Players Giving Up….
Players giving up….
Can’t help but re-watch yesterday game and notice that our secondary has literally given up on making a play.
The more alarming aspect is that this happened when we were trying to hold the lead and force the Giants to FG, which could have diminished our lead to 1pt. What I would like to discuss is the Victor Cruz touchdown.
Let’s break down what happened:
*please note that all images were extracted from NFL.Com*
3rd and 12 4th qtr roughly 6 minutes remaining
Ball on our 25yard line
Giants call Shotgun 3 Split wig wide
Hot WR is bradshaw running the drag
Nolan call 2 deep zone cover 0 Mike Tiger Blitz
Which we saw Burnett and Dansby blitzing
Allen, Smith and Wilson on man to man coverage
Bell and Culver were the two deep safeties.
We can see the pre set reads are made and Danbsy and Burnett are showing blitz. We can also see the man to man coverage for CBs, which is shown in yellow. It’s the Free Safety that plays the Robber and Culver was the over the top help, and Bell was playing his regular Box 1 underneath responsibility.
Play is set
Manning is looking for his prime match up, but can see Wilson making great strides against Mannginham, but notices a flaw right away with Will Allen. Allen is turned in the wrong position allowing Manning to understand he will have an open WR. Look at the play and you can see Allen is in terrible form and Manning locking down on Cruz. Since Allen is breaking in the wrong direction all Cruz has to do is go underneath and he will be wide open.
Cruz makes the catch with Allen at least 5 yards away from him. Allen is veteran CB but this TD was his fault. Why did he break to the outside where there was no indication that Cruz was going there is a great question that I would like to ask him. However, what happens next is even worse.
I’ll give Will Allen credit he tried to make the tackle, but he must have gotten his notes from Clemons because he tried to tackle by the shoulder pads, which works in College and High school but not in the NFL.
Allen couldn’t make the tackle…but where are our two deep safeties. Once again Nolan called the right play, but didn’t get his player to do anything. We can see both of our Safeties are in prime position to make a play on the WR.
What happened to Culver? Well, he was doing his best Rashed Jones impression and just trying to fly and hit something….the only thing that took a hit with this attempt was Culver’s pride.
What happened to Bell?
Right here Bell watching everyone trying to make a play and he’s not doing anything….if I was playing I would have closed on him, and tried my best to knock the ball loose, but Bell watched the play happen and then let Cruz walk into the endzone.
Allen and Culver are both down on the ground, and Bell could have leaped or tried something, instead he’s let up and allowed Cruz to do his dance.
In my eyes, yes this was the turning point to the game. I know there will be a lot of discussion around who cares if we stopped them on the 5yrd line, they would have just eaten up the clock. You can’t play that game, if we held them to a FG we would have still been up by 1pt with the ball in our hands. We could have milked the clock down and played the field position game. However that wasn’t the case. This was a rough game to swallow, and with our team losing two valid leads (11pts to the Giants and 15pts to the Broncos) and allowing the opposition to catch up has to be decrease our moral. Nolan is putting his players in perfect position to make the play, but his players….no our players are not making the plays they need to. Who’s fault is that…
Well that is what I’ll ask you.