Week 1: Tales from the timeline

Nick Falato goes through some of his All-22 tweets from the Giants’ Week 1 loss

For the second consecutive year, the New York Giants had an abysmal start to their season. Brian Flores’ unit stymied the offense; the defense couldn’t stop Sam Darnold, and the floodgates of negativity were correctly unbolted as the Giants lost to the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday, 28-6.

Positivity surrounding this Giants’ team is like finding Waldo at a crowded panoramic festival of red-striped shirt enthusiasts. The offensive line, sans Andrew Thomas, was not as good as expected; the quarterback had a horrendous performance, and the defensive line only managed 11 pressures, with six credited to Dexter Lawrence.

Despite the pessimism, here’s the 2024 Week 1 account of Tales from the timeline:

Dexter Lawrence

Dexter Lawrence proved to be one of the most dominant football players in the entire NFL. He accounted for half of the team’s pressures, is currently tied for a league-leading five hurries (with George Karlaftis and Chris Jones of the Chiefs), and saw plenty of double-teams against Kevin O’Connell’s offense.

Despite Lawrence’s performance, the Giants’ defense surrendered 312 total yards, and Sam Darnold looked almost unstoppable for much of the game. Taking Lawrence off the proved to be a risk against the Vikings. Here are four impressive plays from Lawrence:

The rest of the pass-rush

There’s not a lot here. If we covered the Vikings, there would be a LOT of Christian Darrisaw, who dominated Kayvon Thibodeaux for much of the game. Unfortunately, the Giants only had five pressures accrued to players not named Dexter Lawrence. Two of those pressures were to D.J. Davidson, whose best snap came on the Jalen Nailor touchdown:

However, of all the NFL defenders (minus Monday Night Football), Davidson had the third-lowest Pro Football Focus grade in 22 snaps (of defenders that played at least 20% of their team’s snaps). Davidson was bad against the run, and the grade reflects that fact.

Kayvon Thibodeaux was buried at least twice by Darrisaw. It’s safe to start to worry about the 2022 fifth-overall pick if you haven’t already started down that path. Elijah Chatman played 24 snaps and looked over-matched. He found his way on the ground at least three times while pass-rushing.

Brian Burns, however, deserves a slight pass. It’s frustrating that he, too, was virtually non-existent, but O’Connell frequently had a TE or RB on his side:

I still want more from the significant off-season acquisition. Still, it is incumbent on the Giant’s fifth-overall selection to thrive against the many one-on-one matchups he received — but he hardly won a rep as a pass-rusher.

The rest of the defense

If I can come away with one positive takeaway about the Giants’ defense that isn’t named Dexter Lawrence, it would be the two rookie defensive backs: Andru Phillips and Tyler Nubin. Phillips gifted the Giants half their points with a forced fumble that was promptly recovered by another good football player — Bobby Okereke — when the score was even at zero:

This Phillips (22) forced fumble occurred one snap after Dexter Lawrence’s sack. It was the necessary spark the defense had to provide an offense that just went three-and-out. But the offense, is, well, the offense, and only put three on the board. Phillips also had this solid tackle as the primary force defender:

The running back attempted to bounce the run outside of Phillips, who was able to latch on and secure the stop at the line of scrimmage. Speaking of stops at the line of scrimmage, check out this hit by Tyler Nubin:

Nubin (31) filled the C-Gap off the double-team on Rakeem Nunez-Roches (93) and worked through a wide receiver’s block to make the stop against the pistol run. Nubin also showed range and decisiveness in coverage through his 55 total snaps.

Dane Belton played just nine snaps on defense but had a critical pass defensed that was Darnold’s first incomplete pass:

Belton will see the field more often in passing down sub-packages. The Vikings only had ten third-down attempts in the game and were ahead of the sticks for much of the contest.

Deonte Banks had four tackles in the game; the one below was the most impactful:

Unfortunately, a few plays later, Banks surrendered a touchdown to Justin Jefferson. Banks was receiving some safety shade when matched against Jefferson. He saw five targets and surrendered three catches for 56 yards with that touchdown. I also want to highlight Bobby Okereke (58) on the play. He was able to avoid contact and get outside, away from blockers. He likely would have made the stop if Banks failed to get off his block. Still, Okereke didn’t have his best game either, but he is far from the problem with this team.

Offense

Brian Daboll assumed the responsibility as play-caller; with that, he assumed greater responsibility for the struggles of Daniel Jones, the offensive line, et al. There’s no more excuse or scapegoat if this continues to go sideways. There’s also no sugar-coating it: Daniel Jones was flat-out bad Sunday. But first, I want to show a couple of Andrew Thomas plays where he proves he anchors beautifully against a power-rush:

That was nice. He is good. Here are some other offensive plays of note: