Deep Ball is Not the New York Giants’ Friend

By Dan Soden on November 5, 2014

Jerry Reese made it clear that he wants the New York Giants to be more aggressive on offense, and it looks like they’ve tried to answer that by throwing the ball deep. This didn’t really workout for them in Monday night’s loss to the Indianapolis Colts and it probably won’t bode well for them against the Seattle Seahawks either.

Up until last week, the formula of throwing it deep on the Seahawks has worked. They’ve been allowing a 49.3 completion percentage on throws 10 or more yards downfield, but all that changed last week when the Seahawks beat the Oakland Raiders.

The Seahawks were able to grab two interceptions off the rookie Derek Carr, and they were also able to hold the Raiders to a 30 percent completion rate, but that’s a rookie and the Giants have Eli Manning.

I get that Manning clearly has more experience at quarterback, but the reality is that he hasn’t been connecting with his receiving core like we would all like and the offensive line has left much to be desired. People will complain about head coach Tom Coughlin constantly sticking to the run. The reality is this team just doesn’t have the ability to consistently throw it down the field.

The offensive line, now without rookie Weston Richburg, has been a mix of average and bad, something you would expect the Seahawks to take advantage of like teams have for the past few weeks.

On Monday night, Manning went 0-for-7 when attempting to throw the ball 20 yards downfield; if you add to that the fact that he overthrew his receiver 11 times, it is clear Manning was trying to force something.

I’m sure the pressure of his general manger wanting more from the offense is making it easy, but for a 10-year pro to switch over offensive coordinators and systems, I’m sure there is more to this than just wanting to make management happy. Also, have we mentioned how bad that offensive line has been?