New York offence faces Giant task
Return of linebacker Matthews catalyst to second-half Green Bay resurgence
WASHINGTON — The NFL’s marquee matchup Sunday at Lambeau Field will be the successfully rebuilt defence of the New York Giants squaring off with the offence of the Green Bay Packers, led by quarterback and MVP candidate Aaron Rodgers, that carried the team to six straight victories to repair a once-broken season.
Many wonder how the Green Bay defence, which was exploited badly for parts of this season but played better for at least a portion of the winning streak, will deal during the first-round NFC playoff game with the stuck-in-neutral offence of the Giants, which has failed to reach 20 points in five consecutive games. But that tussle, while relegated to the undercard, could go a long way toward determining the outcome of the most intriguing game of the opening weekend of the NFL post-season.
“It’s gonna be a great opportunity,” Giants quarterback Eli Manning said this week. “They’re a good team. They’re playing great football. Defensively they’re getting a lot of turnovers. Offensively they’re scoring a lot of points. Aaron is playing great football. So they’re coming in hot. We know we’ve got to play smart. We’ve got to find ways to win. We’ve got to keep it close and make some plays in the fourth quarter and win the football game kind of like the way we’ve been winning it all year.”
The Packers were at their lowest point this season when their defence was at its worst. After losing to the Washington Redskins, 42-24, on Nov. 20 at FedEx Field, the Packers had lost four straight games and had a record of 4-6. They’d surrendered 153 points during the fourgame skid. Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins threw for 375 yards and three touchdowns that night and often had his choice of wideopen receivers.
But veteran defensive co-ordinator Dom Capers pulled things together. Linebacker Clay Matthews, who’d returned to the lineup in the Redskins game after missing three games because of a hamstring injury, served as a steadying influence as the Packers yielded only 36 points over their next three games, winning all of them. Matthews also played with a shoulder injury down the stretch but remains a difference-maker, with five sacks in 12 games this season.
The Packers kept winning even while surrendering a total of 76 points over their final three games of the regular season. They have had to patch together their lineup in the secondary of late, and they’ll take the league’s 31st-ranked pass defence during the regular season into Sunday.
“Dom, I think he has everything there is in the book,” Giants head coach Ben McAdoo says. “He does a nice job tailoring what they do defensively to their players. Their front is still getting after the quarterback, and that’s the key to their game. In their secondary, they do have some young guys that are playing. They’re playing a multitude of guys. But they have talented players back there who can make plays and they fit well off of the front.”
The Giants, meanwhile, need another magical post-season run from Manning. He took the Giants to unlikely Super Bowl triumphs over the New England Patriots in the 2007 and 2011 seasons. Each of those post-season runs included a victory in Green Bay.
The Giants have tried everything lately to try to get the offence revved up. Manning threw the ball 63 times during a loss at Philadelphia in the second-to-last game of the regular season. The running game was featured during Sunday’s win in a regular-season finale in which the Giants had nothing at stake in terms of their post-season seeding but still knocked the Redskins from the playoffs. Even so, the Giants haven’t had a 20-point game since a 27-13 triumph Nov. 27 at Cleveland.
They didn’t do much on offence, either, when they faced the Packers in Green Bay this season. The Packers prevailed, 23-16, in early October as the Giants managed only three field goals and Manning’s TD pass to wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. with less than three minutes to play. Manning was sacked three times and threw for only 199 yards on 18-for-35 passing. The Giants ran for only 43 yards and Beckham had a modest 56 receiving yards.