Peter King's Four Latest Thoughts on the Giants Struggles Revealed

I’m not ashamed to admit that I read Peter King’s weekly columns regularly. And this week, I was inspired to do a little more digging into his four thoughts about the Giants in this week’s Football Morning in America column which mention four of the biggest issues with the Giants.

1. He cites Daniel Jones’ turnover issue as a problem. Indeed, as teams that turn the ball over do not win—that much is proven.

But as Eli Manning, who three times in his career threw for 20 or more interceptions, including a career-high 27 in 2013, that because he was a risk-taking gunslinger—used to say, every interception has its own story.

According to PFF, four of Jones’s seven interceptions this year were on pass attempts to tight end Evan Engram. As we saw last week, at least one resulted from Engram taking his eye off the ball for a split second, which resulted in him not being in perfect position to make the catch.

This begs the question of how many other of his interceptions were a result of a lousy decision versus the ball hitting the intended receiver in the hands, popping up, and being picked off?

This isn’t to say that Jones is blameless in his interceptions—he isn’t. His mental processing speed remains a concern and a big one at that. I’m not sure how well he adjusts on the fly.

And there are times when I have thought he has either not looked at the entire field where there might be an open receiver.

The fumbles? He’s had five this year, which is five too many. But how many of those came from blindside pressure that, unless he had eyes in the back of his head, he wouldn’t have seen coming?

But again, with that said, the off-season weight training program he went through was supposed to help with that.

But what it didn’t address is Jones’s continued poor habit of taking one hand off the ball when the pressure is closing in around him. Short of instituting the equivalent of a swear jar—call it a "turnover jar" where every time he loses the handle, he has to drop a cool $100 bill into the jar—I’m beginning to wonder if this problem is going to be fixed.

2. King would not sign tight end Evan Engram to a second contract. I’m 100% with him on this one, as I’ve outlined here and here. Some will disagree with this point, but in the end, it’s all about value.

As much as I like Engram as a person, I don't see how they can justify paying out his rookie option salary, which right now is estimated to top $6 million, given his inconsistency. I’d rather spend that money on a No. 1 receiver or a No. 2 cornerback in free agency.

3. King cited the Giants making “way too many mistakes and penalties” under Joe Judge, a coach who stressed discipline. The Giants have committed an average of 5.3 penalties per game, the 12th lowest average in the league.

But let’s take that average a step further. The Giants penalties have resulted in 13 stalled drives this season out of 71 scoring drives (18.3%).

Worst of all, the penalties are happening on every down—according to NFLPenalties.com, the Giants have committed 11 on first down, 12 each on second and third down, and six on fourth down.

Then there is a matter of the type of penalties. The complete table can be found here, but a couple of quick takeaways show that the top ones are false starts (6) leading the way followed by unnecessary roughness and offensive pass interference (4 each).

False starts are mental errors and are inexcusable—if the offense doesn’t know the snap count, then shame on them. Unnecessary roughness penalties are discipline-related, while offensive pass interference is more of a technique/fundamental issue.

Still, King’s point about mistakes and penalties is valid if one looks at the timing of said penalties. Against the Eagles, Madre Harper committed an unnecessary roughness penalty that halved the distance of a two-point conversion.

On that same drive, which cut the Giants lead to 21-16, the Giants had too many men on the field and an illegal contact infraction. And then on the Eagles’ game-winning drive, there were defensive pass interference and defensive holding penalties that helped the Eagles cause.

The Giants right now aren’t good enough to recover from these mistakes, which is why Judge will continue to hammer the point home.

4. King mentions concerns about offensive tackle Andrew Thomas, the fourth overall pick in the draft, and how he’s struggled out of the gate.

There will be some who point to the lack of a preseason, but that hasn’t hurt the other three rookie tackles who, along with Thomas, were drawing a lot of pre-draft attention.

What could be at play with Thomas is if he spent the off-season preparing to play right tackle, where had things gone according to plan, Thomas might have benefitted more from playing next to Kevin Zeitler.

Any plans, assuming the existed, went out the window when Nate Solder opted out, which mean he had to make the switch over to the left side.

The problem, though, is the Giants can’t bench Thomas. To do so would stunt his development even further, and that’s something head coach Joe Judge has no intention of doing.

“I think with any young player, it always comes down to just fundamentals, that you can execute your technique at the right time against the speed of the game,” Judge said last week.

“Andrew’s a good guy to build with. We have a lot of plans long-term with Andrew. He’s the kind of guy we want to work with, both physically and his personality off the field.

"We have a lot of confidence in Andrew. We’re going to keep working with him and developing him going forward. I fully expect Andrew to have a very productive, long career in this league.”

Judge dismissed any talk that Thomas’ confidence might be shaken following several rough outings.

“I see him coming to work every day with a good attitude, effort, and energy. When you see guys with confidence issues, normally, the urgency goes down. I see this guy work tirelessly every day, so no. He’s a pleasure to be around right there.

“Look, he’s a young player who’s still learning to develop in this league. Nothing is going to be perfect all the time. We need to keep doing a good job of coaching him and bringing him along.”

Admirable words, but at some, the tree has to start bearing some fruit.

Add us as a preferred source on Google