Five Reasons Why the Giants Can Beat the 49ers
The MetLife Stadium field? All in your heads, my friends, at least that’s the consensus from the New York Giants players who worked on that field daily during training camp and who hosted a football game on that field in Week 1.
(And for those of you from the 49ers side who happen to be reading this don’t believe the host team, officials from the NFL and NFLPA concurred with the notion that there’s nothing wrong with the new field turf installed earlier this year.)
But enough about the 49ers since this is Giants Country. And this could very well be the Giants week—the week that they deliver the first win of head coach Joe Judge’s career and the week that they snap a three-game losing streak that dates back to Week 17 of the 2019 season.
The injury situation for both sides is devastating—no question. But the coaches on both teams have had a week to prepare to work around it. It will always come down to who has the cleaner execution of plays and who makes the fewest mistakes.
It might not look like it, but the Giants have been making baby steps toward progress, which is sort of what you’d expect considering the newness of this team and the unusual off-season it went through.
There are signs of the communication between teammates starting to flow naturally and allowing them to play faster. When they get burned or make a mistake, there are players who shake it off and move on to the next play as though nothing happened (yet somehow with the lesson learned from the previous play embedded in their minds.)
But let’s make something clear. This wounded 49ers team isn’t going to be a pushover. The Giants need to make sure their communication, particularly in the back seven of the defense and on the offensive line, is as sharp as a knife because this 49ers coaching staff is a crafty one.
Can the Giants pull it off? Hey, any given Sunday and all that jazz, right? But seriously, here are five reasons the Giants, who are currently a 3.5 point underdog at home this week, should be able to win this one.
1. The 49ers have way more key injuries than the Giants.
By no means should the Giants be sitting there licking their collective chops over how banged up the 49ers are because that’s when the team will lull itself into a false sense of comfort and get sloppy.
And I’m not dismissing the Giants’ injuries here either as losing Saquon Barkley, and Sterling Shepard are about as devastating a scenario as could be.
But the 49ers are so banged up on both sides of the ball that it’s fair to wonder how that chemistry and cohesiveness that helped them emerge into everyone’s favorite Cinderella story last year in the NFC has been affected.
We have seen some teams around the league slowly come out of the gate after not having a typical off-season. One can only imagine how much of a setback it will before a team that now has to mix and match different levels of its depth chart and some new faces and hope that it can find that all-important chemistry on which winning dreams are made.
2. The Giants have been statistically better than the 49ers this season in several key categories.
I know; the only stat that matters is the won-loss record, of which the 49ers stand at 1-1 and the Giants 0-2. But the Giants are statistically better than the 49ers in several key areas, including passing yards per game (260 to 230.5); passing yards against per game (188.5 to 198.5); rushing yards against per game (142 to 138); and total yards against per game (326.5 to 340.5).
That might not amount to a hill of beans, especially after two games. However, for a young Giants team that’s still trying to find its identity, any psychological trick can't hurt at this point, even if the facts appear superficial.
3. The Giants have the better quarterback.
With all due respect to my colleague Grant Cohn over at All49ers, who opined that 49ers backup Nick Mullens is better than Giants starter Daniel Jones, you can throw those stats out the window.
Last week the 49ers under Mullens in the second half, managed to score 10 points, same as the Jets, and not one of those scores came on a Mullens touchdown pass. Oh, and by the way, Mullens, like Jones, finished his stat line with an interception on his way to a dismal 51.7 passer rating despite going eight of 11 or 17 yards and taking two sacks.
Jones was a lot better—25 of 40 for 241 yards with four sacks absorbed (will that offensive line ever get it together?) and the one interception. But while the Giants defense kept Bears quarterback Mitch Trubisky and friends off the scoreboard in the second half, Jones and company put up 13 unanswered points, coming just a play or two short of an impressive comeback win.
Jones has delivered a gusty performance behind center as any young quarterback in the league. Go ahead and call Jones a turnover waiting to happen if you want, but first, make sure you take a look at the story behind those turnovers, specifically the interceptions which you can probably lay just as much at the feet of the passing game targets as anyone.
4. Evan Engram to the rescue?
Ever notice how, when the Giants suffer a significant injury on the offensive side of the ball, tight end Evan Engram, when healthy himself, steps up and strings together solid performances?
Last week when the team lost both Barkley and Shepard to injury, Engram had a big second half, catching six out of seven pass targets for 75 yards after going 0-1 in the first half.
When Shepard had to miss time with a head injury last year, Engram caught 11 out of 17 passes for 94 yards and a touchdown. Earlier that season, with Golden Tate serving a four-game suspension, Engram caught 27 out of 37 pass targets for 331 yards and two touchdowns.
In 2018, Engram caught 22 out of 31 passes for 320 yards and a touchdown in the team’s final four games, as missed by Odell Beckham Jr due to injury. And going back even further to 2017, when the injury bug wiped out many of the Giants receivers, including Beckham, Engram caught 45 out of 78 passes for 522 yards and five scores.
Maybe this is all just a coincidence, but it sure does seem when the chips are down, and the Giants are desperate for playmakers, Engram, when healthy, has risen to the occasion. Will he do so again starting this week? He might be in a position to do so against that banged-up 49ers defense.
5. The Giants need a win—badly.
I don’t want to say the Giants are desperate, but if the shoe fits…
Last week the Giants came close to pulling out a victory against the Bears; they ran out of time. But in that second half of play, they seemed to do everything a little bit better for the most part—and that was all without Saquon Barkley and Sterling Shepard on the field.
Judge said that a team will be ready to win when it’s "ready to execute for a full 60 minutes of football," something the Giants haven’t been able to do just yet. But again, they were close last week, and if they can build on that, maybe, just maybe they’ll be able to turn things around and surprise a few people who have counted them out.
We’ve heard for weeks from the players and coaches about the progress they’re making, and if you look closely, you’ll see those little glimpses of sunshine amid the years-long clouds that have hovered over this franchise.
It’s time for them to finally break up the clouds and start giving their loyal fan base something to smile about.
