SLOW YOUR ROLL!
Banks, Cross warn Giants aren’t title contenders unless offense perks up
Howard Cross laughed dismissively. Carl Banks paused momentarily.
Perhaps the whispers of the Giants’ Super Bowl potential are premature.
“The Cowboys win was overcooked,” Cross warned.
“You have to be a playoff contender before you are a Super Bowl contender,” Banks cautioned.
The Giants’ 10-7 win over the Cowboys on Sunday — completing a season sweep of the NFC’s top seed — has prompted some to suggest the 9-4 Giants are capable of winning the Super Bowl this season. Consider Cross and Banks, two members of the Giants’ Super Bowl XXV team and analysts for MSG Network’s Big Blue coverage, cautiously optimistic. There’s good reason to be, given the Giants’ lights-out defense is paired with a lagging offense. “What we are seeing is that the sky is the limit with this defense,” Banks said. “They have the ability to be a very domineering group if they continue on this track. It looks like they are committed to each other as teammates and want to hold each other accountable, which is half the battle. “If you look at all the great Giants defenses, every guy was accountable to their teammates and didn’t want to let the other guy down. They are just hitting their stride, so it’s dangerous what could happen. They 100 percent compare from a talent standpoint to the great Giants defenses.”
After shutting down Cowboys rookies Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott, the Giants will now set their sights on another surprising MVP candidate, Matthew Stafford, and the Lions at MetLife Stadium. A win would move the Giants into prime position to lock down a wild-card spot, but a loss would put their wild-card hopes in peril with trips to Philadelphia and Washington left to finish the season.
If the defense is hitting its stride, then the offense is still learning how to walk. Cross said he believes all the offense needs to do is put up 20 points (it aver- ages 19.6 per game) and that should be enough for the emerging defense.
The offense has lacked consistency, beyond Odell Beckham Jr.’s insane ability to destroy defenses single-handedly.
“A lot of the disappointment has to do with the expectations being super high. … And week in and week out you have to be able to run the ball a little bit more,” Cross said. “There’s only so many times you can run a slant. You have to get a little bit of yards in the run game, if you can’t do it, then teams kind of tee off on you. You don’t want to be in the situation where you are forced to throw the ball over and over again because that just gives the defensive line a chance to pin their ears back and get after [the quarterback].
“They’re trying to find something that will sustain drives. They shoot themselves in the foot a lot. Eli [Manning] would say that, the offensive line would say that, with the unforced errors. Those things set them back when they are having great drives. They are not good enough at this point to sustain their drives with those plays.”
Just as the defense has improved week to week, and survived the loss of Jason Pierre-Paul against the Cowboys, there is hope the offense eventually will come together and not have to rely so dramatically on Beckham.
“The offense does have to catch up a bit,” Banks said. “But the scary part about it is, we know they can.”