NFL New York Giants

New York Giants Need A New Voice On Defense

Fresh Videos

By @Bigwoolf5

New York Giants, Perry Fewell

The Star-Ledger-USA TODAY Sports

The New York Giants finished this season 6-10, and although this was always going to be a transition year for a team installing a new offense, it’s New York and somebody likely has to take the fall for another year of missing the playoffs. It has been announced that head coach Tom Coughlin will be back, and offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo will also be back after his offense showed marked improvement in his first year with the team. That leaves defensive coordinator Perry Fewell as the guy who should lose his job.

Fewell has been with the Giants since 2010 and has had some success. He was the defensive coordinator for the team when they won the Super Bowl in 2012 against the New England Patriots. After winning the Super Bowl Fewell was being targeted as a possible head coach for many teams, but he decided to stay and hasn’t been able to repeat the success from 2012 since.

The 2013 Giants ranked eighth in the league in total defense, but they feasted on a ton of backup quarterbacks. This year’s Giants defense had a crazy amount of injuries, but even before those started happening the defense was underachieving. And yes, the players and Coughlin really want him back, but just like with the offense last year, it’s time for the Giants to bring in a new voice and scheme for the defense.

This year’s Giants defense ranked as one of the bottom five units in the league and allowed big plays on a regular basis. Even before the injuries started to decimate the team big plays were a huge problem. In the season opener against the Detroit Lions, Calvin Johnson found himself wide open for a 50-plus yard touchdown because of miscommunication, and that seems to happen far too often under Fewell.

Another issue under Fewell is an inconsistent pass rush. Now some of that can be blamed on the players for not winning one-on-one matchups, but it took Fewell way too long to start blitzing more. The Giants were near the bottom of the league in sacks for the majority of the season until Week 13 when Fewell finally decided to start sending more blitzes because the four-man pass rush wasn’t getting it done. After Fewell started blitzing more the Giants started racking up the sacks and ended the season near the top of the league.

This was an adjustment Fewell should have made much earlier in the year and maybe things would have been different. Many fans will remember the last drive against the Dallas Cowboys in Week 12 when Tony Romo had all day to throw the ball and eventually threw a game-winning touchdown pass to Dez Bryant. Also during that game, Fewell was unable to get the right players in on that final drive. He admitted after the game that since he was only rushing four guys he should have had his best pass rushers on the field, And at that point in the season Robert Ayers was the team’s best pass rusher, but he was sitting on the bench.

This season Fewell has made mistakes that shouldn’t be made by a veteran defensive coordinator who has won a Super Bowl. The fact that Fewell has the support of his players does mean something, and he could defend himself by saying the team was decimated by injuries. But this year the Giants defense was dreadful and they need a change. Yes they have personnel issues, but the consistent lack of pass rush and the amount of big plays his defenses consistently allow are reason enough to fire Fewell and start fresh on the defensive side of the ball.

Share Tweet
Trending Now on