In their season opener against Washington, New York recorded three sacks. They were then shut out against Dallas and Tampa Bay before recording five sacks against Kansas City and six sacks against Oakland.
Against the Saints? New York managed just one garbage time sack against backup QB Mark Brunell, though despite the drop off in production, the defense still ranks fourth league wide in sacks per pass play.
This week, as the Giants defense as a whole goes back to the drawing board in search of ways to fix the problems that the Saints exposed in Sunday’s loss, one of the areas of focus will be getting more pressure on the quarterback to force the game-changing sacks
To do that, Giants defensive end Dave Tollefson said it’s just a matter of returning to the basics.
“Pass rushing is really elementary but a lot of people – pass rushers included – tend to complicate it,” Tollefson said. “You have to do what you’re good at, and remember that the quarterback is the prize.”
To get to the prize, Tollefson said that it’s important for the pass rushers to take it one step at a time.
“We need to focus on beating the guy who’s blocking us,” he said. “A lot of guys sometimes forget that and are too busy looking to see where the quarterback is and how many steps they need to take to get to him. But if you’re not focusing on your technique to beat the guy in front of you, what happens? You’re going to get blocked and you’re not going to get any pressure, let alone sacks.”
Tollefson said that it’s very easy for a pass rusher to get frustrated by a worthy opponent to the point where it might look like the defender is having a good game, but in reality is not.
“Osi (Umenyiora) and I talk about it all the time,” Tollefson said. “Some of your best pass rushes aren’t even hits. Say for example it’s a three-step drop and the quarterback gets rid of it and you’re three steps away from him, but you beat the offensive tackle cleanly. Well on the outside looking in, it looks like the guy had a pretty good game, but really if you think about it, you didn’t really finish the job you were supposed to do, so it’s not really a good game.”
To further prove his point, Tollefson opined that a solid statistic for a pass rusher is about ten sacks per season. “How many pass rushes does a guy get per year? Maybe around 800? Think about it. If out of those 800 you find success ten times, that might be considered to be a great year, but in reality, it’s a low batting average.”
While he acknowledge that it’s impossible to sack the quarterback on every play, Tollefson did allow that putting pressure on a guy to force him into making a premature throw or perhaps even an interception can be just as effective., though in the end the sacks is what forces an offense to change its strategy.
“You just have to engulf yourself in pass rushing. Some of my best games didn’t result in a sack. In the Tampa game, I had two really good quarterback hits, but the last time I checked, you don’t get paid big bucks for hitting the quarterback. You get the big money for sacks because they’re the real game changers.”
So how does a defense regroup and string together a series of game changing plays? Tollefson smiled and said it was simply a matter of a defense not pressuring itself and letting things happen naturally.
“When you start putting pressure on yourself to get sacks, then you start forcing things. You have to walk before you run, so that’s why I try to start out by getting the quarterback hits because eventually it will turn into sacks.
“Obviously everyone would like to get a sack on every pass rush, but it doesn’t happen that way,” he continued. “If you think about it, you have four guys pass rushing 35 times a game. So that’s about 140 separate rushers coming at a quarterback. Not everyone is going to get a sack on every play. If you’re able to beat the guy in front of you, and get to the quarterback maybe four times out of that 140, then you can say you had a good game as a defense.”
And that’s something the Giants hope to see happen again as they continue to regroup form last week’s beating and prepare for their big game against the Arizona Cardinals.
“Their personnel is different,” Tollefson said when asked about the most notable differences between the Saints and Cardinals’ offenses. “The Saints run a lot of two-tight end, one back play action passes, and they line (TE Jeremy) Shockey wide. The Cardinals use more of a traditional passing game because they have a slew of great receivers and a quarterback in Kurt Warner who gets rid of the ball quickly.
“We’re going to see if we can figure this out to shut this thing down; because when the Cardinals look at the film, they’re going to see the same things New Orleans saw,” he continued. “We know what we have to do. We have to fix this, and if we can’t get it fixed, it’s going to be a long year.”
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MLB Antonio Pierce had to leave today’s practice early due to a stiff back. Meanwhile RB Ahmad Bradshaw, who the last two weeks had sat out the Wednesday and Thursday practices while resting his foot in a boot, received his first mid-week practices since it was revealed that he’s battling with a foot and ankle injury.
Rounding out the rest of the post practice report, Michael Boley, Chris Canty and Aaron Ross did not practice today. Kareem McKenzie and Eli Manning were limited, and Mario Manningham, Rich Seubert and Danny Ware went through the full practice.
