GET A GRIP!
Giant coaching staff all over sloppy team out for first win
The urgency of the Giants’ coaching staff is coming through clearly this week. Joe Judge cut wide receiver Damion Ratley for an offensive pass interference penalty that negated Daniel Jones’ touchdown pass to Darius Slayton in Dallas last Sunday. And his assistants also spared no one with fair but pointed critiques in a series of Tuesday Zoom calls approaching
Sunday’s home game against Washington (1-4).
Quarterback coach Jerry Schuplinski directed honest culpability at Jones for last week’s sack fumble returned for a touchdown, despite the quick pressure the QB faced from the backside.
“They had a really good call on, we didn’t handle it very well (blocking), and we certainly compounded the mistake by putting the ball on the ground,” Schuplinski said. “So on some of those plays, when they get you, it’s our responsibility to understand when you’re got and just sorta say it’s over and try to cover it up as best we can and go down.
“The hard part with that is Daniel has made some really good plays with his feet and gotten away from those (pressures on other plays),” the QB coach added. “So it’s the whole judgment of when is it really done and when you have a chance to move on. Regardless, we’ve got to put two hands on it and take better care of that.”
Offensive line coach Marc Colombo, meanwhile, said his front five has to be way better — not just improved — to help the winless Giants (0-5) handle Washington’s formidable defensive front.
“I said this a couple weeks ago: We’ve got to start taking leaps,” Colombo said. “We really haven’t done that. They’ve been kind of baby steps. And that’s something we’re gonna have to fix.”
Colombo was specifically critical of Andrew Thomas and the rookie left tackle’s early struggles in letting pass rushers inside of him (or past Thomas’ right shoulder) for a more direct line of attack at Jones. Colombo called that mistake a “cardinal sin” for a lineman.
“What he’s doing, he’s snapping out of his stance and he’s kind of overshooting his target,” Colombo said. “And when you put that on film, you’re gonna get a heavy dose of it. They’re gonna change it up, they’re gonna fake upfield and come back underneath. He’s gotta realize one thing I tell these guys: focus on your target. If your target’s the outside number (on the pass-rusher’s jersey), that’s it. Wherever that target goes, you go.
“He’s getting excited, he’s trying to set out there with quickness, handle the speed,” Colombo added. “(But) he’s got feet to handle the speed. The inside move, it’s a cardinal sin for an offensive lineman to lose inside … He’s gotta know every single defensive end has watched it and seen it have success, and you’re gonna get it all game. Until you shut it down and put it on tape shutting down the inside move, you’re gonna get it every time.”
Both Schuplinski and Colombo were complimentary of Jones and
Thomas, too. They’re not criticizing their players to embarrass them; they’re doing it to teach them, and they’re just as eager to praise them when they do well.
“It’s my job to keep (Thomas’) confidence up, to tell him the things he did well in the game, but it’s also my job to harp on every little tiny thing that he’s done wrong,” Colombo said.
Frankly, though, it is refreshing that Judge’s assistant coaches are well aware of their 0-5 record, nowhere close to satisfied, and not in denial of the reality they face. Because when defensive tackle Dalvin Tomlinson said Monday that “every game is super close for us, we just have to get over the top,” it makes you wonder where in the world Tomlinson got that idea.
It’s not coming from Judge and his coaching staff, that’s for sure.
They may be building player confidence, which is also important, by reinforcing that they’ve had a chance to tie or win some of these games late. But they are not sugarcoating anything about the first five weeks being anywhere close to good enough.
And clearly Judge’s assistants are constantly nitpicking details just like their head coach, who called out linebacker Blake Martinez two weeks ago in a film breakdown on the team’s website for a missed tackle.
“My personality, the personality of this coaching staff, is we’re very blunt, open and honest,” Judge said Wednesday. “I’m not really sitting here trying to sell you a car.
We’re not recruiting you to college. I’m going to tell you the truth every day. You have to be mentally tough to handle that, you have to understand the criticism that we’re giving to you, and you have to be able to take the coaching and move forward with it.”
This isn’t just happening on the offensive side of the ball, either. Defensive backs coach Jerome
Henderson spared no one on Tuesday. His comments on Ryan Lewis, who was beaten by Michael Gallup on the deep pass that set up the Cowboys’ game-winning field goal, made it sound like Madre Harper might start this week.
“I thought he played physical[ly],” he said. “He did miss some tackles that we’ve got to clean up. He played with good awareness. There were a couple plays we’d love to have back. I know for him that last play is one he would like to have back, that I know I’d like for him to have back, and all the Giant fans all over the world would, but we don’t get that.
“And as I watch that play,” Henderson said, “I’d like him to stay on his feet and, in the position he was in, maybe play it out of his hands instead of looking back. But he’s playing in real time and against really good players and I thought they did a great job executing and hopefully we learn from that lesson, and next time that comes up I feel like Ryan’s gonna make that play for us.”
Henderson also said that while James Bradberry is playing well, “the one play he’d love to have back is the one in two minute where the quarterback escapes” and Andy Dalton hit Gallup down the right sideline, prior to the deep pass on Lewis. Bradberry also saw Cooper Kupp sprint right by him for the Rams’ clinching touchdown the week prior due to bad technique.
The DB’s coach left no gray area either for free safety Adrian Colbert’s pair of unnecessary roughness penalties for helmet-to-helmet hits on Cowboys rookie receiver CeeDee Lamb. Both penalties extended Cowboy drives that led to 10 Dallas first-half points.
“You don’t lessen your aggression but you do have to change your target,” Henderson said. “He’s got to get that fixed. He cannot make those penalties for us in those moments. He’s gotta lower his target … I want him to change his aiming point, and he’s got to have discipline to do that in the moment.”
And inside linebacker coach Kevin Sherrer, while highly complimentary of Martinez’s overall play in the middle of the defense, had no problem describing the linebacker’s costly missed tackle on Amari Cooper on Dallas’ final drive.
“It was just a basic fundamental that was not there,” Sherrer said. “He had a drop in a location there that we gave him on that field, and he was a little bit short of that mark. Had he been two or three yards over on that mark in that area of the field we tell him to kind of work to, it would have been probably just a simple catch, tackle him up, maybe get seven or eight yards. So I think he was trying to possibly do a little too much instead of just play within the system and the scheme and the situation that presented itself.
“And he knew it, he knew as soon as it happened what exactly had gone on,” Sherrer said. “That’s the good thing about (Martinez) is a lot of times you’re telling him things he kind of already knows. But yeah, he was hard on himself because that was a critical time in the game where we were calling the zone to keep them in front of us to tackle them and keep the clock running and force them to make a decision. And it turns into a big play for them.”
Judge and his coaches are leaving nothing to chance. They’re coaching their players hard but fairly and honestly, no matter if it’s their starting quarterback or the 53rd man on the roster.
And they know they need a result to reinforce all of it. That’s what they’re working towards for Sunday.