Shepard drooling to face Green Bay’s depleted secondary
This is all new for Sterling Shepard, the precocious rookie receiver, but he can spot vulnerability when he sees it.
And he said he sees it in the Packers’ depleted, injury-riddled defensive backfield.
“It’s definitely something we can exploit,’’ Shepard told The Post after Wednesday’s practice. “It’s just a matter of everybody doing their job. Those guys are still in the NFL for a reason, they’re all good players, we still have to do our job and execute. It’s definitely something, if we do everything right, we can take advantage of.’’
Sunday in an NFC Wild Card game at Lam be au Field, the Giants will need to take advantage of every chink in the Green Bay armor they can find. Eli Manning taking aim at those wearing green and gold in the secondary is a good place to start.
The Packers are ranked 31st in the league in pass defense, allowing 296 yards per game, and they gave up up 32 passing touchdowns this season. To complicate matters, the Packers likely will be without two of their top cornerbacks, Damarious Randall and Quinten Rollins, who came out of last week’s NFC North-clinching victory in Detroit with injuries.
“In the back end they’ve had a lot of guys go down, so it’s kind of people in different spots and different places,’’ Shepard said.
In other seasons, this would be the trigger for an offensive eruption by the Giants. However, their supposed big-play passing attack has surfaced now and again, but rarely with any consistency. Shepard had a strong rookie year with 65 receptions for 683 yards and eight touchdowns. Odell Beckham Jr. was, well, himself, with 101 catches for 1,367 yards and 10 TDs. Victor Cruz in his comeback season had 39 catches for 586 yards and one touchdown. Nothing clicked quite the way it supposed to, though. Manning had a subpar season and the Giants finished 17th in the NFL in passing offense.
Perhaps the Giants have been building to something, to a throwback playoff performance from Manning and an eruption from Beckham and Co.
“I wouldn’t be surprised, just because I know that it’s coming, you know what I mean?’’ Shepard said. “We’re right there. It’s just little stuff we’re doing that’s setting us back. I know it’s coming, we just got to keep on pushing. We’ve been finding ways to get wins so as long as we keep doing that, we got to take this thing a week at a time and survive. That’s our mindset, and if we happen to open the floodgates and everything goes perfect, then so be it, that’ll be great.’’
Beckham, of course, is t he most likely suspect to wreck any game, but he will be have Secret Service-type attention from the Packers, who will put extra bodies everywhere he moves and do everything they can to keep him in front of their defenders.
Shepard is next in line as far as the most likely Giants player to dance through the backups forced to play in the defensive backfield. In his fifth NFL game, Shepard did not do much in the 23-16 loss to the Packers on Oct. 9. He was targeted seven times, but caught only two passes for 14 yards.
The player the Packers saw three months ago is not the player they will see this weekend.
“Me personally, just running cleaner routes, taking my time more,’’ Shepard said. “I feel like early on I was rushing some stuff. I just feel the game slowed down a lot for me. I’m more into working my guy, getting open, instead of rushing it.’’
There have not been any bumps in the rookie road for Shepard. He’s been taken under the wings of Cruz and Beckham — who took him to Miami after Sunday’s win over the Redskins — and fit in snugly in the locker room. He says he considers himself a big-game player. The next game he plays will be the biggest one he’s ever been in.
“You don’t want to think too much about it or put too much pressure on yourself,’’ Shepard said. “It’s another football game, going out and doing what you’ve been doing since you were 5 years old, for me.
“Excited. I love big games. Some people call ’ em pressure situations, there’ s something about that, that’s why you play the game. You play the game for moments like these. This is what I was born to do. I love this. I love that we’re in this situation.’’