Giants Pre-Game: Carolina Panthers vs. New York Giants
At 8:00 p.m., the New York Giants will host the Carolina Panthers at Giants Stadium. The game will be televised on NBC. Are you ready for this Die Hard Giants Fans? This is my favorite time of the year.
Tonight, all of our draft picks and our young players will continue to battle for their respective position as Phessional and I have mentioned before. The 2006 Giants ranked 21st in the NFL in pass offense, and that’s with Eli Manning, Tiki Barber, Jeremy Shockey, Plaxico Burress, and Amani Toomer (1/2 of the year). This is the best offensive unit (as far as individual talent is concerned) that I’ve ever seen the Giants put on the field, and they ranked 21st in pass offense…That’s just pathetic. The 2006 Giants ranked 7th in rush offense, which is much better considering we had Tiki as our Running Back.
The 2006 Giants ranked 28th in pass defense, and I wrote a post the other day how this has been the weakest part of the entire team the past few years. The 2006 Giants ranked 14th in rush defense which is mostly a result of our defensive ends and linebackers getting hurt like Michael Strahan and Lavar Arrington. This year, we need to stay healthy because we have lost too many impact players during the last 2 years. As soon as we got into the playoffs, we got bumped right out.
As soon as Big Blue drafted Steve Smith from USC, Carolina drafted Dwayne Jarrett from USC and they get to face each other head-to-head tonight. We need to see how much of an impact these players make tonight: Brandon Jacobs (RB), David Diehl (at Left Tackle), Guy Whimper (T), Mathias Kiwanuka (at Line-backer), Jared Lorenzen (QB), Kevin Boss (TE), and Sinorice Moss (WR). The following players will not be able to play tonight due to injury: Aaron Ross, Amani Toomer, Plaxico Burress, and Justin Tuck. It’s all good though because we’ll be able to see Sinorice Moss and Steve Smith play more than normal.
On top of paying attention to those individuals battling for their positions, we need to see how far along the Giants’ implementation of the Eagles defensive scheme is. Our 2006 defense ranking is indicative of how weak our ‘D’ is and has been the past few years. Steve Spagnuolo, formerly of the Philadelphia Eagles, is our new Defensive Coordinator after taking over the reigns from Tim Lewis. Spagnuolo needs to bring Big Blue’s ‘D’ up to a level where they are feared again. We weren’t at the level of the Ravens or the Bears, but we were a notch down from that and pretty damn good.
So let me know what you guys are looking forward to in tonight’s match-up and concerned about. After the game, I will write a game summary so tell me what you thought about it once it’s over.
