Big Blue View<\/a>, the SB Nation community for all things Giants.<\/p>\nHere is what he told us about the upcoming game and opponent.<\/p>\n
1. Are you expecting to see Jameis Winston or Jaxson Dart on Monday night? How has the pass game adapted to each quarterback?<\/p>\n
I would expect to see Dart. Concussions, though, are difficult to predict and I expected to see Dart last Sunday when the Giants played the Lions. He practiced all week and took the majority of first-team reps on Friday, then still did not clear the protocol.<\/p>\n
Jameis Winston can still sling the rock. His Average Depth of Target of 10.3 yards per pass would lead the league if he had enough pass attempts. Dart\u2019s is 9.4, and that is second in the league behind Sam Darnold among starting quarterbacks.<\/p>\n
The Giants, even without Malik Nabers, want to go vertical. That isn\u2019t going to change regardless of who is at quarterback.<\/p>\n
FWIW, Dart is the future. He is the Giants\u2019 engine. He is the guy for them. The team, though, loves to play for Winston. You should see the smiles that light up guy\u2019s faces whenever they are asked about Winston. It\u2019s pretty remarkable.<\/p>\n
2. How has the ground game looked without Cam Skattebo?<\/p>\n
Skattebo is a good, exciting player. Everybody forgets, though, that Tyrone Tracy had nearly 1,200 total yards of offense last year, entered this year as the Giants\u2019 RB1, and is a really good player. In the last two weeks, Tracy had 139 yards from scrimmage vs. the Packers and 130 vs. the Lions.<\/p>\n
The Giants are using Tracy as the primary back and Devin Singletary as more of the short-yardage or Red and Black zone back.<\/p>\n
The offensive line is not a mauling, blow defenses off the ball line. Run blocking can be an issue. Mike Kafka, though, has continued to evolve the running game and has used different blocking and running schemes, more or less probing to find some way to be efficient running the ball. It\u2019s been effective enough.<\/p>\n
3. Which underrated player on offense and defense do Patriots fans need to know?<\/p>\n
On offense, I already talked about Tyrone Tracy, so I will say second-year tight end Theo Johnson. He is a guy former head coach Brian Daboll used to show clips of Rob Gronkowski as a teaching tool. Johnson is 6-foot-6, 264 pounds and had been developing nicely. He has at least three catches in eight of the last nine games, and has become a guy Dart and Winston have been begun to look for to make tough catches in big situations. He has cut his drop rate in half this year, as well.<\/p>\n
On defense, there are not a lot of bright spots. One, though, is cornerback Cor\u2019Dale Flott. He is a fourth-year player despite still being just 24 years old. He earned a full-time starting job this season for the first time, beating our former first-round pick Deonte Banks.<\/p>\n
Flott has clearly been the Giants\u2019 best cornerback, really the best defensive back, this season.<\/p>\n
4. The Giants\u2019 team pass rush numbers aren\u2019t great, but Dexter Lawrence, Brian Burns, and Abdul Carter are among the most productive rushers at their respective positions. Is there a clear reason for this? And how have teams managed to slow them down?<\/p>\n
Brian Burns is having a career year. He already has a career-high 13 sacks. Dexter Lawrence and Abdul Carter each have only a half-sack and have not produced the way they were expected to. The pressure numbers are fine, but the latter two have not actually made any impact plays.<\/p>\n
Lawrence is dealing with an elbow injury and, while the Giants won\u2019t say it, I think he has been doing so all year. Carter was thought of as the second coming of Micah Parsons, and we haven\u2019t seen it yet.<\/p>\n
The run defense has been so atrocious it has limited some pass-rush opportunities.<\/p>\n
5. What are the keys to New England extending its nine-game win streak? How can the Giants pull off the road upset?<\/p>\n
This is tricky because the Giants fired defensive coordinator Shane Bowen this week and replaced him with outside linebackers coach Charlie Bullen on an interim basis. The Giants have lost five games this season when they held a double-digit lead, four times failing to hold a lead in the fourth quarter. Abysmal, undisciplined, uninspired defense has been the biggest reason.<\/p>\n
The offense will compete and has produced more than could have been expected.<\/p>\n
For the Patriots, I would say be prepared for the kitchen sink, on both sides of the ball. For the Giants, they need to play with more discipline and resolve on defense than they have, and create some breaks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After 12 weeks of football, the New England Patriots are close to their bye week. There is one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151216,99],"class_list":["post-318713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-england-patriots-game-previews","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}