A Deeper Dive into Why the Giants Lost to the Arizona Cardinals
There’s no such thing as an easy game in the NFL. Likewise, there’s no such thing as a hard game.
What it all comes down to in the end is coaching. And this Giants team, which has looked so solid from both a coaching and execution perspective of late, was outmaneuvered by a Cardinals brain trust that zoomed in on the Giants' weaknesses and exploited them to the point of embarrassment.
“We were outcoached, outplayed,” said Giants head coach Joe Judge. “We have to do more to be successful.”
Indeed, and to underscore that, here is a look at four notable things that made a big difference in this game's outcome.
Defensive Secondary vs. the Wide Receivers
Coming into this game, a strength of the Cardinals very talented defensive backfield was their man-to-man coverage, which Arizona ran at rate of 38%, the third-highest rate in the NFL, before Sunday’s game.
The problem for the Giants is their receivers do not bode well against man-to-man coverage. To beat this kind of coverage, you need receivers who have the quickness to bet the bump-and-run, and the Giants’ receivers have shown this to be a position weakness.
I’ve noted many times how Sterling Shepard is a master at finding soft spots in the zone coverage, and he is. Against man coverage, that’s a different story. Shepard historically hasn’t fared well when jammed at the line of scrimmage because he lacks that quickness to recover.
The same can be said of Golden Tate, who was much better at defeating man-to-man coverage during his prime than he is now.
Ditto for tight end Evan Engram, who on his three pass targets were covered by Dre Kirkpatrick and linebacker Isaiah Simmons, and Darius Slayton, who mostly saw Kirkpatrick on five of his eight pass targets. When your top receiving targets can’t beat man-to-man coverage with any consistency, your offense is in for a long afternoon.
As the final receiving yards for each man shows, no Giants receiver caught more than three of his pass targets. Tate was only targeted twice, catching one ball for a team-high 39 yards, and none of Shepard, Slayton, and Engram (Wayne Gallman was the other receiving target who had three receptions, but we aren’t counting him in this) had more than 35 yards.
Getting the Run Game Going
What’s that old saying? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?
Well, that’s what the Giants offensive game plan this week did, and did that screw things up for them. In the last few weeks, the Giants run game’s success has come on the heels of the offense going with a heavy personnel package.
Based on the snap counts this week, the Giants went away from that heavy personnel set for some inexplicable reason, and it cost them.
The Cardinals’ defensive game plan was to stop the Giants running game, which it did in holding New York to 78 yards on 17 carries, and by locking in on the receiving targets in man-to-man—again, the kryptonite of the Giants’ receivers—the offense was in for a long afternoon.
The Giants made this adjustment two weeks ago against the Bengals, switching to a heavy personnel package to jumpstart the run game after halftime. They used a heavy set again last week against the Seahawks.
So why, after taking note of how the Cardinals were slowing down their passing game—and why with quarterback Daniel Jones showing apparent signs of deteriorating due to his ailing hamstring—didn't the coaching staff switch gears and return to the heavy personnel set coming out of the half?
Yes, the Giants were down 20-0 as Arizona had scored on their opening possession of the first half. But one can’t help but wonder what might have happened if the adjustment to the heavier personnel package, which has worked so well for the running game and opened things up for the passing game, was made as soon as the second quarter.
Slowing Down the Pass Rush
The Cardinals' pass rush teed off on the Giants offensive blockers, recording eight sacks, six against Daniel Jones. The pass rush was able to be so aggressive because they knew they likely didn’t have to fear Jones taking off on any designed runs or executing any zone reads (yet another reason why playing a hobbled Jones this week made ZERO sense).
One way to slow down the pass rush would have been to get the running backs more involved in the passing game. Of the 24 pass targets, Gallman received four, while Alfred Morris and Dion Lewis didn’t even get a sniff of a pass target.
Against an aggressive rush, screens and dump-offs might have helped the cause, yet the Giants seemed more intent on going down the field. It was frustrating to see the Giants go to Slayton five times in the first quarter alone (Slayton, remember, only had eight pass targets all day) when he only managed to catch two of those five first-quarter pass targets for 20 yards.
The Kyler Murray Effect
The Giants were intent on not letting Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray beat them with his legs. As such, they mostly sent three or four men at him to keep him in the pocket, which, for the most part, worked.
The drawback, though, is when you send three or four men against the quarterback, and there are five to block them, you’re not at an advantage. So what that creates is gobs of time for the quarterback to sit back in the pocket and pick apart the defensive secondary, which Murray did.
Per PFF, Murray’s average time in the pocket was 3.49 seconds—nearly a full second more than his 2.83 seconds average coming into this game. The longer the quarterback has to work in the pocket, the more stress that puts on the defensive secondary, and that’s precisely what happened this week as Murray had time to let a receiver shake free from the coverage.
The result? Murray connected on 24 out of his 32 pass targets (75%) because he had all kinds of time to work.
As far as the defense is concerned, the bottom line is while they did slow down Murray, at the same time, they went away from what they do best.
Some Final Thoughts
Yes, Andrew Thomas's game was as bad as it looked if you prescribe to PFF's tape evaluation. Thomas gave up a whopping seven pressures that included two sacks. Ouch.
Jones, by the way, was charged with two of the six sacks against him, the result of him holding onto the ball too long. And speaking of which, Jones averaged 2.6 seconds to throw this week, up from the 2.58 seconds he averaged prior to this game, which would suggest that the Giants receivers were being smothered by the Cardinals.
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