Three takeaways from the Giants' Week 7 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles
1. Getting lined up
Brian Daboll was not prescient. He was simply stating the obvious when he met with reporters on Wednesday to make the announcement that Andrew Thomas would miss the remainder of the season after Lisfranc (foot) surgery.
Four separate times Daboll uttered variations of the phrase that Thomas is irreplaceable. Four days later, the Giants backed up their coach in the worst possible way as they surrendered eight sacks in a 28-3 home loss to the Eagles.
Nakobe Dean and Jaylen Carter had two sacks apiece and Nolan Smith Jr., Josh Sweat, Jalyx Hunt and former Jet Bryce Huff added one each.
“Giving up eight sacks is too much,” said Joshua Ezeudu, who started in place of Thomas at left tackle. “It is tough. All we have to do is go back to the film room and see what went wrong and just get better at it.”
2. Lawrence of East Rutherford
So were there any positives that came out of Sunday’s throttling? Yes, and his name is Dexter Lawrence. The Giants nose tackle finished with five tackles, two sacks and two quarterback hits.
Lawrence, who leads the NFL with nine sacks, made it clear after the game that his individual accomplishments are due in part to the work his teammates and the defensive coaching staff put in.
“It’s the game plans, it’s the [defensive backs] covering, the guys outside of me rushing as well,” he said. “I do what I can when I can. Whenever I get that one-on-one or whenever I [have to] hustle to a ball or effort plays, it’s more than what the numbers say that goes along with me getting sacks.”
But certainly nine sacks in seven games has to be meaningful, right? “Not when we keep losing,” he said.
3. Offensive offensive football
The numbers do not lie. Three points, 119 total yards of offense, 76 rushing yards and 43 passing yards. Exactly none of it could be construed as positive. And what is more concerning is that these are domains that the Giants spend time working on during the week.
“I don’t know what our longest play was, [but] it couldn’t have been too long,” Daboll said. “I don’t know what it was, but it’s hard to generate points when your longest play is 14 yards or your longest play last week was 15 yards. So you can do that one of two ways: catch and run or push the ball down the field and give our guys some chances or go up and make some plays.
“We’re continuing to work on that. Those are two areas that we put a lot of time and effort [into] and we’re not getting the results equal to the work and the effort that we’re putting into it.”