Blue Liar

Welcome back. This is the Big Blue Banter New York Giants Football Podcast. I'm Dan Schneier.

Joined as always my co-host Nick Falado. And on tonight's show, we're going to break down the all-22 game coaches film of the Giants victory in week 17 over the Cowboys. We're

going to do it a little differently for this show. We're going to break down the offense and

defense on one show tonight. And before we break that down, Nick, I wanted to say this. It's

really interesting. The Giants end this season against the Cowboys with a victory where if they had won the game

and Washington had lost, the Giants would have won the division. But you can't help but feel good

when you watch the all 22 of this game. At least I can't, and I am not known as one of the most

positive Giants analysts on the internet. I think that's abundantly clear. But the film's good in this one. It really is on both sides of the ball. The only reason this game was close in my mind, again, was untimely turnovers, a few second and long run calls by Jason Garrett that just make me shake my head. And there was a lot I liked about Garrett in this game, which I want to get into, but he's got to fix that for next year. And someone has to get in there. Someone has to show him the analytics. Someone has to talk to him about different ways to move the ball via short passing or take long shots on second and ten. Nothing is worse than what he's done in some of these situations and what he's put the Giants in with these second and long runs. And I threw a graph,

a graphic about it out on Twitter earlier this week. And the Giants were actually eighth in the

NFL in the most second and long runs this year. So just the stat you don't want to see. It's a

hard way to win when you do that. You put yourself in so many third and long situations. And not only

that, on those calls, you really don't have a chance, at least not with Sequel Barkley not in the game, to break any kind of big play open as well. So that's one thing, but aside from that, I came away really positive about this game, really positive about Daniel Jones, extremely positive about Sterling Shepard, who continues to be underrated, and is an excellent piece who's going to be even better next year, the offensive line, specifically the run blocking, and then the defense with just the dominant performance. And again, Patrick Graham with a really good performance. There's a lot to talk about here, Nick. So I'll actually open the floor to you. Where would you want to start? Say we start with the offense and even on that first drive. I mean, the Giants kind of controlled the line of scrimmage. They really, I think,

manipulated the Dallas Cowboys. If you remember back to the first matchup with the Cowboys,

the Giants kind of really implemented that counter game a lot. And that's when you really saw

them make that a focal point of their offensive strategy. So they knew the Dallas Cowboys knew

that. Giants then run that on their first drive.

They ran some duo a little bit. And then they ran a fake counter with a reverse to Sterling

Shepard that went the distance. And if you watch that play, you'll see every cowboy linebacker

scrape over the top. They read their run keys with Caden Smith faking. He was bluffing like he was going to cap the end man on the line of scrimmage like he usually does as a lead blocker, but instead he pivots off his inside foot and runs out in the spades with Nick Gates. And there was only one Cowboys defender between the hash and the sidelines. They were totally manipulated. So I thought that was an excellent play call by Jason Garrett, and he did have a few. I would agree there was a sequence in this game where he ran

twice on first and second long because I think the Giants took a penalty. And it's like, why would

you do that in the situation when you're actually having success throwing the football against the Dallas

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