The New York Giants are 3-1-1 and in the driver’s seat of the NFC East. They might not have won in Week 5, but they also didn’t lose and still managed to expand their lead in the division by half a game. While the story of Week 1 as the Giants’ suffocating offense, the story of the last three games has been the defense.
The Giants have been led by defense over the last 7 quarters, with Dennard Wilson switching to an aggressive blitzing front. The Giants now lead the NFL in Cover-0 (pure man coverage across the board) and are second in the NFL in in blitz rate over the last two weeks.
Their defense has been impressive and it’s been leading to wins — the Giants haven’t lost since starting quarterback Jaxson Dart was lost for the season.
Yet for the third game in a row, the NFC East leading Giants are underdogs against a cellar-dweller. And much of the national media is once again is picking the Giants’ opponents over the division leader.
“Everybody counts us out,” defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson said Thursday. “We like playing with a chip on our shoulder. That’s what it is.”
On the Giants’ blitzing attack
The Giants made a significant adjustment in the second quarter against the Arizona Cardinals and it was a minor revolution for the defense. The Giants had spent the first 13 quarters of the season relying on their athletic edge defenders to win on their own, and not blitzing often. After the Cardinals carved them up in the first quarter of Week 3, the Giants started sending pressure and it changed their entire defense.
“It’s been effective,” Wilson said. “I mean, we’ve been able to hit the quarterback. We’ve been able to disguise. They don’t know where it’s coming from. And the biggest thing when you pressure, the DB’s are covering well so you have more confidence in calling it. They’ve been doing a good job on the back end, communicating, playing man-to-man, playing fire zone coverage. So, it’s been good for us. It’s been effective and we’ve been getting the quarterback off the spot and forcing them to bad decisions.”
It’s almost a surprise that the Giants waited as long as they did to unleash their blitz package. Perhaps the weather slowed them down against the Tennessee Titans, but Wilson certainly seems happy to be blitzing now.
“I like everybody blitzing,” Wilson said. “On our defense, everybody’s a blitzer. Dru is a dynamic player. Dru, let’s talk a little bit about [CB] Dru (Phillips) and his growth. Dru has been playing some really good, high-level football the last three or four weeks in coverage, blitzing, playing the run. He’s ahead of things. I love where he’s at, but he is an asset. He is an explosive, he’s another violent player that’s not afraid of contact. And when we get the opportunity to send him or any other player that we have, we work on it, we rep it, and they go full speed and you don’t know where it’s going to come from.”
“One thing I like about this group, they love going forward,” he added. “They love attacking. So, they all are attack players. So, in our scheme, we have the ability to run blitzes from everywhere and anybody can come from different looks. And that’s the enjoyment of being in this system, running this system, and also the players fitting within the system. So, they can come from anywhere.”
In particular, the Giants’ blitzes have unleashed rookie linebacker Arvell Reese, who has quickly become one of the most dynamic defenders in the NFL. For his part, Wilson relishes the opportunities to get Reese going forward and matched up on smaller blockers.
“If you can get Arvell on a running back, it’s a good matchup for us any day of the week,” Wilson said. “He is a violent scud missile. When he goes forward, I say he’s like a bull, he’s sees red and it’s good for us. If we can dictate and get a running back and get him on a one-on-one, more times than not he’s going to win. And if the first time that he goes, he’s going to make you feel him. And if he can make you feel him and then he’s already elusive and a hell of an athlete, so now they can set him up with moves and things like that. So, it’s always fun to turn on the film and see Arvell when he makes contact with people because it doesn’t look good.”
On the defense against the Washington Commanders
The Giants were generally very good against the Washington Commanders, but they had a couple lapses. In particular were the two long scrambles by QB Jayden Daniels. Wilson said Thursday that neither play should have happened.
“Well, first and foremost, both of them (QB Jayden Daniels’ runs) should never have happened,” Wilson said. “We had a five-man front with a game, and we didn’t execute the game. And when we didn’t execute the game, we didn’t have a guy wrap. And if the guy wrapped, he would have been right in his face. And then on the second one, it’s about balancing the rush. You can’t have two interior tackles outside of the hash. And we didn’t get vertical penetration, and he got out. Both situations, the one on the first touchdown, it was a second and six, right? And we always talk about you can spy, and we had a spy in the game but on second down, are you spying when you’re really trying to go pressure them there? But for us, in the run game and with the quarterback scrambling, it’s about our execution. It’s about everybody doing their job when their number’s called. The first run that popped should have never popped either. They had we call a plunge play with the tight end going back, and we had three guys behind the ball. When that happens and they flash back, the three guys got to work in unison to rock back, and we didn’t. And that starts from communication. That starts from eye discipline. That’s being ahead of the play, but we’ll get that fixed. And for the most part, we’ve been pretty good at it but we can’t have those lapses. And we’ve been communicating with the players a lot about this. It’s like if you just do your job and don’t worry about anything else and you take care of your responsibility, we play really good defense. When one guy gets out of whack, this or that, things happen. Also on those plays, we got to get them down in the secondary. And ultimately if things pop, we got to get them down in the secondary. But we worked diligently this week just making sure our communication is loud, it’s obnoxious, it’s annoying, and making sure that we surround the ball this week going into this game.”
Daniels’ two touchdowns were mistakes by the Giants, and the offense would have done more than enough (eventually) to win if the defense had shut Daniels down. But for the third game in a row, the defense ultimately made the play to win (or at least not-lose) the game. In this case, Wilson credited Kayvon Thibodeaux and Darius Alexander for heads-up plays to slow the Commanders down and burn the closing seconds of overtime.
“Well, I think it all goes back to the whole unit with the situational awareness,” Wilson said. “Harbs (John Harbaugh) does a great job, and we’ve been in that situation before in practice, that we’ve practiced that and how to handle it. But let’s go back to that play, I mean, without Thibs (edge defender Kayvon Thibodeaux) making that play and forcing the quarterback to go down when he added to him, that play wouldn’t have happened. So, it’s just kudos to all of them. (DL) Darius (Alexander) was very good on that play too, trying to hold things up. So, it was a lot of situational awareness there and obviously, I wish we got it done before that instead of having a tie. But the guys, they bowed up in that fourth quarter. They didn’t waver. They attacked the moment from everybody on defense. And I just love their tenacity and the way they know how to finish.
“The key for us is just to execute,” he added, “to communicate, get the call, get aligned, beat them into a stance, and then line up and play our style of football.”