Defense rests with sub-par day
GREEN BAY — The Giants’ miraculous, season-long defensive turnaround that fueled their playoff run crumbled when it mattered most: in the second half of a playoff game against Aaron Rodgers. Though it had stifled the mighty Green Bay offense for much of the first half in the Giants’ 38-13 loss to the Packers Sunday, Big Blue gave up a Hail Mary to end the second quarter before falling apart after halftime.
“I feel like we played great defense all year and that’s why it hurts me so bad,” linebacker Devon Kennard said. “It’s just I hate that the season’s ending and I feel like as a defense we played like crap at least for a half of football.”
The vaunted secondary could not handle Rodgers, who passed for more yards (362) than any quarterback against the Giants this season, and added four TDs.
“I think the first series we get a three and out in the second half and after that it was like a snowball effect and it felt like nothing was going our way defensively,” Kennard said. “We know what our formula was to win all year and it’s great defense, field position, special teams.” That equation didn’t pan out . What caused the sudden faults in the Giants’ defense?
“Aaron Rodgers happened today,” Jonathan Casillas said. “He did what he do. He created. He extended plays.”
A critical moment came on the second defensive play of the game, when Dominique RodgersCromartie made a play on Jared Cook and came up hurt.
“Something caught me in the thigh, I couldn’t lift my leg,” he said. It was a severe bruise but nothing worse, the cornerback said. He tried to work his way back, and even played a couple of snaps on special teams, but was done for the day on defense.
“I mean it’s huge, he’s one of the best players on our team,” Casillas said. “One of the best corners in the league. So whenever you take him off the team it’s going to be tough for us.”
Rodgers-Cromartie said he thought he could have made a big impact had he been able to play, though he clarified that he didn’t necessarily think that could have changed the outcome.
“I felt like I knew them guys,” Rodgers-Cromartie said. “If you looked at it now, I felt a lot of plays were made in the slot. Coming from (Randall) Cobb or even putting 17 (Davante Adams) in there. So that one definitely hurt.”
What made the breakdown surprising, even without RodgersCromartie, was that the Giants’ defense opened the game by suppressing the Packers like it had done to so many opponents recently. Green Bay opened the game with five straight drives that ended in punts.
“You could see it, you could see they were a little frustrated, Aaron Rodgers was a little frustrated,” Casillas said. “They couldn’t really do too much. We were getting to ’em, we were hitting ’em.”
Eventually, them pay.
“It’s bittersweet just knowing how good we were this year,” Casillas said. Rodgers made USA TODAY