effective today, after failing time and time again in 2023.
Bricillo’s O-Line deserves a boatload of praise for not only providing ample time for DJ to check the ball down, but for blocking downfield, and absolutely mauling in the run game as well. After this showing against a strong Cleveland front, I’m confident that the days of gameplans being completely wrecked by opposing pass rushes are finally behind us. We’re obviously still limited by our quarterback, but no longer will I enter games with the expectation that my team is physically incapable of scoring 20 points. This extremely low base line of offensive competency is all I’m really asking of this Giants team, especially if our defense is able to replicate this type of performance.
In the NFL Gods’ latest twist of irony - it was Deshaun Watson who spent much of his day extremely uncomfortable, and in constant duress. Shane Bowen thankfully lit last week’s game script on fire and decided to blitz the living shit out of this creep (5+ rushers on 57% of snaps) and the results were astonishing. Dex, Kayvon, Burns, and even Azeez Ojulari lived in the Browns’ backfield leading to 8 sacks, 4 QB hits, and 19 pressures.
Like the weird kid stuck playing the triangle, the Cleveland run game was also never able to get into any sort of rhythm. This led to obvious passing situations and allowed the Giants to deploy additional pass rushers at will. It quickly became apparent that Watson no longer likes playing from behind.
Unfortunately, the Giants were unable to put this game on ice in the second half. For the second straight week, a Singletary fumble ended a promising 3rd quarter drive. Meanwhile Daniel Jones was extremely inaccurate for much of the half, missing Wan’Dale on a big 3rd down and a wide-open Nabers for a potential score. Jones then lofted a dying duck from his own end zone late in the game that could (should) have been intercepted.
At that point, Daboll’s faith in his quarterback’s ability to simply not blow the game had wavered. So much so, that after a 4th down stop - the Giants were forced to turtle with a trio of cowardly run plays, leading directly to the newest member of the kicking carousel; Greg Joseph shanking the shit out of a game-sealing field goal.
The defense would come up with one final stop, thanks in part to a brutal drop by Cedric Tillman on a would-be 4th down conversion. Again, it was far from perfect but given that I’ve seen this team lose this exact game a dozen times, I’m willing to toss this one into the learning experience/building block category.
There is undoubtedly a lot to clean up moving forward - but seeing the mold of this team start to take form is a complete breath of fresh air (something that’s pretty hard to come by in Cleveland). If we continue to see this dominant of a pass rush, paired with the development of a top young playmaker, our Sundays will stop being the misery filled torture sessions we’ve grown so accustomed to.
Time will tell whether or not Big Blue is able to build on any of these positives against teams that aren’t in their “dumpster fire” phase. Unfortunately, we’ll have wait another week to test this theory with Dallas coming to town this Thursday Night.
