BLOCK HEADS
PLENTY OF BLAME FOR GIANTS’ OL DISASTER
THE HONEYMOON is over for Ben McAdoo.
It ended unceremoniously on Sunday night against the Cowboys.
It ended because the Giants raised Super Bowl expectations through the roof when they handed Eli Manning new weapons to team with Odell Beckham Jr. and complement a defense that has a chance to be dominant.
The offense is McAdoo’s baby, and the ba by needs a diaper change.
It is broken, and McAdoo needs to fix it, and fast.
The Giants have now gone seven straight games without scoring 20 points. And six of them have been with His 13Ness on the field.
Beckham can’t and shouldn’t be asked to be the savior every damn night.
But he will have to be once again if the offensive line continues its Bataan march to nowhere and leaves the head coach and the quarterback in a sinkhole.
If GM Jerry Reese is proven wrong on this offensive line, and McAdoo can’t find a way to overcome its recurring inadequacies, then no Supe for you, Giants fans.
McAdoo, remember, used the offseason to identify 100 areas of improvement.
It didn’t look like his offense or his offensive line was one of them Sunday night.
It is disconcerting to panicstricken Giants fans that they find themselves fearing once again that the offensive line will be this team’s Achilles’ heel.
The questions and concerns that have hung over the franchise since Super Bowl XLVI won’t go away:
Will Reese’s gamble that his young offensive linemen would grow and mature into a cohesive unit blow up in his face?
Was keeping the offensive line intact a grievous leap of faith that will sabotage the season?
Beckham, of course, changes the complexion of the offense, because that is what superstars do.
Everyone was forced to raise their game. No one did.
More than anyone else, Manning, who requires a clean pocket, and McAdoo, who will call better and bolder plays downfield when Beckham returns, have to be better.
If the offensive line could impose its will in the trenches, it would make it considerably easier for Manning and McAdoo to exploit the soft zones on the back end that have tormented them and forced them to take what is given instead of what they want and inch their way up the field as long as they can protect The Duke.
“It wasn’t one group or one position or one player,” McAdoo said.
That’s a better job of protection than Manning had.
Manning can’t play scared and McAdoo can’t coach scared, and of course that’s easier said than done when The Great Wall of East Rutherford comes crumbling down.
Beckham ’s absence forced Brandon Mar - shall, signed to be Robin to Beckham’s Batman, to again be Batman, and he is no longer a No. 1 receiver.
He either couldn’t get open or Manning never looked his way, or both. Marshall is not in sync with Manning, but four targets all night? Often against a rookie corner? Where were the plays designed for him to be a possession receiver?
McAdoo’s challenge is to start coaching above the X’s and O’s on the offensive side of the ball.
I picked the 2017 Giants to win the Super Bowl fully expecting them to be more diverse and explosive and less predictable with the arrival of Marshall and rookie tight end Evan Engram, and I drank the offensive line Kool-Aid. Consider me alarmed. The Giants assured us that all was well with the offense, the offensive line was in the hands of ascending players who could presumably pick up defensive line stunts, the quarterback was a young 36, Paul Perkins was the starting running back, tight end Rhett Ellison and the addition of a fullback would enhance the physicality, and Marshall and Engram would make defenses pay for daring to double Beckham, so on and so forth.
It is only one game, but the inevitable first impression you are forced to reach is that the defense is good enough to keep the game close just as the offensive line is bad enough to keep the game close ... unless and until Beckham rides to the rescue.
It is a dangerous way to live, because it leaves Manning and McAdoo with little or no room for error, and it didn’t get the Giants that fifth Lombardi Trophy last season, and it won’t this season.
“We need to find a way to win a ballgame this week and find a way to get better up-front in a hurry,” McAdoo said. Fix it, Ben. Fix it now.