W2W4: New England Patriots vs New York Giants
By Hal Bent
Mandatory Credit: Stew Milne-USA TODAY Sports
The New England Patriots continued their tour through the NFC East by shellacking the Washington Redskins despite a sloppy, injury-filled performance in Foxboro, MA last Sunday. The Patriots lost running back Dion Lewis for the season and saw starting tackle Sebastian Vollmer and free safety Duron Harmon leave the game with injuries.
Next up, the Patriots face-off against the New York Giants as the marquee 4:25 pm EST game on CBS. With a Monday night, Sunday night, and then 4:25 pm EST game on Fox, it will be a while until Patriots fans get another chance to bombard Twitter with their complaints about CBS’s top announcing duo Jim Nantz and Phil Simms (note: you can follow my live tweets and in-game analysis during New England Patriots games at @halbent01 on Twitter).
With the social media feeds being full of Giants fans in New England crawling out from under a rock and beating their chests while chanting “2007! 2011!”, there is a desperate need to put the history aside (other than the head coaches and quarterbacks, there are very few players left from 2011, let alone 2007) and analyze the 2015 versions of these teams.
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Unless a time machine shows up with the 2007 versions of Justin Tuck, Osi Umenyiora, and Michael Strahan, the Giants will not be replicating those Super Bowl performances with a club-wielding Jason Pierre-Paul in his second game back, George Selvie, Cullen Jenkins, Robert Ayers, Johnathan Hankins, and Kerry Wynn rushing Tom Brady.
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This is a match-up of two division leaders (although the Eagles are a much better team than the Giants regardless of their records) and the game analysis needs to be focused on what will happen on Sunday afternoon on the field. This is a severely flawed Giants defense that will struggle to slow the Patriots multi-weapon offense and an offense that lacks weapons beyond Odell Beckham Jr.
Forget the undeafeted season talk, forget the Super Bowls past, this is one road game against an unfamiliar opponent with an offensive line beat-up by injuries. Let’s dig into who is on the field and what each team will try to do. Since both teams are focusing on the game on the field, let’s do the same and investigate both teams and what to watch for on Sunday and the game score prediction at the end of the analysis:
Next: When the Giants Run the Ball