Welcome back. It's the big blue banter. New York Giants football podcast. I'm Dan Schneier.

Join as always my co-s, Nick Falado. Tonight we are here to break down. And tonight, by night, I mean, it's freaking six o'clock on the East Coast. It's already dark. What a devastating. Time to be on the East Coast after daylight savings when it gets dark at like five o'clock. It's just sucks. It's so depressing. But not as depressing as the Giants' defensive film. What a sell right there, Nick, to get us going. Right? We're going to break down what went wrong. It was bad tape for the Giants on defense for the most part, though some bright spots, Micah McFadden, big time bright spot in this game,

and some downgrades to, some down spots do, which we'll get into.

But Nick, overall, before we get into some of the play breakdowns, what were your thoughts

on what happened on defense and how the Giants kind of regressed in a lot of ways from what they'd

shown in the three weeks prior to this game?

I just want to credit Bo Hardigree and Aiden O'Connell, the rookie quarterback.

I think their game plan was executed efficiently.

I would almost say flawlessly, but that's a little bit of an over-sell.

But it was, we're going to hand the football off to Josh Jacobs on a lot of zone running concepts,

something that Marcus told us they didn't really do all that often and all of the personnel suggests they should. Well, it was a lot of zone and there was a lot of cutback lanes and the Giants weren't as disciplined on defense as I would have hoped, but also passing, get the football out of Aiden O'Connell's hands very quickly. And that's all they did. It was, we understand we have this read. We're going to get the football out. If it's not there, we're going to check the football out of Aden O'Connell's hands very quickly. And that's all they did.

It was, we understand we have this read.

We're going to get the football out. If it's not there, we're going to check the football down. We're not going to have Aden O'Connell sitting back there allowing Link Bartondale to tee off on them. The Giants finished with four pressures in this game. Four. And I'm not even looking at the pass rush. Like you guys are non-existent because it really wasn't that much opportunity for them to do anything.

You got to remember, man, it was quick. The Giants were down 21-0 in this game. They were getting their asses kick. Raiders didn't have to pass. And they were running the football well. So kudos to the Raiders offense and their coaching staff and Antonio Pierce for being able to get a rookie, what,

fifth round pick up the speed like that because he looked legit. Didn't have to do too much, but he looked fine with what they asked him to do. He did look fine. He got rid of the football fast. That's part of it. Like I just, well, I'll be, again, I mentioned in the last pod, Nick, but we'll be, I'll be talking you about this a bunch when we, you know, go over a quarterback prospects in this coming draft. I want to see guys who don't waste space in the pocket and are just able to get into their drop so much faster and get the ball out of their hands faster. And I think A. O'Connell did a really good job of getting to the top of his drop and getting the ball out. And that's like half the battle, it feels like playing quarterback. when I watched the ones who are successful and keep the passing game on diamond and rhythm and the ones who don't. And the deep ball he threw, that was a good example of it, Nick. Like he didn't hitch into that throw, dude. He just hit his back foot and let that thing rip. And the ball got out on time. And wasn't a good rep for Dante Banks, by the way, Deonte Banks.

It was not a good game for Deonté Banks. He got burnt by Trey Tucker and Jacourne Myers. But Trey Tucker is also like so fast. Like that's part of it. It was the release though, man. It was the release that it was the release that made me be like, ah, shit, you know. So it wasn't just like, yeah, he's fast. Like you had to beat them all in the line of scrimmage.

You have that line of scrimmage to take advantage of your speed.

And Trey Tucker did that on that play. And that's totally fair. And we'll get to Deonti Banks later. But I just felt like, like you said, it was a great game plan. Great. They were so well prepared the Raiders for this game under Pierce, which is such a nice sign for him.

And, you know, I can take some happiness or solace in the fact that Antonio, even though the Giants lost this game, that Antonio Pierce had a good first game as a coach because I love Antonio Pierce. Same. Hopefully they don't Rich Passachia, him though. I hope not. But I read that they might give him a chance, actually, if he does okay, which sucks, too because I saw I looked ahead because I was so intrigued by by this pierce storyline nick that i looked ahead and i know the raiders have some really tough games on their schedule coming up which is so unfortunate for pierce they have the dolphins they have the jets which is going to be a bad game script for them they have the chiefs as their next three games which is not ideal dolphins and Chiefs being two of those, but three winning

teams with a running record. But we'll see what Pierce is able to do. But yeah, I think ultimately the biggest concern for me in this game, Nick, was the run defense. As you mentioned, just not a good game for the Giants run defense. And we'll get into some of that on the tape breakdown. So let's get into that now. Yeah, we can get into that just in a second. But they did only allow Josh Jacobs to have 3.8 yards per carry. But people, I'm only saying this because I've seen people recite that on Twitter. But again, a lot of that was in the second half when they were just milk in the clock. When it mattered, the Giants run defense just wasn't there to slow down what the Raiders were throwing at them. And it wasn't like they were reinventing the wheel either. It was pretty fundamental football stuff. And I also like was going through this tape. I wanted to get your opinion on this. Like was it just a loss of Leonard Williams that made this run defense worse? And look, losing a good player like that is always going to bring your defense down a little bit. But that's not the reason why the run defense just suffered here. A lot of the issues with the run defense was the cutback. That mostly fell on the edges. And I thought Kvon Tibido, who had a couple really good plays against the run, he also had some plays where he was, where he pinched way too far and he was the contained defender.

I believe he was a contained defender.

And then Josh Jacobs just bounced right around him.

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