Between The Lines: Rebuilt Giants D Line Can Still Create Havoc

Every Tuesday with Between The Lines, I'll pick out some aspect of line play to try to focus on the part of the game that often gets overlooked by television announcers. To begin this year's series, I looked at the Giants defensive line, as the Super Bowl champs try to recover from the loss of Michael Strahan (retirement) and Osi Umenyiora (injury). As we all know, the Giants shut down the Redskins in the season opener last Thursday, but how did the rebuilt defensive line do? Read below to find out.

Overview

Last year the Giants rode a dominating defensive line to a Super Bowl title, but 23 of those sacks are now gone thanks to the losses of Strahan and Umenyiora. The biggest concern is not only how the loss of those two defensive ends will affect the pass rush, but also whether it will take away Justin Tuck's biggest asset--his ability to play defensive tackle as well as defensive end, creating mismatches all across the line.

In the opener, the Giants still moved Tuck around. He lined up at defensive tackle for nine snaps and stood up as a linebacker for two third down plays. Tuck didn't get a lot of pressure from the defensive tackle spot in this game, but most of his action at DT came in the final drive of the game, when the Giants were just finishing off the Redskins.
The Giants were also looking to see what they would get from Mathias Kiwanuka, who has moved back to defensive end from outside linebacker, and backups Renaldo Wynn and Jerome McDougle. Inside, the Giants were relying on the three-man rotation of Fred Robbins, Barry Cofield and Jay Alford to keep Clinton Portis contained.

The Redskins playcalling in Jim Zorn's debut could seriously be questioned. There were several plays where Chris Cooley was asked to block one of the Giants defensive ends on running plays. It's a role the Cooley can't handle, even if the play is called to go to the other side of the line, and it led to several blown plays.

The Results

So how did they do? As you would expect considering the final result, it was a good night for the Giants, but not in the way you may have thought. The Giants only got one sack on Jason Campbell, and even that sack was as much the fault of Campbell (who rolled outside his pocket) as it was the efforts of Tuck, who picked up the sack. I also counted nine quarterback hurries on Campbell's 28 pass attempts. That wasn't an overwhelming number, but largely that was because of the Redskins' tendency to check down quickly into short passes, whether it was third and three or third and 17.

Player	Snaps	Tackles
Justin Tuck	43	4
Fred Robbins	39	4
Mathias Kiwanuka	50	6
Barry Cofield	34
Renaldo Wynn	10	3
Jay Alford	21
Jerome McDougle	11
Total Snaps	208

But what was eye-opening was just how successful the Giants were at shutting down the Redskins running game. Portis ended the night with 23 carries for 84 yards (helped in large part by a 23-yard run). The star of the game defensively was Fred Robbins, who was consistently too quick and too strong for Redskins right guard Randy Thomas. Robbins had an amazing knack for flying out of his stance a half-step ahead of nearly everyone else. The Giants style of attacking a gap allowed Robbins to create plenty of havoc. He played most of the first half on the Redskins' side of the line of scrimmage. I counted 11 different plays where Robbins either beat or drove his man iinto the backfield. Three of his tackles were tackles for losses, which is an outstanding performance for a defensive tackle and he also had three quarterback hurries. There were a couple of plays where Robbins took himself out of the play by shooting a gap in the wrong direction, but that's well worth the risk considering how well he blew up several other plays. If there was any knock on Robbins, it was that he wore down in the second half, which meant that the Redskins finally found some running room up the middle late in the game.

The other two defensive tackles were not as effective, although it's hard to match Robbins production. Barry Cofield and Jay Alford were simply pluggers. Cofield was driven out of his gap responsibility a couple of times for decent running gains, while Alford simply occupied space. Neither recorded a tackle.

At defensive end, the pairing of Tuck and Kiwanuka may not be as talented as Strahan and Omenyiora, but their versatility does give defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo plenty of options. Kiwanuka played linebacker last year, so it's not a stretch for him to drop into pass coverage, something he did on three different plays against the Redskins. On one of those plays, the Giants were caught in a bad decision, as Kiwanuka dropped into coverage on a run his way, leaving him way out of position to stuff the run. But overall, the surprise factor of dropping him or Tuck into a short zone (Tuck dropped into coverage twice) is a useful addition to Spagnuolo's schemes.

Kiwaunka showed decent push against the run; he was very active both on running and passing plays although he still needs some work on developing more pass rush moves--he mainly has a speed rush right now, which resulted in one pressure although it came on a play where Campbell held the ball. Kiwanuka was actually more effective against the run, as the Redskins got burned when they tried to block him with Chris Cooley, and he showed enough quickness to chase down plays from the backside. He led the defensive linemen with six tackles.

Tuck is now the Giants d-line star, and he showed hints of building on last year's 10-sack performance. While he didn't get much pass rush when he moved inside to defensive tackle, he did generate some heat from his regular defensive end spot. Despite the one sack Stephen Heyer and Chris Samuels did a pretty good job of keeping him contained--I counted one other pressure in addition to the sack, but Tuck was very active. He also forced Campbell to step up in the pocket a couple of times and he finished with four tackles. Tuck will have to prove that he can still get sacks now that he has a bullseye on his back, but it was a solid first game in a new role as offensive enemy No. 1.

If there is a concern coming into this game it had to be the play of the Giants backup defensive ends. After failing to talk Strahan into coming out of retirement, the Giants signed Jerome McDougle, who had just been cut by the Eagles. A waiver wire claim can't be expected to replace a Hall of Famer, but McDougle showed some pass rush moves in his limited time. What he didn't show was much aptitude for playing the run--he seems most content looping outside on a speed rush, which explains why most of his snaps came in pass-rushing situations (he played on three third downs, then stayed in for a full drive at the very end of the game when the Redskins were in a must-pass situation).

The Giants other defensive end, Renaldo Wynn, looks more like a run plugger. Wynn played one full series in each half to give Tuck a breather. He showed the ability to not give up on a play and make tackles on backside pursuit, but he also was driven out of the hole for a nice gain on another play. He looked like a servicable backup, but it's a severe backup to go from Tuck as a do-anything No. 3 defensive end to Wynn.

Overall, the Giants defensive line passed its first test in fine fashion. While the Giants won't get to the passer as well as they did last year, if Robbins can keep creating havoc inside, they should still have the horses to give offenses problem, especially with Spagnuolo's blitz packages that bring safeties and linebackers from everywhere. Expect the Giants to finish the year with less sacks, but Tuck, Kiwanuka and Robbins are good enough to continue to keep the defensive in the upper echelon of the NFL.