The Giants ran the identical ‘Power’ operating idea on eight consecutive performs on their remaining area aim drive in Sunday’s fourth quarter towards the Jaguars.
Calling the identical play twice in a row is rare within the NFL. Calling the identical play eight instances in a row to achieve 61 yards and precious factors late in a victory?
That’s exceptional.
“It’s rare for a team to do this,” ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky, the previous NFL quarterback, informed the Daily News Monday. “But the offensive line has become the strength of the unit, and it gets the ball into the Giants’ best player’s hands.”
That participant could be Saquon Barkley, who rushed six instances for 44 yards on the drive, all six instances to the appropriate aspect.
“We did,” Barkley admitted postgame. “Can’t stop it, why not?”
The ‘Power’ idea added a sixth lineman, sort out Devery Hamilton, to the Giants’ entrance. And it pulled rookie left guard Josh Ezeudu from the bottom and used tight finish Chris Myarick as a lead-block fullback out of an offset I-formation.
Coach Brian Daboll and offensive coordinator Mike Kafka dressed it up in a different way at instances.
They put Myarick in movement twice alongside the road as an alternative of within the ‘I.’ They ran Matt Breida to the left aspect on one snap, pulling proper guard Mark Glowinski to the left.
Jones additionally stored the ball and scrambled left for a 15-yard acquire to wind the clock all the way down to the 2-minute warning – with Myarick in movement left to proper, Ezeudu pulling left to proper, and Breida faking the handoff.
But all eight performs had been the identical ‘Power’ idea, and the Jaguars had no reply for it. The solely purpose the Giants didn’t finish the sport with it was as a result of Barkley stepped out of bounds twice.
That’s one easy purpose Orlovsky believes the Giants caught with it: how efficient it was on the primary snap of that remaining drive, with Barkley bouncing outdoors for 13 yards.
“Once you call it on first down and he hits it like that you’re like, screw it, he is seeing it and feeling it,” Orlovsky stated.
The former NFL quarterback additionally stated energy is advantageous for the Giants in a close-out scenario as a result of “You can run it against any [defensive] front.” The protection’s alignment isn’t going to vary the plan.
Another purpose the Giants caught with their bread and butter is probably going as a result of they had been taking part in two backups on the road: Ezeudu at left guard and Tyre Phillips at proper sort out. And they simplified the calls to what their new personnel might greatest execute.
That’s good teaching, even when it means repeating a play that always.
“Yeah, we had a couple different personnel groups we couldn’t get into,” Daboll stated of how the O-line accidents impacted playcalling. “Phillips had to jump in and then Ezeudu … young players that haven’t played a lot of football, in this environment, in a close game.”
Interestingly, Barkley famous that the Jaguars didn’t appear to note the Giants’ repetition till it was too late.
This is an efficient instance of how the Giants have so many choices of their formations, in addition to completely different paths again to their core ideas and gameplan. Players and coaches have famous this flexibility as a novel benefit and staple of Daboll’s and Kafka’s offense.
“I don’t know if they realized that it was the same play until probably like the fifth or sixth time, to be completely honest,” Barkley stated. “Then we had something off of it when we [kept] it, and DJ made a big play, used his feet. It’s hard to [stop]. It can look like we’re running the same play, but you can run so many things out of that formation.”
It needed to be demoralizing for Jacksonville to get punched within the mouth so regularly and successfully by the identical play, proper?
“Was it demoralizing?” Barkley stated, repeating the query. “I don’t know. I can just tell when you lean on defense throughout the game, you can feel them starting to soften up, and [then you can] take them to the deep water and drown them.”
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Source: www.bostonherald.com