Giants' sleeping pass rush awakens in defeat of Bengals
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — The New York Giants defense finished the game in an unfamiliar place Monday night.
On the bench.
But New York’s oft-maligned pass rush was a big reason why the Giants, whose offense closed out the game, defeated the Cincinnati Bengals 21-20.
“Oh man, those guys, they’re such a big reason why I’m getting all these picks,” safety Landon Collins, who has intercepted four passes in the past three games, told Paste BN Sports. “When they’re going at it like that, it makes our job on the back end so much easier. And when they’re going at it like that, we have a much better chance of winning.”
The Giants (6-3) began Monday ranked dead last in the NFL in sacks (11) but added three against Cincinnati. Their rushers have played well in spurts, even if the effort didn't translate to the stat sheet. It even prompted head coach Ben McAdoo to question the numbers geeks.
“When I said stats are for losers, what I really meant was you have to dig deeper than just the numbers to get some quality information,” McAdoo said in his postgame press conference.
“It was nice to get home to the quarterback. I thought we made a move even early in the game and, at the end, it was good to finish it off.”
New York continues to hold the inside track for a wild card berth in the NFC. With three division games looming in three of the final four weeks of the season, the Giants needed to beat the Bengals to maintain their margin for error as they try to end a five-year playoff drought.
It wasn’t only the sacks, either, that sealed the game for the Giants. They hit Andy Dalton six times and harassed him on third-down passing attempts, allowing Cincy to convert just 2-of-11 tries.
And consider this sequence late in the game:
— Dalton had just scrambled up the middle 15 yards for a first down with fewer than five minutes left to play and a game-winning drive was within reach. But on the next play, from the Bengals 30-yard line, defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul bull rushed tight end Tyler Eifert and shoved him so far backwards, that Pierre-Paul had to spin upfield to wrangle Dalton to the ground after he lobbed a wobbly pass incomplete. Dalton got up limping.
— On second down, five Giants crashed the pocket and converged to bring Dalton down. Officially, linebacker Jonathan Casillas and defensive tackle Damon Harrison split the sack.
— Third down. Defensive end Olivier Vernon lined up in a two-point stance above left guard Clint Boling before knifing through the pocket for another sack.
The Bengals punted and never saw the ball again.
“We just played backs against the wall,” Vernon told reporters after the game. “We knew we couldn’t let them score on us. We let them score on us, game over. Everybody just stepped up.”
The Giants have now won four in a row. With upcoming games against the Chicago Bears (2-7) and Cleveland Browns (0-10), that streak could grow to six. The NFC East, however, is becoming one of the most competitive divisions in football with the Dallas Cowboys (8-1) looking like a legitimate Super Bowl contender, the Washington Redskins (5-3-1) surging, and the Philadelphia Eagles (5-4) beating some talented opponents.
But the Giants are also clearly trending in the right direction.
“It’s a great feeling,” Collins said, “because we’re proving a point that we’re a team to reckon with.”
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Follow Lorenzo Reyes on Twitter @LorenzoGReyes
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