The New York Giants surrendered 276 rushing yards in their 38-20 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. Both Saquon Barkley and Tank Bigsby topped the 100-yard mark as the Eagles averaged 8.4 yards per carry, with each back exceeding 10 yards per attempt. There’s no other way to slice it — the Giants were flat-out embarrassed on the ground.
The Giants couldn’t fit the run, tackle, or slow down an Eagles rushing attack that entered Week 8 averaging a measly 88 yards per game, ranking 29th in the NFL. Yes, the officiating was comically bad — to the point where fans are questioning the integrity of Brad Rogers’ crew — but that doesn’t change the fact that Philadelphia manhandled the Giants in the trenches.
The Giants couldn’t handle Philadelphia’s double-teams up front; the edge rushers lost contain multiple times, and the linebackers — particularly Darius Muasau — were not gap-sound. Overall, the defense was undisciplined in its run fits, and the third-level defenders — notably Tyler Nubin — lacked the quickness and range to compensate for the breakdowns up front. Then there’s the sloppy tackling, which Muasau was guilty of multiple times. He missed four of five tackle attempts, for an 80% missed-tackle rate.
The Giants held Philadelphia to just 73 yards (3.7 yards per carry) two weeks ago. The Eagles honored the run more seriously in Week 8 and attacked the Giants outside the tackles. On the nub tight end side, the Eagles pulled their play side tackle and center to the frontside multiple times throughout the game. Philadelphia also incorporated center skip-pulls, G-Lead (play-side guard), an HB misdirection crack toss pitch, among other more common rushing concepts.
The Eagles also ran their signature tush push, with quarterback Jalen Hurts granted the luxury of fighting for extra yardage without worrying about ball security. What a luxury!
Enough snarkiness from me. Let’s go through five run defense plays — if we can call it that — where the Eagles embarrassed the Giants.
Second play of the game
A second-and-10. Philadelphia aligned with six offensive linemen (Fred Johnson, No. 74) and tight end Grant Calcaterra (81) on the field side, as well as wide receiver Darius Cooper (80). The Giants align in an OVER front with Roy Robertson-Harris (95) as the six-technique over the sixth offensive lineman acting as a tight end.
This defensive alignment is used to account for Philadelphia’s extra muscle, but it leaves a natural bubble in the backside B-Gap. Rakeem Nunez-Roches (93) is the backside one-technique with Kayvon Thibodeaux as the backside edge; there is A LOT of space between the two players. Nunez-Roches’ one-technique alignment made the double-team between center Brett Toth (64) and Landon Dickerson (69) naturally leveraged, meaning the COMBO-Climb up to Muasau would negate the linebacker from fitting the backside B-Gap. Unfortunately, this is precisely what happened.
Muasau failed to be cognizant of the backside responsibility as Barkley pressed the frontside. To the Giants’ credit, the frontside played the run well, but Muasau failed to err on the side of caution and got caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar. This is one of a few major mistakes Muasau has made in the run game this season — many of these mistakes are blamed on safety Tyler Nubin’s (27) angle discernment, which isn’t exactly fair; let me explain …
This is a failure because Nunez-Roches is pushed backward into Muasau, who rendered himself incapable of executing his run responsibility. This put Nubin in a spot — from depth — to fill the B-Gap against Barkley. Nubin lacks the athletic quickness to close this gap and restrict the space of a back who bounces outside. Nubin does a poor job here, too, but he is put into this position by his teammates, and Nubin’s poor job is more of a fundamental issue with his talents — a lack of play speed. Nubin likely could have pressed up to the line of scrimmage a bit more as well.
One more point on Nubin: his below-average athleticism has shown up multiple times this season, particularly when he’s forced to chase a back toward the sideline before the opponent finds the end zone. Nubin has to win with instincts and processing, but right now, he’s playing tentative football. A more aggressive approach when filling downhill — especially to clean up mistakes from the front seven — might suit him better. He also needs to close space more decisively and avoid stopping his feet when coming downhill, as his stop-start ability is marginal in those situations. This was a terribly deflating way to start a road football game.
18 yards for Bigsby
With 11:28 left in the first quarter, down seven, the Giants surrendered this 18-yard rush to Tank Bigsby:
Philadelphia went under center in 12 personnel, with an extra offensive lineman again. New York aligned in a five-man front with Brian Burns (0) as the edge defender outside of Dallas Goedert (88), toward the side of Tae Banks (2), which was the field side. There are no pullers; it’s a simple run where Philadelphia creates two double teams on the nose and front-side five-technique, with Burns on Goedert to the play side. The double team by Johnson (Lane as well, No. 65) wipes Robertson-Harris down the line of scrimmage, but no one climbs to Bobby Okereke (58).
Burns doesn’t set the edge against Goedert; he keeps the tight end off his chest, but the defense concedes too much space, allowing Bigsby to win the edge. This mishap by Burns was compounded by Banks, who seemingly rarely knows where to be on the football field. So both contain defenders fail to contain, and Bigsby scampers for 18 yards and an easy first down.
Okereke waited for the double-team in front of him to clear and then reacted once Bigsby committed outside. The veteran linebacker failed to locate Bigsby. Okereke was where he needed to be and was not necessarily in the wrong, but a more athletic player would likely have closed that gap and made that tackle; quicker instincts from Okereke may have prevented the play altogether, but it was not Okereke who left the edge of the defense defenseless.
Barkley for 28 yards
At the end of the third quarter, down 24-13 on a first-and-10, Barkley broke off this run before coming up a bit hobbled at the end of the play.
The Giants have been vulnerable against outside runs all year, and the Eagles exploited that to the tune of 277 yards on the ground. This variation of crack toss toward the double-Y boundary side allowed Lane Johnson to kick around the two tight ends who double-teamed Robertson-Harris. The center, Brett Toth, who filled in for Cam Jurgens, was fantastic, pulling into space all game, and the Eagles used the West Point graduate’s talents in that regard.
Johnson hit Burns, Toth took out Korie Black (38), and Okereke overpursued to the outside in an attempt to box Barkely inward toward Dane Belton (24), whose angle wasn’t perfect. This was a five-man front with Muasau blitzing toward the field side, and the Eagles ran away from the blitz. Tyler Steen’s (56) handful of D.J. Davidson’s (98) jersey didn’t help the Giants’ cause, but it was a well-timed play call that was well executed to the front side by Philadelphia. New York was out-physicaled in the trenches on defense for the entirety of this game.
29 yards on 2nd-and-26
If there’s anything that’s going to define Shane Bowen’s tenure as the defensive coordinator in New York — other than expletives — it’s surrendering long plays after pressing the offense up against a wall. This Bigsby 29-yard run on second-and-26 is all too familiar, and came just one play after Brian Burns sacked Jalen Hurts for a 16-yard loss.
The Giants slant to the offensive left as the center folds around Dickerson’s block of Davidson on the zone-read play. Burns defeated Jordan Mailata (68) to the front side of the play; to the backside, where Bigsby cut the rock toward, Carter went wide around Lane Johnson and Goedert, who both stumbled out of their stances due to their feet getting tangled — this was not the first time that happened in this football game.
Still, Bigsby identifies and locates the cut-back and reads the flow of the defense well, but there was a waiting unblocked linebacker in Muasau, who stopped his feet and allowed Bigsby to get outside. Black took on Carter’s block to the outside, and Muasau’s athletic limitation showed up — again — as Bigsby powers through his would-be tackle attempt, and the linebacker falls into Black and Carter.
I will not absolve Bowen, for these issues are persistent ; still, at some point, the players need to do their jobs. I have watched terrible linebacking play since I’ve covered this team. This Week 8 game for Muasau is among the worst.
Make a tackle!
It’s garbage time at the end of the game; the final play that results in a 17-yard gain for Bigsby, who forced five missed tackles in the game — at least two or three on this play:
Perhaps I was conservative before; it seemed like there were five missed tackles on this play alone. Massive effort from Bigsby against a despondent and beat-up Giants’ defense, who failed to defend the run all game.
Final thoughts
The Giants were destroyed on the ground against the Eagles. They were out-muscled, failed to execute, and were just deconstructed by Philadelphia. A deflating performance for a prideful Giants’ defense that needs to do something quick with Christian McCaffrey and Kyle Shanahan coming to town in Week 9.
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