E-GIANTS
Dave Klein was the Giants' beat writer
for The Star-Ledger from 1961 to 1995.
He is the author of 26 books and he is one of
only five sportswriters to have covered all the Super Bowls.
Dave has allowed TEAM GIANTS to reprint some of his articles.

By DAVE KLEIN
The next time you hear somebody exclaim, in obvious annoyance, "How hard can it be for a pro running back to get a yard?" you'll know you're listening to someone who doesn't have much of a grasp of football.

Especially the offensive line play.

It has become fashionable to criticize Giants' running back Ron Dayne, and certainly he deserves a piece of the blame for the team's horrid performance on short yardage and goal line situations, but it isn't his fault, not all of it.

By definition, if a 245-pound running back gets the block(s) he needs, he shouldn't have to weigh as much as a garage door to stumble forward for one yard. Last Sunday, when Dayne was given the chance to score from the Lions' 1-yard line and failed, the boos began cascading down from the stands.

But even head coach Tom Coughlin, who has never been known for his gentle, placid approach to failure, made this observation: "It's hard to gain a yard when we didn't block a soul out there," he said, placing the blame squarely on the offensive line -- and maybe inadvertently placing credit on the Detroit defensive front.

So now the Giants sit last in the conference in red zone offense (and just how tired are you of that "red zone" phrase?), having converted only seven touchdowns out of 21 such opportunities. The red zone, of course, is the area from the other guys' 20-yard line and in; the newer phrase, the "green zone," refers to the end zone.

So the Giants aren't doing very well in the red zone, and as a result aren't doing that well in the green zone, either. And it isn't right to blame Dayne or Mike Cloud or even Tiki Barber because when the blocks need to be there, well, they aren't.

"It is an area that has been of concern for us and we just have to do a better job with it," Coughlin said. "It's a case of getting the right block at the right time."

Rather than blaming Dayne (and this is not a defense of him, merely a statement that he may weigh 240-245 pounds but he isn't a "big power back" and in fact was never used that way at Wisconsin, when he weighed nearly 260 pounds and won the 1999 Heisman Trophy), let's take a look at the situations.

The coaches love to call this area "down and distance," and that is perfectly clear even to non- coaching types like you and me. But when it becomes third-and-one and the Giants take Barber out of the game and send in Dayne, what's a conscientious defense to think? Right, the big guy is getting the ball.

Never would the call be a play-action fake to Dayne with the quarterback suddenly standing and throwing into the end zone. Might that work? Sure, why not? The straight-ahead to Dayne isn't doing much of a job. So the defenses stiffen and block the middle and fill the gaps and play over-under (don't you just love that coachly stuff?) and here comes the ball carrier and there go his blockers -- falling on their seating apparatuses, or being knocked back there.

And it's another third-down-and-short (down and distance, remember?) failure. And it's going to be viewed as the ball carrier's fault because he's the one out there in the glare of the spotlight. He's the guy who has the ball in his hands and he's the one who is knocked down short of the desired "down and distance" yardage.

Is this fair? No, of course not. There have to be other plays that would work. The mind flies back through the decades and comes up with this question: "Whatever happened to the naked bootleg?" Remember when the quarterback would fake his handoff to the back and while the rest of the guys played push-down-in-the-dirt he would blithely scamper off in the other direction, having hidden the ball on his hip, and the next time the behemoths looked around, probably because of the sound of a packed crowd celebrating, he was prancing around in the other end of the end zone (sorry, the green zone) and they had been suckered again.

No wonder nobody likes quarterbacks, and no wonder the NFL has to enact so many rules to protect them. As the great old defensive tackle Alex Karras once growled: "Why don't they just put skirts on the damned quarterbacks?"

Come on, now, Alex. If you defensive guys weren't so good at stuffing the play then the quarterback wouldn't make you look like damned fools, you know?

Anyway, the Giants are off to Minnesota -- "The Land of 10,000 Touchdowns" -- and they'll play Sunday's game in a dome, where the noise builds and builds to such intense levels that it is impossible to hear the quarterback barking signals. Teams have resorted to the silent signal, which isn't really good because the linemen have to look at the quarterback and not at the thugs and goons lined up across from them.

Of course, the Giants have used other plays. Remember Green Bay and Dallas, when they were still winning? They got close, to the two-yard line in both cases, and Kurt Warner threw one of those nifty little "fade" patterns to his tight end, Jeremy Shockey.

In each case, it resulted in a touchdown. Hey, there's an idea. Fake putting the ball in Dayne's girthy belly and then stand up and throw the fade. How about that, Kurt? Cool. Now let's see if he can convince Coughlin and/or offensive coordinator John Hufnagel that it might work.

Beating your head against the brick wall called Dayne-must-be-able-to-do-that-because-he- weighs-240-pounds just isn't working. Try something else.

Interesting comment fro E-GIANTS subscriber Chris J. -- "Bill Parcells said that the Giants' pass defense is especially good, although I believe the rush defense was rated higher at the time. What are the scouts saying about the entire defense? In particular, with two new safeties, three new linebackers, etc., we have more speed on the field, I believe. How much of a pass defense factor is that?"

We'll print the rest of Chris' e-mail soon, since he has requested an interesting analytical feature, but for now let's answer this way: "The defense has faster people, which automatically makes it better in pass defense. If those faster people are lighter, however, it can be a bit of a problem against those gigantic offensive linemen leading the backs through the holes. But pass defense is clearly better -- in five games rookie strong safety Gibril Wilson has made more big plays than Shaun Williams made in five years, and Brent Alexander is more dependable at free safety than Omar Stoutmire was.

Check out Dave's website at E-GIANTS where you can subscribe to his newsletters which run much more frequently than what is available here.
- Team Giants

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