Ian Taubin, inreesewetrust.blogspot.com

So far so good! – Team priorities for pre-season games are to a) avoid injuries and b) have the starters and top reserves outplay their respective counterparts. In fact, the Giants came out of their first game with only the usual bumps and bruises, after dominating the Panthers through the first half. The Giants led 14-2 at the break as the Panthers were held to just 5 first downs and 91 total yards in the first half as they never came close to scoring any offensive points. It didn’t hurt, though, that the Giants ultimately won out on the game’s final play when undrafted rookie free agent DE Tommie Hill picked off a deflected ball – DT Leger Douzable made the hit – and raced into the Panthers’ end zone to break a 17-17 tie and give the Giants a somewhat improbable pre-season victory.

Anyone for seconds? – Perhaps the only good thing about the NFL’s way too lengthy pre-season schedule is the fact it allows a lot of younger players to get their only extended playing time of the year. One guy who got a lot of snaps for the Giants against Carolina, for example, was rookie LT William Beatty, the team’s second second round pick at the 2009 draft. Unfortunately, though, the results were decidedly mixed. Somewhat surprisingly, Beatty, who came to the Giants with a reputation of being an athletic pass protector, but not a particularly physical run blocker, was actually solid enough drive blocking. On running plays, Beatty came off the snap with authority, made good initial contact, kept his pads low and his arms extended and generally did an excellent job sealing off the pursuit angles of his target. Beatty was also effective pulling and made several solid blocks in space. Beatty, a converted TE who does run very well for an offensive lineman, also stayed with the play and on more than one occasion ended up making blocks far downfield. On other hand, Beatty had his problems in pass protection. For an athletic player, Beatty isn’t at all smooth backpedaling as he tends to lift his feet too far off the ground. While he has very long arms he didn’t get much of an initial punch or arm extension and allowed Carolina DEs to get into his pads. Beatty also did a poor job absorbing the initial contact as he played way too high and was consistently knocked off balance on that initial contact. As a result, Beatty had a particular problem dealing with cut-back moves as he struggled to change direction. At the same time, though, Beatty did a decent job cutting off the edge, although he did allow Carolina rookie DE Everette Brown, another second rounder this year, to power around the corner for a sack on one occasion. Based on his outing against Carolina, it is hard to imagine that the Giants are going to feel all that comfortable about considering Beatty as their first option off the bench at OT anytime soon.

While Beatty had his problems in his pro debut against the Panthers, LB/DE Clint Sintim, the Giants’ other second round pick this year, was one of the real stars of the win over Carolina. Sintim had a sack and a forced fumble and also drew a holding penalty as he showed good power and intensity coming off the edge. Interestingly, though, Sintim only played a few snaps on third downs as a down DE; in fact, he played mostly at SSLB where he appeared to be far smoother and agile than we were expecting. As a SSLB, Sintim did a nice job holding the point of attack and looked surprisingly fluid moving in reverse. He also delivered a couple of nice pops. Sintim, though, struggled at times to get off blocks and didn’t always find the ball when engaged. It is also probably a good idea not to get overly excited over his pass rush potential, at least for the moment. During snaps as a down DE, Sintim did show a decent first step and got good power and leverage when he dipped his shoulder and drove around the edge; he‘s also relentless in pursuit of the ball. We still need to be convinced, though, that Sintim has the package of speed and power to be able to consistently beat quality NFL OTs when matched up one-on-one. Indeed, his sack came while being blocked by a second-team TE, while the holding call was drawn against an undrafted rookie free agent. In particular, Sintim didn’t appear to be real explosive off the snap and was slow to get back to speed after changing directions. In the end, Sintim’s real value as a pass rusher may come through the Giants finding ways to get him freed up by moving him around before the snap, through stunts and by looking for mismatches against TEs and RBs.

This and that: For those that haven’t heard, Plaxcio Burress will not be playing football this year for anybody except perhaps the Sing Sing intramural team after he plead guilty to reduced gun charges on Thursday in exchange for a 2-year prison sentence… Michael Vick is back and ready to make a statement when the Eagles face the NY Jets in the 3^rd pre-season game next week. ESPN will almost certainly pickup that game. I am imagining that it will be the highest rated pre-season game in many years…Denver Broncos receiver Brandon Marshall is ready to jump ship. He doesn’t like the system he is in, has no faith in his quarterback and doesn’t believe his team is a title contender. Look for the NY Jets and the Eagles to take a look into acquiring him…The Tampa Bay Bucs need to have a sit down about conduct off the field because in the past week, Tanard Jackson and Aqib Talib had run-ins with the league or the law. Not exactly a good start to the Raheem Morris regime…It looks like the Bengals might have a secret weapon on the hands and they didn’t even know it. Chad Ocho Cinco replaced Shayne Graham as the place kicker and kicked a perfect extra point and placed a kickoff all the way down to the 8 yard line. Not to bad for a 30 year old wide receiver.

For more news on the New York Giants, go to inreesewetrust.blogspot.com.

Tags: affordable sports tickets, cheap nfl tickets, cheap sports tickets, discount nfl tickets, discount sports tickets, discounted sports tickets, fanrates, giants new, giants tickets, Giants Update 8/24/09, ginats injuries, gmen, inreesewetrust, national football league, nfl tickets, ny giants

This entry was posted on Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 10:18 pm and is filed under Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.