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.