Ben crotchety about TE
BEN MCADOO may look like a movie villain, but he is not a madman.
The Giants head coach said there is no reason to panic, but at the same time realizes that he needs to get his team out of an 0-2 hole and that will require making some significant changes for this Sunday’s Week 3 matchup against NFC East foe Philadelphia Eagles.
“We can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again. That’s insanity,” McAdoo said on a conference call Tuesday. “It’s not working so we’re going to look to make some more changes this week like we did last week. Maybe a little more drastic.”
That drastic change could be McAdoo handing over play calling duties to offensive coordinator Mike Sullivan, which the Giants head coach left the door open to possibly doing. “That’s something we’ll look at and talk about,” he said.
McAdoo has been calling plays since he took over as offensive coordinator in 2014, but since becoming head coach last season, the Giants offense has struggled and Monday’s 24-10 loss to the Lions marked the eighth straight game (including postseason) in which they have failed to score at least 20 points.
It’s not all on McAdoo, though, as the offense as a whole has struggled, particularly the offensive line.
The group gave up five sacks against the Lions on Monday and left tackle Ereck ELI MANNING isn’t the only guy Ben McAdoo criticizes.
During Tuesday’s conference call the Giants head coach was critical of rookie tight end Evan Engram for getting an unsportsmanlike penalty after celebrating his first career touchdown.
“We can’t have that,” McAdoo said. “We don’t need to be kicking off from the 20yard line. … I’m not sure it was something he intended to do, but again we can’t have that. That was poor judgment on his part.”
Engram appeared to grab his crotch while doing a Michael Jackson-type dance in the back of the end zone.
The penalty was enforced on the kickoff, which first-year kicker Aldrick Rosas booted out of bounds to give the Lions even better field position.
But McAdoo was not too harsh on his rookie tight end.
“He’ll learn from it, he’ll grow from it,” he said. “He’s a high character man and I don’t anticipate that will happen again.”
ODELL OK?
Odell Beckham Jr. played in his first game of the season Monday against the Lions, but it was in limited fashion as he continues to recover from a sprained left ankle. Flowers was the biggest culprit, allowing Lions defensive end Ezekiel Ansah to sack Eli Manning three times.
It’s a continued trend for Flowers but the Giants head coach plans to stick with his current left tackle.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Ereck is a young player, I thought he did some good things in the ballgame. He gets singled out but that’s the way it is within this league. Breakdowns are spread out, it’s not just one player making breakdowns.”
McAdoo actually did not sound open to any personnel changes at all. “Personnel jobs are won in this league,” he said. “They’re not given away. Somebody’s got to win a job to get a job.”
But the Giants’ offensive line may look different anyway if right tackle Bobby Hart is unable to return from his ankle injury.
Left guard Justin Pugh spent most of Monday playing right tackle, filling in for Hart after he left the game on the second play of the game. Backup Brett Jones filled in for Pugh at left guard.
It’s an alignment the Giants could use again this week in Philly. “Am I confident in Pugh? Yes,” McAdoo said. “I think he went out there and competed his tail off.”
Whatever changes McAdoo does or does not make for next Sunday, he knows the Giants need to learn from their losses to turn things around. “I’m confident in this group of men. I’m confident in this group of coaches,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do. We are not happy with the way the game went last night.”
Beckham played 34 snaps and finished with four catches for 36 yards, but the question the rest of the week will be how his ankle is recovering from the game action.
“He got some treatment this morning. He’s still working hard to get back to his full self,” McAdoo said. “But he made some progress last night getting some snaps.”
The Giants ran the clock out to head into halftime on Monday trailing the Lions 17-7, but it did not have to be that way. The Lions kicked a field goal on fourth-and-two on the Giants’ 38-yard line, which brought the clock down to 39 seconds remaining in the half. The Giants had all three timeouts remaining, though, and could have used one right after the third down before the field goal to stop the clock with 1:20 remaining.
Instead they let the clock go down and by the time they received the ball and ran a play there was just 26 seconds left in the half.
McAdoo justified the decision, saying he didn’t want the Lions to consider going for it on fourth down.
“We just wanted to make sure that they were going to go for the field goal,” he said.