Tag: giants eagles playoffs

NFL Playoffs: The Giants’ move from man to zone could upset Jalen Hurts

Giants DC Wink Martindale has switched heavily from man to zone defense in the last month. That could be a problem for Jalen Hurts.

New York Giants defensive coordinator Don “Wink” Martindale is fond of saying that if you are wearing a Giants helmet, you are going to attack on defense. That’s always been Wink’s modus operandi — when he was the Baltimore Ravens’ defensive coordinator from 2018 through 2021, Baltimore regularly led the NFL in blitz rate. That has transferred to the Giants in Martindale’s first year on the job. In 2021, Bug Blue blitzed exactly 25% of the time. This season? No team has blitzed at a higher rate than the Giants’ 39.7%, and it isn’t close — in the regular season, the Arizona Cardinals ranked second in blitz rate at 34.5%.

So, you know what you’re going to get when facing a Wink Martindale defense from that perspective. And generally, he’ll throw in a high rate of man coverage to go along with all those blitzes. That was what the Giants did through Week 14, which marked their first of two regular-season games against the Philadelphia Eagles, who they’ll face in Saturday night’s divisional round contest.

Through Week 14, per Sports Info Solutions, only the New Orleans Saints and the Pittsburgh Steelers had more opponent passing attempts in man coverage than the Giants’ 176. And on those 176 attempts, Martindale’s defense allowed 124 completions for 1,129 yards, seven touchdowns, two interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 79.0. Only the Steelers blitzed on more opponent passing attempts with man coverage than the Giants’ 84 — Martindale’s squad gave up 44 completions for 498 yards, two touchdowns, one interception, and an opponent passer rating of 73.4.

But since that first Eagles game, Martindale has changed his coverage concepts pretty drastically. The Giants are still attacking with blitzes, but they’re playing much more zone coverage — especially split-safety zone. Perhaps it was what happened in that 44-28 loss to the Eagles that changed Martindale’s mindset. In that game, Jalen Hurts set New York’s man coverage to “Julienne” in the Cuisinart, completing nine of 16 passes for 152 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 128.1. Against man coverage and the blitz, Hurts completed six of 10 passes for 99 yards, one of his touchdowns, and a passer rating of 126.7.

From Week 15 through the team’s wild-card win over the Minnesota Vikings, the Giants have faced 100 passing attempts in zone coverage, seventh-most in the league. They’ve allowed 69 completions for 788 yards, one touchdown, one interception, and an opponent passer rating of 91.8. They’ve blitzed with zone coverage on 29 opponent passing attempts since Week 15 — only the Tampa Bay Buccaneers did it more often in that time — allowing 21 completions for 347 yards, no touchdowns, no interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 112.3, which ranks third-worst in the league.

So, it looks on the surface that Martindale’s switch from man to zone has made his defense more vulnerable. But if Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts has one bit of Kryptonite in what has been an MVP-level season, it’s the ability to deal with blitzes and zone coverage behind them. Hurts has faced zone coverage with blitzes on 51 of his dropbacks this season, and he’s completed just 23 passes for 274 yards, no touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 78.5 — seventh-worst in the NFL.

“Everybody’s saying he’s having an MVP season, and I agree because he can beat you with his legs,” Martindale said this week of Hurts. “He can beat you with just being a dropback quarterback. He can beat you with a sore shoulder. He can beat you a lot of different ways, and that’s a great challenge because there’s just a few quarterbacks that can do it that way. And you can have him dead to rights back there n the pocket, and he’s a magician. He’ll get out of it.

“I’m not happy for the guy right now because I’m preparing for him. But you can see the work that he put in the past offseason. And where he’s at today is, to me, two completely different quarterbacks. Out of respect of the game, you respect that. You can see the hard work that he put in. It’s going to be a tremendous challenge.”

Perhaps one way to mitigate that challenge in the Giants’ favor is for Martindale to show Hurts things he hasn’t really seen from his defense.

Giants head coach Brian Daboll has turned Daniel Jones into a running nightmare

Giants head coach Brian Daboll has turned quarterback Daniel Jones into a dynamite rushing threat. Here’s how it looks on tape.

When the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Eagles face off this Saturday in the divisional round of the playoffs, one of those defenses will have to deal with a quarterback who has been lighting opponents up as a runner.

This quarterback has amassed a total EPA of 34.54 on the ground in the 2022 NFL season, which ranks third-best among all players in the league. His 0.25 EPA per attempt is tied for second-best, behind only Chicago Bears quarterback Justin Fields, his 137 rushing attempts ranks third in the league, his 786 rushing yards ranks second, his 238 yards after contact ranks fourth, his seven rushing touchdowns is tied for third-most with Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills, and his five runs of 15 or more yards is tied for third-best behind Lamar Jackson and Justin Fields.

You, of course, probably already know — based on this article’s headline — that we are not talking about Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts. We are talking about Giants quarterback Daniel Jones.

Go figure. This may come as a surprise if your only memory of Jones as a runner is his running out of gas against the Eagles in 2020.

Things are different now.

We all know how effective Jalen Hurts has been as a runner this season — when he’s on the field, the Eagles can deploy all their multiple run concepts post-snap, while disguising their intentions with fairly static pre-snap looks. Including a ton of big runs out of passing personnel, which defenses really don’t like.

Jalen Hurts is the system, and the system is Jalen Hurts

But it’s time to recognize what two Giants coaches — first-year head coach Brian Daboll and first-year offensive coordinator Mike Kafka — have done to make Jones such an effective runner. We’re not just talking about scrambles here; Jones’ designed runs have become a crucial part of Big Blue’s offense.

The Eagles are well aware of this. On Tuesday, Philadelphia head coach Nick Sirianni mentioned that he’s hoping his defense will be well-suited to deal with Jones as a runner based on facing Hurts in practice.

“Well, the good thing is they’ve got a lot of reps versus a guy like Hurts, so Daniel Jones is dangerous in the pocket and when he gets out of the pocket. He’s really playing really good football. He’s continuing to get better. Hats off to him and that coaching staff for allowing that to happen.

“But that’s one thing you always are appreciative of is that these guys, the two practices that we had last week, because Jalen still may not have thrown, but he still practiced last week, and then all the training camp practices, all the good versus good periods, they’ve had to defend a quarterback with that ability to scramble.

“So, we feel like we got a lot of good reps at it, but we know also that he obviously — how dangerous he is and how good we’re going to have to be to do the things we need to do to be successful in this game against Daniel.”

That Sirianni is talking about Hurts as a preparatory devise for Jones tells you just how much Jones can impact things in that regard. And the Eagles saw this in Week 14. With 10:50 left in the third quarter of Philly’s eventual 48-22 win, the Giants gave the Eagles a taste of their own medicine with an inside zone read run by Jones. The Eagles’ aggressive front went with the Giants’ slide to the left, keyed on running back Saquon Barkley, and Jones had an open lane for a 17-yard run.

Daboll spoke recently about how well Jones and Barkley work together on these plays.

“The first thing, I think, they really appreciate one another – the type of teammate that each person is. I’d say they both work extremely hard. They’ve been here for some time. I think they’ve had probably some ups and downs. And they’re pretty close, so I think that helps. In the running game, if you are choosing to use a quarterback on runs, that’s a pretty important chemistry that you have with one another between the two of them with the ball handling and the decision-making and the reads. And then in the passing game, those guys have worked hard together to make sure they’re on the same page. But both of those guys, I think, respect one another’s responsibilities. I think they’re good captains for us. And I think they work well together.”

Using the threat of Barkley as the back, and the Giants’ slide to one side, is a common construct in Jones’ explosive runs; this 25-yarder against the Indianapolis Colts in Week 17 was another example. This was 11 personnel again (one tight end, one running back, three receivers), and Jones was reading left defensive end Kwity Paye to see when Paye would take off after Barkley, and when Jones himself should just… well, take off. Note the presence of tight end Daniel Bellinger blocking cornerback Dallis Flowers at the second level; these kinds of blocks are also key to Jones’ big-play runs.

This 12-yard run against the Minnesota Vikings in the wild-card round had a couple of different wrinkles. It was still 11 personnel, but this time, running back Matt Breida played the role of Jones’ backfield foil, receiver Richie James took a fake handoff from left to right, and Bellinger pulled all the way across the formation from right to left to stick cornerback Duke Shelley with a block. Receiver Isaiah Hodgins tried to block cornerback Chandon Sullivan on this play, but Sullivan got past Hodgins to approach Jones. That’s when the quarterback showed his moves.

The Giants will obviously want to keep this game closer than that Week 14 contest against the Eagles — Philadelphia had leads of 21-0 and 27-7 along the way. If it is closer this time, don’t be surprised if it’s Daniel Jones showing his wheels in ways you may not have expected.

Zero the Hero: Why Dexter Lawrence is the NFL’s best nose tackle

Dexter Lawrence has been an attack factor all season long in Wink Martindale’s defense. Here’s why nobody in the NFL plays nose tackle quite like him.

Nose tackle is not a glamorous position. Never has been. Back in the 1970s, when 3-4 base defenses became the hot NFL trend, interior defensive linemen who were used to hunting in four-on-the-floor fronts had to adjust to gumming things up in the middle so that other defensive linemen could eat. The big man aligning straight over the head of the center, or to the left or right shoulder of the center, was going to get assaulted on every play.

“A lot of the time it’s very difficult,” Hall of Fame nose tackle Curley Culp told Sports Illustrated in 1979, “because as defensive linemen we want to get to the quarterback, but we have to be team-oriented first. Psychologically, it affects you if you let it, because you get off one blocker and there’s another one waiting for you, and it’s like that the whole game. So you just got to try and try and try and try.”

In today’s NFL defenses, when nickel is base, dime is second base, and base is the odd structure out, nose tackles can make gains in hybrid fronts. But it’s still a relatively thankless job. Over the last five seasons, per Sports Info Solutions, the top defensive linemen in pressures from a 0-tech alignment (head over center) are generally good for about 10 pressures per season — what a top edge rusher might have in one really good game. From 2017 through 2021, Larry Ogunjobi (now of the Pittsburgh Steelers, then of the Cleveland Browns) had the most total pressures in a season from a true 0-tech alignment with 19. More often, if you’re getting eight to 12 quarterback disruptions from that slot in a full season, you’re cooking with gas.

So, how do we explain the effect of New York Giants defensive lineman Dexter Lawrence, who is demolishing enemy lines from inside as few others could imagine doing?

In the Giants’ 31-24 wild-card win over the Minnesota Vikings, Lawrence was unblockable from everywhere, but mostly and specifically when he was on the center.

This has been the case all season long, and it really doesn’t matter who the center is.

Perhaps more insane is how Lawrence is able to take those same double teams that flummox other big men and just throw them aside. This is in part because Lawrence understands leverage and angles so well — he’s less inclined to stay in the middle looking for a wrestling match, and more prone to look for open space on the outside of either blocker. This happened with 12:02 left in the first quarter of the Vikings game. Minnesota center Garrett Bradbury had Lawrence one-on-one to start the play, and then right guard Ed Ingram joined in. Didn’t matter, because Lawrence just shifted his huge frame across Bradbury’s body for the win.

With 2:40 left in the first half, Lawrence had a different combination and concept to beat. Now, it was Bradbury and left guard Ezra Cleveland coming at him from either side. This also didn’t matter, because Lawrence just moved Bradbury out of the gap with a killer rip move and ignored Cleveland’s efforts on the way to Kirk Cousins’ neighborhood.

There are other instances in which Lawrence will eschew the technique and use his pure power to dominate a blocker in embarrassing fashion. Cleveland experienced this particular phenomenon with 9:44 left in the third quarter — out of a three-man rush with a late blitzer.

There’s also Lawrence’s ability to beat up running backs in the middle of the defense, which will be Job One against the Philadelphia Eagles in the divisional round. Lawrence has two tackles for loss on running plays against the Vikings; this Dalvin Cook one-yard loss was another case of Lawrence getting double-teamed and just pinballing off the center for the reduction. Lawrence’s ability to shock blockers with power moves and then explode into the backfield might be unmatched in this league.

It didn’t take Giants defensive coordinator Don “Wink” Martindale long to realize what he had on his hands with Lawrence in his first year coaching Big Blue’s defense. When Lawrence, at 6-foot-4 and 345 pounds, chased then-Carolina Panthers quarterback Baker Mayfield out of bounds with 36 seconds left in the first quarter of this Week 2 contest, Wink had seen all he needed to see, and knew all he needed to know.

“I told the whole defense on Monday, the play where he chased Baker Mayfield down and got him short of the sticks on that scramble, I don’t know [if] in my career I’ve ever seen a big man like that make a play like that,” Martindale said soon after. “And that’s the kind of effort and leadership that he brings to the defense.”

Lawrence was more circumspect about the play — to him, it’s what’s to be expected.

“One of my goals is to never let a quarterback outrun me. That’s kind of like a competitive little thing I just have in my head all the time. I was just trying to go get him, really.”

Making the impossible look easy? One more way Dexter Lawrence is bringing much-needed visibility to a position that so often goes unnoticed.