Shoulda Coulda Woulda

Yup. That was a game that we should have won. The bitterness of this loss is the reason my blog is a day late this week.

A 3-2 record is not the end of the world, but with the Bills coming to town next week there are some things that need work. The number one priority is the epitomy of New York Giants football, and that is the defense. The past two weeks the Giants have not looked good at stopping the run at all. I think that's partly because Justin Tuck didn't play either of those games. Osi is a good defensive end and a great pass rusher but stopping the run isn't really his strong suit. We need our leader on defense back on the field as soon as possible.

Another issue of concern is the Giants defensive struggles against the hurry up. When the Giants don't have time to make their substitutions opposing offenses are having a fairly easy time moving the ball. Charlie Whitehurst? Are you kidding me? I guess the guy made some plays. That one in particular when the Seahawks took the lead for good when Osi jumped offsides and there wasn't a whistle was frustrating but man our defense was looking helpless on that drive anyway.

What makes this even more difficult of a loss was despite the lack of defense on Whitehurst's go ahead drive was that Eli drove right back down the field following it. 1st and goal from the ten and we have a false start. That is extremely frustrating. The Giants still had some timeouts so I had a feeling they were going to be running a draw on that play before the false start. The penalty pushed them back and they decided to throw. Unfortunately Victor Cruz lost his feet and because of that the ball was a little ahead of him and he tipped it up. Pick six the other way.

But hey, we can mope about how we should have won that game, and we can complain about some of the ATROCIOUS calls, but the truth of the matter is we made some mistakes and we didn't play very good defense. The Seahawks had a fair amount of mistakes as well but they made the plays when they mattered. But this team has resiliency. The Giants are going to fight. If there's a time to prove that it's against the 4-1 Bills at home on Sunday.

Hopefully Tuck and Jacobs will both be back and able to play. Those are two big leaders of this team that weren't able to suit up last week and they would make a huge difference. The Bills would have to be crazy not to run the hurry up. The Giants know this. Time to put that weakness to rest, do some extra suicides at practice and man up. And on offense we could use a run game. We haven't had much of that but maybe throwing to the backs is more our game these days. It sure seems like it.

We need to throw Ballard the ball more. He has been showing some serious toughness the last few games and he fights for every yard. Plus Cruz has shown he can make the big plays (that third and long circus catch was unbelievable). He's had his fair share of mistakes seeing as he's a young player, but this guy can play and there seems to be a great work ethic about him.

Lets face it the Seahawks game was a stinker, but I'm not worried. The Giants under Coughlin tend to respond well after a disappointing week, and at home against the Bills is a pretty good place to do it. We hit a little bump in the road, but it's time to re-establish some New York Giant pride. And we gotta do that by improving the defense. It's not the personnel it's a state of mind.

"We gotta go out there like a bunch of crazed dogs..."