Giants’ versatile line of defense
Tight-knit, versatile unit must keep heat on full blast vs. Pats
Among New York’s defensive line players, there is no greater sin than costing the team a sack,
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Some things can be tolerated. The quarterback throws the football a split second before the hit. A blocker grabs a fistful of jersey. A running back picks up a blitz.
Yet it is pretty well established within the culture of the New York Giants defensive line that one thing must never, ever happen as a pocket is collapsing.
There is no greater sin than costing your brother a sack.
Let Osi Umenyiora, the elder statesman, explain.
“Maybe I’m coming around the edge and (Justin) Tuck made an inside move, and the quarterback runs to the left and escapes,” the ninth-year defensive end said. “Then it’s going to cost him $500.
“It’s hell when you miss one. Everybody is going to let you know about it.”
Everybody would be this collection of
athletic, versatile and battle-tested linemen who form the heart of a defense trying to win Super Bowl XLVI.
From Umenyiora and Tuck to underrated defensive tackles Linval Joseph and Chris Canty to budding star Jason Pierre-paul and others, they tend to see each other as family.
And you know what they say about family. They can be tougher to please than anyone else. Imagine the meeting room where this defensive line plots strategy and breaks down video.
“You have to have thick skin to sit in that room,” defensive coordinator Perry Fewell says. “Anything they can compete on or one-up each other on — anything, even the seats they sit in — they are going at it.”
One bone of contention accompanying the ride to XLVI: Sack King.
There’s actually a crown for this, proudly held by Pierre-paul, the second-year pro who led the team and finished fourth in the NFL during the regular season with 16½ sacks and was named first-team all-pro. Someone disputes that he should wear the crown.
“Osi tries to argue that the crown should be based on sacks per play,” says defensive line coach Robert Nunn, mindful that Umenyiora’s nine sacks during an injury-disrupted regular season came in nine games. “He’s not winning that one.”
It is part of Nunn’s job to facilitate order and focus in a room where the principals love to police themselves. Recent weeks have demonstrated, with the healthier line recording seven sacks and 11 hurries in road playoff victories against the Green Bay Packers and San Francisco 49ers, that their methods are working.
“He understands how we function,” Tuck says of Nunn, in his second year on the job and at his fifth NFL stop. “We may joke around, but guys know how to shake it off and get serious. He gives us that freedom.
“If we didn’t perform, I’m sure he’d put his foot down.”
Uncommon roads to NFL
The bond is deeper than dominant play or slapstick comedy.
Consider how some of them got here. Pierre-paul, the son of Haitian immigrants, went to three colleges in three years. Umenyiora, born in London, lived in Nigeria for eight years and didn’t begin playing football until he was 15, when he moved to Alabama to live with his older sister Nkem.
Then there’s Dave Tollefson, a fifthyear backup end who was cut by the Packers and Oakland Raiders and once played for the Frankfurt Galaxy in the NFL Europa league.
Tollefson was out of football for three years, reaching an apparent dead end after playing two years at Los Medanos Community College in Pittsburg, Calif. He was working as a carpenter when former teammate Damien Chumley implored him to come join him at Northwest Missouri State because he knew he’d make the team.
“It changed my life,” says Tollefson, father of two boys. His specialty as a carpenter? “It was kind of like a synopsis of my NFL career,” he says with a chuckle, mindful of his career-high five sacks this season. “Nothing really special, but I can do everything well enough.”
When Umenyiora, then 15, left his parents in Nigeria and moved in with Nkem in Auburn, Ala., a friend suggested he try football. Initially, Umenyiora rejected the suggestion, knowing his parents, John and stepmother Ijeoma, would not have approved.
“Nigerian parents, when they send you here, they send you to go to school — nothing else,” Umenyiora says. “One day, I was like, ‘Let me see what happens.’ And here I am.”
It wasn’t exactly a direct path. Umenyiora’s grades slipped, and his parents demanded that Osi quit football.
He begged Nkem to let him resume football, and she agreed to keep it a secret. He picked his grades up.
“When they knew I was playing, I was on my way to college,” Umenyiora, drafted in the second round by the Giants in 2003 from Troy, said of his parents.
Umenyiora has posted 5½ sacks since Week 17, but it was a tough season. He missed four games with a high ankle sprain and three games after arthroscopic knee surgery. He held out in a training camp contract dispute.
“When I came back (from the holdout), the love I got in that room, there’s nothing like it,” he says. “It’s like we really are brothers.”
Tuck battled his own issues in what he considers the toughest year of his life. He has lost his grandfather and two uncles since camp opened. Another uncle died in January 2011.
“Because it all happened in such a short period of time, that’s going to be tough on anybody,” Tuck says. “Honestly, I haven’t had time to have breakdowns. You go down, see the family, pay your respects at the funeral, shed your tears, get back on a plane and go play a football game.”
In August, Tuck played in a preseason game against the New York Jets hours after burying his grandfather, Leroy, 84. Two plays before coaches were set to remove him, Tuck collided with a Jets lineman. The ensuing neck injury began a string of physical setbacks.
He missed the season opener with the neck injury and missed three games in October with groin and neck injuries. There also were ankle, toe, back and shoulder injuries. He counted seven injuries to seven body parts.
“There were a lot of times this year when I thought, ‘I don’t want to play this game anymore,’ ” Tuck says. “So that’s been my biggest struggle.”
Mixing and matching
Tuck rolls his eyes when asked how many times he expects to hear during Super Bowl week that the defensive line might have to carry the Giants to victory.
“It will come up in every single interview,” he says.
In the last Super Bowl, when Michael Strahan was the proven star, Tuck made a name for himself with two sacks and a forced fumble.
Tuck, Umenyiora and Tollefson are the only players left from the defensive line that pestered Tom Brady in the last Super Bowl, but the gist of the mission hasn’t changed.
“If we’re not able to get pressure on Tom Brady, we don’t stand a chance to win this game,” Umenyiora says. “A lot of it will fall on our shoulders.”
That includes Pierre-paul, a 2010 firstround pick from South Florida who reminds Tuck of himself when he broke in under Strahan.
“This year, he came in hungry,” Tuck says. “He came in the meeting room asking questions, really engaging. The first year, he didn’t seem interested in it. He really surprised me this year by how he matured, watching film, studying and giving me feedback for what’s happening on the field.”
Pierre-paul has been the line’s most consistent playmaker this season. In December, he won NFC player of the week honors twice in three weeks.
The Giants have the NFL’S most versatile defensive line. Tuck, as he did in XLII, often lines up as a defensive tackle. Pierre-paul has lined up at middle linebacker. Linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka, a converted lineman, is a key blitzer. Tollefson also plays tackle.
“They have so many interchangeable parts, they can look at how teams protect and look for mismatches,” says former NFL coach Tony Dungy, an NBC analyst. “They do a great job, using the talents of six or seven rushers.”
Says Nunn, “At some point this season, everyone has had to be the key link in the chain to keep us going.”
If not, they’d never hear the end of it in the meeting room.