Early thoughts on Giants game

The Green Bay Packers have a chance to get off to the fast start head coach Mike McCarthy is looking for by beating the banged up New York Giants in the Meadowlands on Sunday. The Giants are for sure without their starting running back and may be without quarterback Eli Manning. If the Packers’ defense is licking it’s chops, they have good reason.

McCarthy seemed to lay blame for the Packers’ offensive woes last Sunday on the offensive line, which certainly played a huge part in the Packers being unable to run the football effectively. The zone-blocking scheme is still a problem for me, I’ve yet to see holes open like the they do in Denver or Atlanta. Something is wrong if you can’t learn it in 17 regular season games and eight preseason games. If one area might hold the Packers back from taking the next step it’s the zone-blocking scheme.

Vernand Morency hopefully will be back this week and he supposedly knows the scheme better than the other backs, so maybe we will find out if it is the line or the running backs. The Packers beat Philly with rookies Brandon Jackson starting at running back and Korey Hall starting at fullback, but they only gained 46 yards on the ground.
Brett Favre didn’t do anything special other than his one vintage play when he underhanded a pass to DeShawn Wynn that resulted in an 18 yard gain on third down. Favre even ran down field and jumped on Wynn after the play. I thought Wynn had scored a touchdown there for a minute. Favre is still Favre, that’s for sure. The one thing Favre did do well was handle the immense pressure the Eagles put on him and only made one real mistake when he threw late down the middle and got picked off.

I think you can count on the Packers defense to play well, but you can’t count on special teams to come up those kind of plays every week.

More to come.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 at 8:49 pm and is filed under Al Davis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Ed Frye

    G-men generated very little pass rush, especially in the 2nd half. Their DTs were also easily pushed backwards on running plays. Combine that with the inability of their secondary to cover anybody and suddenly you realize what a great opportunity this is for the Pack’s O. If the Pack fails to click on the ground and through the air to generate long scoring drives – something is very rotten in Denmark.

    On the flip-side, the NY offense is formidable, as we saw vs the Cowboys. D Ward will ably fill in for Jacobs and may even be more dangerous. The NYG offensive line did a good job giving Eli time to throw and opened holes for the run game, so the Packer D will be stiffly challenged with or w/o Eli. My guess is Eli will start but even if he doesn’t, his lefty back-up can be deadly accurate in the short-intermediate range passing. Will a one-armed Al Harris be able to defend 8′ tall Plaxico???

    Vegas has the game a pick’em. I see the Pack O scoring several TDs and I see another big game from Crosby and I see the Pack winning by less than a TD.

  • Ed Frye

    As game time approaches, G-Men move up to two point favorite on news that Eli is coming. Packer D and Giants O looks like a fair fight, as does Packer O and Giants D.

    Many are predicting MM’s gameplan will be pass-pass-pass. I disagree. The NYG’s DTs present too inviting of a target to ignore. How often does an NFL team face a team with two soft starting DTs? I say establish the run game by running right at the DTs. This will give the OLine some much needed confidence and will open up the middle of the field for slants and other underneath passing routes off of play action. I’d also stretch the field with some early downfield throws. Going against same defensive scheme two weeks in a row should help, especially given the G-Men have much less talent at DT, SEC and maybe even at LB. I’d look for G-Men to blitz Favre more than Philly did.

    Morency and Jennings figure to be inactive whereas Giants DE Osi Humanmanure figures to start. Monday this looked to be reversed. Holliday is on IR now too. I don’t know status of CB Sam Madison for G-Men.

    Packer D must limit Eli to Plaxico as well as keep D Ward from breaking the long one on them. If Al Harris can hold up and Nick Barnett can play back to last week, D should do well. I am looking for a bounce back from AJ Hawk as well. He did not show up in week one. Not a good sign for former top 5 pick. If he were playing at the same level as Barnett, D would be awesome. Dallas only sacked Eli once last week. Will be interesting to see if Pack DLine can repeat last week’s pressure.

    I’m still expecting the Packer O to be able to score on the NYG and I’m still expecting the Packer D to do a much better job than Dallas did in keeping the NYG O out of the endzone.

    As to O/U – I can only take the under in Packer games this year but when the opposing defense is bottom 10, I must pass. Next week at home vs SD will be the time to go UNDER.

  • Ed Frye

    Things went pretty much as expected – Favre and the Packer O are good enough to score 5 TDs against perhaps the weakest defense in the NFL. AJ Hawk has another forgettable game, getting pushed around like a rag doll most of the day. Barnett continues to play well but was not as the same level as he was previous week. Woodson and Harris also dropped a level. Ward ran for 90 yds on defense as DL also played well but not as well as the week before. The only player on D that may have stepped it up was Atari Bigby. OLine began the game much more determined as did BJax, with quick gains of 8 and 7 yds. However, 17 carries for 35 yds in total against this D was not a good day for BJax. D Wynn, with 50 yds on 10 carries, including 2 TDs, made a statement. The one play by #25 was an exciting screen play. Passing game was mostly dink and dunk although the long pass to Jones to set up the first TD, as well as the TD passes to D Lee and D Driver were well thrown balls. Too bad for Crosby but at least the pressure of being perfect is gone.

    No major injuries as far as I could tell. SD got destroyed by the NE Cheaters last night, meaning they will be angry for the upcoming game with GB. SD secondary is suspect but their pass rush is not. Favre/OLine has trouble with 3-4 fronts.

    2-0 GBP vs 1-1 SDC at Lambeau.

    I assume SDC will be favored by 6 points and the O/U = 38. We shall see. IF GB defeats SD, I will be shocked.