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24 Aug 2008
INSTANT ANALYSIS: Losing Osi Umenyiora
In this week's preseason open discussion thread on our message boards, I referred to the Jets-Giants game as the "Jason Sehorn ACL Memorial". The reference was to a Jets-Giants preseason game that took place 10 years to the day that I made the post, when then-Giants cornerback Sehorn, coming off an excellent year, tore his ACL whilst returning the game's opening kickoff. He left his speed on the operating table and was never the same player again -- you might remember Brandon Stokley burning him on a streak in the Super Bowl two years later.
It's unlikely that Osi Umenyiora will suffer the same fate after he tore his lateral meniscus during Saturday night's game with the Jets, but his loss will have an incredibly damaging effect on a New York Giants team that simply couldn't afford to lose him. While you can make claims for Eli Manning, Chris Snee, or Antonio Pierce, I believe that Umenyiora was the Giants' most important player coming into this season as an absolutely indispensable part of their defense. His loss will affect them in many ways.
Umenyiora excels in his ability to play both the pass and the run effectively; while he's not the block-guzzler that Michael Strahan was, he's excellent at trapping running backs into thinking they can try and get outside of him on tosses and sweeps, only to use his speed to maintain an excellent angle and stifle the play altogether. It's exactly that play which I wonder whether Umenyiora will be able to make when he comes back. Physically, Umenyiora will struggle to regain his fluidity while changing directions, and playing on the Giants Stadium turf for its final year in 2009 won't do his knee any favors.
As much as strictly replacing Umenyiora with someone (I'll get to that later on) else in the starting lineup will hurt the team, the larger effect of the injury will be on the Giants defense as a whole.
Justin Tuck likely became a full-time defensive end as soon as Umenyiora went down; unfortunately, while it's easy to imagine that Tuck will be able to get to the passer even more by playing every down, Giants fans should be worried about Tuck's ability to get to the passer without two of the other Aces around him in 2008.
Last year, Tuck rarely saw a double-team. If I had to estimate, Umenyiora and Strahan saw approximately 95% of the double-teams on defensive snaps, a credit to their deadly ability to abuse offensive linemen in one-on-one situations. Ask Winston Justice if you don't remember. While Tuck lined up in his natural position part of the time, his greatest success was on passing downs at defensive tackle, where he used his speed to get past guards hopelessly assigned to match up with him one-on-one. Now, Tuck is going to have to line up against better athletes on every snap, and without Strahan or Umenyiora available, Tuck will be facing the bulk of the double-teams. Moving into his new role as the primary (and perhaps only) elite pass rusher on the Giants defense, Tuck will undoubtedly struggle to put up the same numbers he did last year.
The impact will also be felt on the Giants' defensive tackles, Barry Cofield and Fred Robbins. Cofield and Robbins often only have two offensive linemen to worry about, allowing them a relatively easy time of shedding blockers and getting the occasional penetration into the backfield on passing plays. Now, it's much more likely that either Cofield or Robbins will have a third dedicated offensive lineman (as opposed to a mere chip) to worry about on running plays, increasing the work they'll have to do.
Defensive Coordinator Steve Spagnuolo builds his defense around creating pressure on quarterbacks; even last year, with that dominant front four, the Giants were in the top twelve in the league for rushing five, six, and seven or more players. That owes to Spagnuolo's background in Philadelphia, where he worked underneath blitz guru Jim Johnson. While the Super Bowl gameplan that Spagnuolo was lauded for involved very little blitzing, Spagnuolo will likely feel the need to turn up the heat with more linebacker and safety blitzes.
If Spagnuolo does blitz more, it runs the risk of overexposing a secondary which was erratic in 2007 and is already replacing arguably its best player, Gibril Wilson, with a rookie in Kenny Phillips. As the unit comments in the Giants chapter state, the relationship between pass rush and coverage is symbiotic.
Furthermore, the Giants defense was ninth in the league on third downs, but 12th in the league on both first and second downs. While that's not a huge difference, a lot of that has to do with an adjusted sack rate on third downs of 12.6 percent, one that was best in the league by more than three percentage points. One would have to imagine that the GIants' ability to get to the passer in those situations will go down, which could cause their third down performance to regress even further than it might have been expected to.
There are several options for replacing Umenyiora in the lineup. The simplest one, involving the smallest amount of change in personnel and responsibility, would involve replacing Umenyiora with a combination of Renaldo Wynn and Dave Tollefson. Some have suggested that Tollefson is another hidden gem in the vein of Tuck, but that's simply not the case -- Tollefson's a journeyman who's bounced around three teams in as many seasons after being a seventh-round pick. Wynn had no impact on the Saints' line last year. Neither are acceptable options.
The more logical idea is to move 2006 first-round pick Mathias Kiwanuka back to defensive end on a permanent basis. Kiwanuka was drafted as an end out of Boston College, but moved to linebacker last year because of the depth the Giants had up front and his inability to keep on weight. Kiwanuka has elite athleticism, but his instincts for the game and his ability to use that athleticism in space is still in question. Kiwanuka made a series of huge mistakes as a rookie, and in his sophomore campaign, he was simply abysmal in zone coverage. Moving him back to end might be admitting defeat in that switch, and opens up a new hole at linebacker, but the move would limit his exposure to the things he's weak at while giving the Giants another pass rusher for teams to worry about. While Giants fans won't have fond memories of the injury-riddled 2006 that saw them suiting up players off the street at linebacker, moving the experienced Danny Clark or promising rookie Bryan Kehl into a starting role would be preferable to giving Wynn or Tollefson dramatically increased playing time.
No matter who plays more, the loss is a huge one for the Giants. Bringing in Michael Strahan will help, but this was a team that was expected to take a defensive hit by losing Strahan for the season already. Even if Strahan played at his level from last year, they'd still be down a stud defensive lineman. For a defense that never let offensive linemen take a play off last year, that could be one too many for them to retain their style -- and level -- of play.
17 comments, Last at 27 Aug 2008, 11:06am by whatnow
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Comments
Why do people have this idea that the original placement of Kiwanuka at LB was a permanent career move? They wanted to get him on the field as much as possible so they created what is a 1 down/short yardage LB position.
It will be interesting to see if they Giants back up the money truck for Strahan or if he even accepts.
I agree with you on one thing Bill, before this season the Giants had 4 or 5 indispensable players and now 1 of them is gone for the year.
If the Giants didn't think that the Kiwanuka move was a career move, why didn't they move him, or at least give him one or two reps a session, back to end at training camp after Strahan retired. They have more than enough linebackers, Clark, Wilkinson, Blackburn and even Kehl could all start in this league, Deossie, Tank Daniels and Jonathon Goff (though hurt) are decent backups. If the Giants thought that Kiwanuka was a better end than linebacker he would be an end. He's not. And there's no way they'll move him before the season. By week six, if they have 5 total sacks and Quarterbacks are carving up their secondary, they'll make a move. But I really think Mathias has shown enough skill and progression (people love to point out the week 1 Dallas game last year when Whitten toasted him for 116 yards and a score, but no one remembers the week 10 game when Kiwanuka shut Whitten down to the tune of 2 catches for 12 yards and no TDs. He broke his leg the next week in Detroit) to be the best outside linebacker on the roster. Don't be surprised if they don't move him.
I'm not convinced that Kiwanuka is any better than serviceable at DE anyway. Right now, this is as bad a position to lose as anybody except Manning. Danny Clark is a decent LB, but their best option would be if they could somehow talk Strahan into returning (no chance, although I hear he needs the money...).
#2... The guys who have started at DE are 3 down players (terrific players) who would occasionally sit out a series here and there. If the goal was to get Kiwanuka on the field as much as possible, why let him play DE full-time so that he's only on the field once or twice a series? I think your practice point has merit if they don't make the move NOW after Osi's injury. However, I would be totally shocked (barring Strahan's return) if they didn't.
#3... Why do you think he wouldn't be good? I thought he played very well as a rookie considering how physically raw he was and the fact they had literally no one to rotate with him. For a couple of games, the opposite starter at DE was William Joseph. (I almost screamed typing that)
#4. Exactly. The point here, similar to Tuck, is to get as many snaps out of Kiwanuka as you can. Which means a move back to end is idiotic. Why not instead use him as an Adalius Thomas type hybrid player. With Osi out, you put Kiwi in the linebacker spot on downs when you expect run, then move him to end and slide Wilkinson into LB on downs of medium distance and move him over to tackle where he can rush the QB with Tuck, Robbins and Tollefson on long distance passing downs. Don't forget, Wilkinson is pretty athletic himself when healthy and can rush the passer in an aces package as well.
My favorite Mathias Kiwanuka moment was the MPC Computers Bowl, Boston College vs. Boise State.
The announcers kept talking up this great pass rusher Boston College had, this Kiwanuka kid.
Partway through the game, they did one of those "let's see how Kiwanuka has been doing" mini-highlight reels, and it was one play after another of Boise OT Daryn College (now Packers starting OG) abusing Kiwanuka like he was a high-school 3rd stringer... followed shortly by a clip of Kiwanuka making a backfield tackle from the LEFT end position, far far away from the NFL-caliber offensive lineman that had been dominating him all night.
The announcers seemed confused.
It was little shock to me when the Giants decided that they had spent that 1st round pick on a linebacker rather than a defensive end. It's no surprise that they weren't rushing him back to the line after Strahan's retirement.
Its not that I think Kiwanuka's a bad player, its just that he hasn't done anything to convince me he's anything special. And he's being asked to step in for a team that's just lost two elite players. I think the Giants are excellent at player development, and Coughlin's always been a better coach than he's gotten credit for (since he's such a blowhard), so they'll manage, but this will definitely hurt
I am sorry Osi is out for the season. The league needs to have as many great players as possible on the field. Just terrible news.
I think we're about to see another example of how a couple great players make the guys around them look great also. Now that Strahan and Osi are gone, the remaining guys will look much more ordinary. Tuck is pretty solid, but Kiwanuka is nothing special, and in general the awesome collection of D-linemen the Giants featured is going to look pretty average this year.
Gonna be a long season for the defending champs.
Does this injury compare with Reggie Haryward's knee injury 2 years ago? Out a year, played at 70-80% a year, and we'll see about year #3.
Jaguar's defense definately declined during this period, but other factors helped the decline.
The NY Post's Paul Schwartz is reporting that, as suspected, the Giants are moving Kiwanuka to Osi's old weakside DE spot. (click my name)
I still expect to see Renaldo Wynn in there a lot on running downs, though. I like Kiwi's potential as a pass rusher, but in terms of anchoring against a OT in the run game, he's a liability.
2:
"but no one remembers the week 10 game when Kiwanuka shut Whitten down to the tune of 2 catches for 12 yards and no TDs."
I believe Dallas admitted that game that they purposefully kept Witten in to block more and give Romo time to hit TO (who had 4 TDs).
but no one remembers the week 10 game when Kiwanuka shut Whitten down to the tune of 2 catches for 12 yards and no TDs.
This absolutely, positively didn't happen. Witten was in to block on almost every play.
I have a theory that losing one good defensive player tends to do less damage than people think it will. But when you start to lose multiple important guys at the same position, that gets pretty yucky.
The Giants can weather this and still field a good defensive line. The problem is that they've become accustomed to a dominant pass rush that can shut down offenses like Dallas and New England all by itself.
I'm thinking the Giants tie the Redskins for last in the division at 7-9.
14, yeah, if it's Umenyiora OR Strahan, but both? I guess this is the curse of the Super Bowl loser.
Sorry. Still have a hard idea getting my head around the whole "Eli Manning, Super Bowl winning quarterback" thing.
and playing on the Giants Stadium turf for its final year in 2009 won’t do his knee any favors
What? They're not moving back to grass in 2010, are they?
Do you have data from the play-by-play on how frequently DEs actually get double-teamed?
Generally there are four guys out in a pass pattern, leaving 6 blockers. One of the DTs is generally always doubled. In the absence of a blitz, the RB/TE may chip on the DE before releasing into the pattern as the fifth receiver, but if there's even a single LB or safety blitzing then both DEs end up single blocked.
Generally the only time I see DEs getting double-teamed is when they make an inside move or execute a stunt which the tackle and guard both block, or in the case of those chip-blocks that I mentioned earlier.
It just seems like I read/hear about double teams way more than I see them. Any hard data on this?
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