Scouting Report
1 - New York Giants That division title last year was no fluke. Stocked
with young talent and coaches who know what
to do with it, this team will only be
better
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Fox's schemes turn
defenders like Armstead and Garnes (20) into
reminders of the D of past Giants
champs.
(John Iacono)
| People still
aren't convinced that the Giants are for real.
They look at the 1997 season as an aberration. Almost
unanimously picked to finish last, the Giants instead swept
the board in the NFC East—well, almost; they tied one
game—and won the division. Jim Fassel, operating with
basically the same personnel that
had gone 6-l0 the year before, was named coach of the year,
and deservedly
so.
What you hear now is that the Giants snuck up on teams in
'97. They can't possibly do it again. Just look at their
'98 schedule. Over the last nine games of the regular
season, New York will play both
Super Bowl teams—Green Bay and Denver—plus
Philadelphia and Kansas City, at home. On the road they'll
face San Francisco and their four division foes. Everyone
will be ready for
them.
Well, here's why
the Giants will repeat
as division champs:
The defense comes
back intact, and it's a
fundamentally sound,
sturdy unit, beautifully coached by John Fox. It's very
similar to
New York's Super Bowl
defenses of '86 and '90. There's no Lawrence Taylor, of
course, but the current front line is better than those of
the
two championship teams, and so is the secondary. Plus, the
Super Bowl teams never had an open-side linebacker like
Jessie Armstead.
Best of all, this defense is a young unit on the rise.
Every defender but one on the roster is in his 20's. (In
fact, of the 22 projected starters on both offense and
defense, the only ones not in their 20's are wideout Chris
Calloway, who's 30, and
tight end Howard Cross, who's 31.) Those young legs could be
the difference down the stretch. The NFL is an endurance
contest these days, and in November and December these guys
will be coming on while older teams are
fading.
The Giants have been ripped for their drafts in the '90s,
but the misses have come on offense. The defensive drafts
have produced a steady influx of terrific young talent:
Armstead, corners Phillippi Sparks and Jason Sehorn,
safeties Sam
Garnes and
Tito Wooten, All-Pro end Michael Strahan, tackle Keith
Hamilton, middle linebacker Corey Widmer, nickel linebacker
Scott Galyon
... it's an impressive
list.
To take advantage of all this wealth, Fox is adding new
schemes, more blitzes from the corners and safeties, more
nickel and dime packages thrown in to spread confusion on
early downs. He smiles when you ask him what's in store for
the Giants' 1998
first-round draft pick, 215-pound Shaun Williams, a fine athlete
and hitter at either safety or nickel corner. "Just
watch," he
says.
The offense has more weapons too, including wideout Ike
Hilliard, who missed most of his rookie season with a neck
injury; former Chargers tight end Al Pupunu; and running
back Gary Brown, a low-slung, 230-pound banger who gained
nearly 1,000 yards
behind a hopeless San Diego
line.
Now to the heart of the Giants' story: quarterback Danny
Kanell. Last year, after taking the starting job away from
Dave Brown in October, Kanell was protected in an offense
that stressed ball control. "The idea was to play
mistake-free football," he
says. "Don't screw it up. Let the defense win it. This
year we'll open it up and
attack."
Kanell was O.K. for a while, but then he played miserably
in a 20-8 loss to Tampa Bay in November. Fassell read him
the riot act. Work harder, study more, get yourself
together—or you'll be watching Brown run the team
again.
| Schedule |
| Sept. | 6 | WASHINGTON |
| 13 | at Oakland |
| 21 | DALLAS |
| 27 | at San Diego |
| Oct. | 4 | at Tampa Bay |
| 11 | ATLANTA |
| 18 | ARIZONA |
| 25 | OPEN DATE |
| Nov. | 1 | at Washington |
| 8 | at Dallas |
| 15 | GREEN BAY |
| 22 | PHILADELPHIA |
| 30 | at San Francisco |
| Dec. | 6 | at Arizona |
| 13 | DENVER |
| 20 | KANSAS CITY |
| 27 | at Philadelphia |
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"I came in at
9 a.m. one Saturday during December," Fassell says,
"to get ready for a one o'clock team meeting, and
Danny was already there, looking at tape. I told him, 'When
I put the game plan in, I want you to tell me what you
like. I want you to ask questions,
not just sit there and accept everything.' He responded to
the
challenge."
The Giants closed out the regular season by winning their
final three games, all against NFC East teams. Then came
the disastrous wild-card playoff, in which New York blew a
16-point halftime lead at home and lost to Minnesota,
23-22. Afterward, the
defense, which fought among itself on the field and on the
bench, wore the goat horns, but a lot of things went wrong
toward the end of that game, and the Giants did have a
nine-point lead and the ball with 3:51 left. Maybe if they
had picked up one more
first down and burned a little more time off the clock
... and maybe if the Vikings
hadn't scored so quickly
... and maybe if Minnesota's onside kick with 1:30 left
hadn't bounced off Calloway's hands, setting up the
Vikings' game-winning field
goal....
That's a lot of maybes. The point is, the Giants weren't
playoff hardened. "We were ready to play that
day," Fox said, "but we were young. We needed to
grow. The game was big for us, maybe too big at the time.
But you learn from it. It makes you
hungrier next time
around."
The Giants
are hungrier. Fassell says Kanell is ready to take it to the
next level. So is Fox's defense. This team is for
real. —Paul Zimmerman
By the Numbers | Inside Slant | Lineup
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