We may not be talking much about the Giants’ defense right now and that’s primarily because they’re 2-7 and third in the NFC East (which, from a divisional standpoint, is the near-bottom of the bottom). But over the team’s last two games — a 25-23 loss to the Buccaneers, and a 23-20 win over Washington — defensive coordinator Patrick Graham has been doing some tremendous things with both fronts and coverages. The fronts moved Tampa Bay’s offensive line off their spots more often than not, and the coverage groups and concepts lured Alex Smith — who’s been in the NFL since 2005 — into three interceptions.
The third of those interceptions came with 2:27 left in the game, and sealed the win for the Giants. It was an outstanding play design that deserves detailed review.
One of the most interesting things about the play is that this was not an all-week install — not something the Giants had done before. Graham went to head coach Joe Judge on Saturday morning with the idea for the play, and after hearing Graham out, Judge decided to add it to the plan.
As the late, great John Facenda often said in his role as the “Voice of God” for NFL Films, “It proved to be a wise decision.” It was a Cover-2 disguise from a dime defense, and the plan and execution were both brilliant.
“I thought it was a good idea, and our guys were smart enough to handle it right there,” Judge said this week on Giants.com. “The concept is to be able to play zone defense with a little bit of disguise. You’ve got to affect [the quarterback]. You can affect him with pressure to the pocket to get him off the spot, or you can affect him with disguise down the field. Here, we’re trying to get a combination of both by getting pressure in the pocket — but more importantly on this back end right here, we want to try and confuse him and not let him know what he’s seeing.
“The look we’re giving pre-snap and post-snap are two different things. We’re disguising what we’re doing, so when he thinks he knows what it is, when he goes to confirm [the safety placement], it’s something completely different. Now he’s confused, he holds the ball, and that puts him in a bad situation.”
Pre-snap, Logan Ryan looks like a deep safety, but this is Cover-2, and Ryan is actually the middle hole defender — he’s responsible for the stuff over the middle. Pre-snap, the Giants have their cornerbacks looking as if they’re playing to the flats, and cornerback Darnay Holmes and safety Jabrill Peppers with the hook/curl responsibility look. Post-snap, cornerbacks James Bradberry and Julian Love shift to the two-deep coverage, which makes it inverted Cover-2. This allows Ryan to step up into that middle responsibility.
At this point, Smith does have a relatively clean pocket — clean enough to make the throw he wants to make to receiver Terry McLaurin — but he may be thinking that cornerback Isaac Yiadom has passed McLaurin off to the deep defender to that side. So, in his mind, Smith is waiting for the coverage games to play out, and he thinks he has an open space in which McLaurin can get an easy completion.
In truth, Smith has fallen for the proverbial banana in the tailpipe — Ryan closes with deceptively late movement from his single-high perch, and Smith absolutely does not see it coming until the ball is out. By then, of course, it’s too late.
The communication between Ryan and his teammates is quite remarkable, because not only is this Ryan’s first year in this defense, he’s also switching from cornerback to safety — something I thought would work very well when Ryan first suggested it a few months ago.
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“You have to ask them, but to me, they seem like they really like being around each other,” Graham said this week, when asked about the communication between Ryan and Peppers specifically. “You would have to ask Pep himself, but if I’m a young DB in this league, you’re dealing with Logan, who has been in this league and has a lot of experience and been successful. It’s a wealth of knowledge you can get from him. You see that and that helps, that definitely helps.
“In terms of being on the field, the more interchangeable they are, the more you can disguise it. For me, as they’re growing with one another and understanding, okay, I can do your job, you can do my job. Now you start to play that game within the game, that’s always a good thing. You don’t want to put someone is harm’s way because what I can do and what you can do is different. If I’m the post safety, then I’m going to play the post safety spot. I like the fact that they will work with one another and be as interchangeable as possible as we keep growing this thing as we work through the season.”
So far so good, and this Sunday, the Giants face the Eagles and one Carson Wentz, who has not been playing nearly up to his former standards. If Graham can put his charges in more and different positions to create mental disruption throughout the season, Big Blue will be a very tough out — no matter what their record may be.
