fishgutmartyr

Jameel McClain interview on Seattle loss:

 

Q: As the starting middle linebacker for a team that just gave up 350 yards rushing, what was your take on what went wrong?

A: We just didn’t play sound football. People weren’t where they were supposed to be, myself included. I always look at myself first. There was a time or two where I wasn’t in the position that I was supposed to be in to help the defense. We really didn’t play solid football. That is it in a nutshell. As a starting linebacker or as any linebacker, it is anybody on this defense, even someone who was watching the game, no one likes that feeling. No one wants records to be set on them, no one.

 

Q: Do you feel like you guys can straighten it out, though? You are facing another read-option quarterback in [Colin] Kaepernick…Do you feel like it is fixable that quickly?

A: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely, it is fixable. It is more communication. It is more attention to detail. It is more [if someone doesn’t know], ask a question. It is more of that. Everything can be fixed. We are blessed. We are in the NFL. Each week we get another opportunity to prove ourselves all over again. In these past weeks, we haven’t done well, so this is the time the iron strikes and it is hot. We get it rolling the way it is supposed to be going and like you said, we do face the same offense over again. People really have to look at themselves. Starting with me, I have to look at myself harder and see what I can do better.

 

Q: Did you feel that you guys were prepared for everything you saw… Were there any surprises out there to give up that kind of yardage?

A: We were prepared. We were definitely prepared. Coach had a great game plan. The game changes. There always will be a few surprises. We can’t predict exactly what they are going to do. They did have a few wrinkles that we did not know of. Within those wrinkles, they got some plays off of it. All in all, it is just a player thing. It is not about being surprised. It is not about the game plan. It is not about being bad. It is not about anything. It is about coaches coach and players play. Us players, myself as a player, we need to play better.

Seattle running a read option was a surprise? Seattle running--was that a surprise? What a crock.

We have no real reason to stay 4-3: it's not like we have Strahan, Tuck, and Osi anymore. Not saying 3-4 will save the day, it's just that there's no talent on this team preventing it.

 

I was watching with an eight year old. Halfway through the second quarter, as Wilson was scampering for another 14 yards the kid yells out, "that's the EXACT same play they've run three times already!"

 

A fucking eight-year old figured it out, but JaQuain Williams was baffled every time.

JaQuain was probably wondering who "57" was, and why the coaches were yelling at him so much.

To be fair, and not to deny a shit-ton of problems with the offense, when they have gotten in range of a field goal they have been pretty good at scoring TDs.

Of course, you're not going to be attempting too many field goals when you're down 20+ points, either.

 

Yeah, Fewell really benefitted from:

 

1. Winning a Super Bowl with a D that got hot at the right time, and

 

2. Having Beason and Will Hill come in at the right time last year and make him look like a genius.

 

Other than that, the guy's been pretty sub-average for his tenure here.

It's beginning to look like #2 should be "Having Freeman, Barkley, Pryor, and Tolzien come in at the right time last year and make him look like a genius."

Wilson wasn't even contained on passing downs. It was ridiculous.

 

I'm sorry but talent matters... being in the NFL doesn't mean you're top notch... we can name a few players who shouldn't be... and why would you expect our O to set the world on fire under a brand new system with makeshift OL and one good receiver? McAdoo just like any of us is learning from his mistakes... and he took over a shit sandwitch where "game planning" was a foreign subject to players... just as it is with the D now.... year after year we have seen slow as shit TEs kill us... Jason Witten comes to mind... how many times must you see him roam freely before you realize Fewel is subpar?

LOL. Our best WR is the rookie, 1 rookie running back whose strength is running exactly into the oline's weakest point, and a slightly improved oline. Oh, and a TE that's basically disappeared once the rest of the league noticed him a little. I've been cutting McAdoo some slack because of it.

On the other hand, last year we had to bring back Brandon Jacobs to field any running backs (other than Cox, who's buried in the depth chart this year), were starting guys that are now backups to this oline, and fielded a TE that lost his current job because he kept dropping the eggs while trying to bag them. Still, we had one less win playing a much tougher schedule to the same point, with no bye week.

So, please, let's wait until he gets to 7 wins over sub-.500 teams before we start comparing notes on gameplanning. McAdoo got slaughtered after the bye--so much for gameplanning...

And none of this excuses our defense turning losses into routs. Maybe keep the final score within 10 pts once in a while.

You're talking about a game. I'm talking about entire seasons of failure, and not just this one season.

Being a Giants Defensive Coordinator has to be the most bullet-proof position in the world. You can fuck up at historic levels in multiple seasons, and fans will clamor for the head of the Offensive Coordinator.

Not that the offense has shown any level of competency, but that doesn't mean the defense is showing anything.

 

I see your point, but MY point is that there are three guys in four draft classes STILL ON THE TEAM and producing. Nicks helped us win a Super Bowl which is immeasurable... and then what? Joseph was a nice player, and is probably a nice player in Minnesota. He's not a nice player on the Giants. 4 guys from 2014? Do you really think JaQuain Williams, Jerrel Jernigan, and James Brewer are NFL caliber players?

 

Yeah, there's been a ton of injuries, and I'm not sure who to blame for that. Jerry Palmieri has been with Coughlin since his days in Jacksonville... and Coughlin was run out of Jacksonville because he had three years where 15 players wound up on IR. I'm pretty sure Palmieri is having guys do routines that worked back in 1985. But Reese takes chances on these guys too. Sometimes you get a Jessie Armstead and it works out... but lately we've been getting a lot more Terrell Thomases.

 

At some point, you have to stop making excuses and start drafting better. I'm hoping these last two are steps in the right direction.

 

2011-4 guys from that draft are still on the team, although Prince is the only one truly worthy of being a starter. Tyler Sash was a decent special teamer, which is what he was drafted for, but that was it.

Williams isn't worthy of being a starter because he hasn't developed. This is a common song with this team's linebackers. That points to one of my favorite position coaches.

I would say Jernigan would be a better option in the slot right now than Parker, if he could ever stay fucking healthy. He's not seeing a probowl, but he has been known to occasionally catch something. Without argument, he's a career 4th WR--but a team does need a 4th WR.

Injuries--it's football. I'll blame Palmieri for the preventable shit like hamstrings or torn pectoral muscles during training, but how do you prevent Thomas from getting injured 3 TIMES IN THE SAME KNEE!? Or Hixon? Or Phillips having a fixable problem in the knee that reveals an incorrectable problem? Or some scrub from Tampa landing on Nick's foot? Or Beason's toe for that matter? You can't--and you can't possibly know that's going to happen when you draft/sign them. We drafted Thomas a few years removed from the first knee injury, and he was fine. We drafted Webster in the second round in 2005 after he played his senior year on a badly injured foot, and rarely had a problem with him being injured. Go figure.

If you want players for more than three years, you have to pay them, often for more than you want to. We didn't want to pay Joseph; and pointing out that shows one of the few areas we've drafted successfully--DT. Reece has actually used the draft pretty well to rotate players out of big contracts in a few positions--CB (Webster, Ross, Thomas, Amukamara) and WR come to mind--the problem is when you're spending premium picks every 2-3 years on the same positions, you can't use them elsewhere. And god help you if you pick wrong (Austin), or your pick has a short career(Thomas).

I'm not sure if we pay JPP at the end of the season--I AM sure that if we do, someone on this site is going to freak out over how much we pay. How much whining has been going on over Beatty, who was given average pay for a LT? You occasionally hear it over Beason's contract, and everyone wanted him signed for a longer stay (including myself). I remember Accorsi getting excoriated for spending free agency "just signing his guys for too much." I'm not really finding fault in it, I guess that's part of modern fandom: but how else do you avoid big contracts unless you don't re-sign anyone? Hell, we were looking forward to getting out from under Tuck's contract, and we made out like a bandit for most of it.

 

 

Check out his run from 2009-2012.

 

Of the guys in that time, only Pierre-Paul, the Mook, and Will Beatty are producing for this team. That's three fucking guys OUT OF 28.

 

Early returns on the last two drafts look decent, but holy Christ, those four drafts were bad.

2009-Beatty is still on the team. Nicks gave us 3 seasons of spectacular play before he got injured in 2012. Andre Brown would have done well if he wasn't so brittle.

2010-2 quality starters in JPP and Joseph. Just because we didn't renew Joseph's contract doesn't make that a bad pick. Blaming Reese for Jones is just asinine.

2011-4 guys from that draft are still on the team, although Prince is the only one truly worthy of being a starter. Tyler Sash was a decent special teamer, which is what he was drafted for, but that was it.

2012- That was a bad draft. When your redeeming hope lies in Kuhn and Mosely, that's bad.

You want to know what draft really killed this team? 2008. Not because it was bad; but because the potential was great, and all of them wound up with shortened careers. There were 4 good to very good starters in that class, and we wound up with half-assed versions of the players, if anything at all. We've been playing catch-up ever since. If Phillips/Thomas had decent legs, do you think we'd be playing Hosely and missing Will Hill? If Goff wasn't devastated, do you think we'd be worrying about Herzlich getting on the field? What would you do for a healthy Manningham right about now? I get sick just thinking about that class.

Maybe if he subs-out Jenkins/Patterson, but Hankins is capable of getting pressure. 2.5 sacks ain't bad at all for a DT.

His knee injuries are degenerative--they're getting worse whether he plays or not...just slower, and they probably won't need replacement as quickly as he would if he were still playing.

If it wasn't all about money/contracts, he probably should have stopped playing years ago.

So for his sake, no.

Meanwhile, I don't recall his play in his last few years being much more than a liability in the secondary. Outside of Rolle, we don't have great safeties right now, but Phillips at this point wouldn't be an improvement at all--and might very well be a downgrade.

So for our sake, no.

If you're going to move a DE into a linebacker spot, you move Kiwinuka out there--he at least played as a linebacker at this level. But I doubt he has the speed to do it at this point.

I'd much rather see what Kennard can do, however, and Kiwi isn't an upgrade over Williams. And I sure hope they're not thinking of subbing out Hankins for Kiwi, because that isn't an upgrade, either.

This thread needs a sponge for the tears and spilled milk.

Bradshaw plays with heart, he gives it his all. But how can you build a rushing game around a guy who's constantly wearing a boot?

That we even tried to go through a season with Bradshaw and Brown last year was completely insane.

He does ok for a rookie. What concerned me was that it seemed we kept rushing to the inside. So not only was it predictable that we were rushing when he was on the field (since he can't catch), but where he was running was predictable. Even if Williams isn't very good at it (and I'm not saying he is/isn't), we should have run a couple sweeps, just to keep the defense honest.

But Jennings is clearly a better back right now.

This last game was exactly what I was talking about.

We took the lead in the first half, defense gives it up in the very next series, which included a 3rd and 6 and a 3rd and 9.

The offense moves a little bit, stalls, but the punt puts Dallas 90+ yards away. You would think that we would get the ball back in decent field position, even if they get a first down. Not only do they give up points, Dallas marches down for a TD.

The offense finally scores a 3rd TD--5 minutes left. A chance to tie, if the defense gets off of the field--of course, it doesn't.

They choked in nearly every key series they faced.

A microcosm of Fewell's career. One of the major contributing factors to Manning's multiple 4th quarter victories in 2011.

The difference is the offense isn't good enough to compensate.

I thought the holding/false start penalties killed them more than anything else. They had a couple of drives die from those.

We were sixth in defensive DVOA last season and fourth in weighted defensive DVOA. However the number 1 team (Seattle) was three times better than us and the number two team (Arizona) was twice as good as us. but I think that speaks to the point that it is REALLY hard to have a dominant defense in today's nfl. I don't think we were as awful as some think though.

 

So far this season we're 12th in defensive DVOA--7th against the pass, 20th against the run. Again though, Detroit is 7 times better than us and there's a huge drop off between them and Denver and then another big dropoff between Denver and San Fran. The rules just make it really hard to have a lockdown dominant defense unless everything breaks right for you. Look at Seattle: three times worse in DVOA than they were last year yet they're still rank fifth so far. They went from dominant to good and the only players they really lost were McDonald and Thurmond unless you want to count browner

The defense had good games against teams like Minnesota (playing Freeman, who'd been on the team less than a week), Green Bay (no Rodgers), and Philly (no Foles). Unless you're willing to argue that there was no dropoff in competency on these teams between 1st and 2nd string QBs (or in Minny's case, mysterious stranger); I don't see where my argument that we haven't been able to slow a good offense down for a long time is damaged.

Look at last years schedule--Every team with a good offense didn't just beat the defense, they slaughtered them.

 

Well, it'd sure be shocking if the offense could put up some points on their opening possession instead of going three and out and punting. Real way to start momentum, right there, because the the scores are typically 10-0 other team after the Giants have already possessed the ball three times. I don't even know why we bother to choose to receive the ball every time we win a coin toss. It's conceding a three and out and giving the ball to the other team at the start of the second half, where they will undoubtedly extend their lead because the offense can't score any points in the first half.

 

These guys don't get that you can't win in an offense-centric league with an inconsistent offense. They'd rather bitch about a coordinator and his defense that forces turnovers but constantly gets put in shitty positions because when the offense can't move the ball, they REALLY can't move the ball. They ended up going backwards more times than I can even remember and spotting the Eagles 30+ yards. Even when they did move the ball, a stupid penalty like Weston Richburg attempting the flying headbutt off the top rope and all the fucking holding calls effect the defense when you come back, can't pick up the first down, and have to punt.

Well, technically, we didn't go 3 and out--we hit a 17 yard pass and went 4 and out. But I'll concede the point. And Philly had the ball first--so we didn't win the toss.

But I'm not asking for some mythological defense here--I'm asking for not every series by an opponent ending in points, and the occasional 3 and out. The occasional stop when it has to happen. Seriously, outside of the 2011 playoff run (and honestly, I'm having trouble thinking of one even including 2011), can you think of a time where this team kept a good offense below 25 pts? Maybe the Packers in 2012? (They weren't the powerhouse they were the previous 2 years, though.)

As far as adjustments go--were any made, or did Philly just let off of the gas once we were down 27 points? The whole 2nd half was garbage time.

Other teams are capable of forcing 3 and out on opening drives--why is it unreasonable for us to expect the same occasionally?

Personally, I'd be more than willing to give up the #1 ranking on INTs if it meant getting the opponent's punter involved more consistently.

For this team to have even a puncher's chance this season, the defense HAS to step up--the offense isn't good enough to carry the weight anymore, and hasn't been for a few seasons now.

 

#1 in defended passes too. No one's "throwing at will" on them, they're just on the field all the damn time.

 

I don't think they're great or anything. As Stormy said they're under-performing, particularly the pass rush. Just pointing out there's SOME redeeming features. Jerk.

So far on this thread, I've been called "the mother ship" and "jerk." It's hurtful, I say. Hurtful.

2/14 on 3rd down + 10 punts = Blame Fewell.

Nope, offense and defense are both to blame. The offense sucked, but they didn't give up 149 yds rushing, either. And a nice chunk of that was in the first quarter, so the whole "defense was tired" argument doesn't really flush.

The offense couldn't get out of their own way, there's no denying that. And every time it looked like they might get it together, they had a penalty or a sack, or both--you know, because Philly's defense needed the help.

On the other hand, from the first series on, the defense looked completely bamboozled with Philly's no-huddle. Was this a surprise to them at this point? How do you look that unprepared when your offense is trying to do the same thing during practice? How does this not fall right onto the lap of Fewell?

NOBODY did their jobs last week, but I would have hoped that the side that has more talent and stability would have done better.

How many more years/made 3rd and 10+ downs/blown leads/blowouts do you guys need before it's obvious Fewell's schemes can not even slow, let alone stop, a good offense? Or does one playoff run cancel out 4 regular seasons of mediocrity or worse?

#1 in INTs

For the money spent on the backfield, we fucking well better be high-ranked in pass defense, not just INTs. OOPS! We're 24th in passing yds. And that's after feasting on Kirk Cousins. So unless we get an int, they're throwing at will.

#24 in total yards/game: we're not getting off of the field. #17 in points/game: with 2 games with scores held to 14 and 17 points.

I'm not trying to be a jerk (it comes naturally), but I can't for the life of me understand how this defense is "ok." It has been given seasons to improve, it has had personnel improvements, and it is STILL mediocre at best.

We were down 3 pts before Walton touched the ball. We were down 10 pts before he touched it a 5th time. 1 punt, 1 int the entire first half. Every other time the Eagles touched the ball, they scored points. Yeah, the offense wasn't doing their job, but I didn't see much getting done on the defense, either.

The losses have been group efforts, just like the wins. The thing is, there's far more talent on defense, and they're not playing in a new scheme. True special teams weren't helping matters; but they weren't responsible for all 35 points the first game, and had nothing to do with what the Eagles did to us.

They ran on us. They passed on us. We were reasonably healthy--or at least as healthy as we're going to get this year. And again, we're not able to stop a good offense, just like last year, and most of Fewell's time here.

Hallucinations are a symptom of schizophrenia.

Of course you stay in a nickel--Philly doesn't have a running back, right?

It's the same logic that has him rush three on obvious passing downs: Foles couldn't pass for a first down if he's running for one--mission accomplished.

I know, he gets turnovers. I just wish he'd get an occasional punt after 3rd and long.