Added 2/6/2007
By Damon Micalizzi
for BigBlueInteractive.com
I had been TIVOing NFL Match-Up for the past three months - along with 12 out of the 17 Giants’ games from this season.
We’re going to compare some young quarterbacks here. Big Ben, Rivers, Eli, and Grossman. While Grossman’s performance yesterday, really doesn’t allow him to be considered in the conversation, we will keep him around, only focusing on his successes earlier in the year.
Eli Manning has come under plenty of scrutiny and has been under a fine microscope since day one. And rightfully so. His Elway-esque maneuvering out of San Diego and into New York more than merits the criticism. Throw in the fact that he is playing in the biggest media market in the world and has been surrounded by more offensive weapons than most quarterbacks and there is virtually no margin of error for a number one draft pick with the surname Manning.
For two seasons now I (along with others) have argued that while Eli does have a ways to go in terms of maturity and mechanics, the problems offensively for this team are more so the blame of the coaching staff and the offensive scheme than the young gunslinger. I know that not everyone has the time or the experience to have the Football IQ to fully grasp the foundation of this argument. I also can understand that to the eyes of the casual football fan, who only follows the Giants, and sees Big Ben win a Super Bowl last year, and Rivers lead the Chargers to 14 wins in his first full year as a starter, it appears that Eli is not on par with the other quarterbacks in his draft class. So I hope that I can explain this without getting too technical, so that those who deem Eli a mistake, will cut the kid a little bit of slack and realize that our future is not so bleak with the youngest Manning calling the signals.
We’ll start with Grossman (again, only analyzing his successes…the first 5 games of the season). Early in the season the highlight films were full of Grossman throwing long bombs to wide receivers Bernard Berrian and hitting Mushin Mohammad over the middle for big gains. Yet when you look at these plays, the tight is often held in a Max Protect scheme along with help from the fullback and with halfback Thomas Jones chipping the defensive end or linebacker before sneaking out as a check down option. This was the one-read scheme that was installed to get the ball out of his hands quickly and they had some success early on. Grossman on a 5-step drop would have to read where the deep safety went, if the safety bit on the under (crossing) route, he’d throw the deep ball against one-on-one coverage. If the safety ran with the deep route he would hit Mohammad on the under route, again in man-to-man coverage. If Grossman had the time (and early on he did thanks to the Max Protect), a pump fake here or there would often help the safety bite a little harder and Rex was able to throw the ball to either a tall guy with great speed deep (Berrian) or an expert route runner with great hands and the guts of a burglar going over the middle (Muhammad) almost always against a single defender.
That was it - a simple one-read scheme. Pending on the down and/or distance the package would change but the scheme was always the same - figure out which way the safety goes and throw it to the other guy.
It only took about six weeks for the defensive coordinators around the league to figure this out. And by the time they did, the running game was going and returner Devin Hester had figured out how to hold on to kicks (most of the time) and they still had the tough defense (and the League’s easiest schedule) to cover up for this glaring weakness along the way to 13 wins.
Let me reiterate once again, that Grossman does not in any way shape or form belong in this conversation, but when you look at what led to his early success it strengthens the argument.
Now let’s look at Phillip Rivers - another young quarterback and his first full year as a starter. Rivers started out on fire. He also had the league MVP running the ball behind him and breaking scoring records too. Marty Ball didn’t hurt him either. Again that single-read scheme put up more points than any other team in the league. When a defense has to worry about a running game that features LaDanian Tomlinson, play action becomes bread-and-butter. When your running back can also catch the ball, your linebackers, who were biting on the run fake are now frozen for a second because they have to respect the fact that the running back also caught 100 balls two years ago.
The one-read scheme, coupled with the heavy dose of a two-headed running attack, and lots of play action becomes even more dangerous when your best receiver is a tight end. The mismatches created by having a tight end who is too big for a safety to cover and too fast for a linebacker to cover forced a lot of double teams (this sounds familiar I know…I’ll get there). Double teams meant single coverage and/or bigger holes in the zones on the outside for three pretty decent receivers. We would often see young Phillip get rid of the ball on a 3-step drop (many times on 2nd-and-short thanks to an LDT 8- or 9-yard gain on first down) or a play action, quick slant to Gates that would eventually go for 20-30 yards. When the double teams would follow Gates (while an inside linebacker or weakside linebacker would spy LDT), the play action pass would turn into a deep ball or a quick out to wide receivers Eric Parker, Keenan McCardell, or Vincent Jackson.
Later in the year, as teams began to figure this out, and when coverages were disguised a little more creatively, Rivers did not look very good and was often baited into throwing to the wrong receiver. In fact he had a five-game stretch in the last third of the season that was down right awful. However 13 touchdowns by LDT (during that stretch), a very good defense, and a somewhat soft schedule helped that go largely unnoticed.
And then there’s everyone’s favorite quarterback, Big Ben Roethlisberger. And we’ll throw out this year just to be fair to Big Ben, after an appendectomy and a motorcycle crash, a 112-degree fever etc…
“The guy is 24-2 as a starter.” “He won the Super Bowl in his second year.” Well la di freakin’ dah. No one has had their offense dumbed down any more than Roethlisberger, whose head coach said right after Tommy Maddox went down, “We are not going to put him in a position where he has to do too much.” Brilliant! They ran the ball an average of 34 times a game. “His quarterback rating is in the 90s.” Roethlisberger, who has escape-ability with his legs and a strong arm, only throws the ball 19-22 times a game.
Pittsburgh, while they made no secret about their plans to run the ball down your throat, and did so with success, also threw in a trick play or two in just about every game. They would also run on third-and-long, knowing that if the field position was decent, their defense would get the ball back for them. End-arounds, flea flickers, a pitch to a halfback, who hands it to a wide receiver who throws it back to Big Ben for a bomb to Hines Ward. Not your conventional drop back and pass kind of play calls. And when he did drop back and pass, play action was the call most of the time because they were passing on a down that was seemingly a running down. Then it was a 3- or 5-step drop and a quick out or slant.
It’s no surprise that Big Ben’s favorite receiver was Plaxico Burress when he was with Pittsburgh. His knack for making a leaping acrobatic catch bailed Big Ben out many times in their brief time together. Hines Ward is no slouch either.
The game plan in Pittsburgh was precise. Run the ball as much as you can. Play action. Play action. Play action. But you pass either only when you have to, or on a running down to keep the safeties in. Use quick drops and get rid of the ball ASAP and throw in a trick play every now and then just to keep the defense honest.
This worked all the way to the Super Bowl, where the Steelers’ defense shut down the Seahawks saving an awful game for Big Ben in which he would have surely been the goat if not for a call or two.
So there you have three quarterbacks who have all arguably been more successful than young Eli Manning. Why you ask? Eli had an elite running back in Tiki Barber and a capable back up in Brandon Jacobs. He has the weapons at WR in Plaxico and Amani Toomer. He has the big play mismatch machine tight end in Shockey. The offensive line has been pretty solid if not good. Where does Eli come up short?
It’s a complex answer but it is my argument that Eli will be and is a better quarterback than all the aforementioned. He has just been mismanaged and not properly put in a position for a young quarterback to succeed. For one (and again, this is just looking at this season’s games since those are the only ones I have tape for), John Huffnagel’s offensive scheme, for lack of a better word, stunk.
Thank you Captain Obvious, you might say. But this goes much deeper than the play calling.
If you look at the tape, you will see very little play action and very few 3-step drops. This doesn’t make the defense do too much guessing. Passing plays are pretty much advertised and the quarterback is holding on to the ball too long on each play. I will explain.
Sure the first few games of the season, Eli looked pretty good. He went toe-to-toe with big bro on opening night, survived eight sacks and led a fierce 4th quarter come back in hostile Philly, and was stellar in games on the road against Atlanta and Dallas. Through most of the first half of the season we didn’t hear much about the mechanical flaws or the incorrect reads of the previous year’s late season collapse. Now that Eli was able to properly diagnose what was going on on the other side of the ball, he was able to audible to the right play and make the right reads most of the time.
But something else happened - there were eight games on tape of the Giants for other teams to study. Suddenly the play action, or should I say lack there of, wasn’t a part of the equation for the defense to worry about. They simply didn’t do it. On passing downs, pass rushers were able to pin their ears back and get after the QB easier because he seldom took a 3-step drop. Huffnagel’s infatuation with the deep ball had Eli standing back there in the pocket after 5- and 7-step drops waiting for receivers to break free on long-developing routes. With the pocket collapsing and the receivers still not finished with their patterns, he was forced to either throw it early, or high hoping that the taller guys could make a play.
As the team kept losing and kept having these troubles offensively, you would think that the coaches would make an adjustment. It never really happened. Eli started hitting the check down more. He started looking to Shockey more late in the season. But if it wasn’t that quick come back route by Burress, most every route by a WR was a deep post or a deep double move. Shockey was either held in to block too often, or fell victim to being the number one option on the second read of a play that took too long to develop.
Make no mistake - the injuries hurt Eli this year big time too. When you lose your left tackle and your reliable possession receiver, even Joe Montana would have a bit of a decline. But Bill Walsh would have made some adjustments. He wouldn’t continue to send his receivers on long-developing routes, leaving his franchise quarterback standing back in the pocket while a back-up left tackle protects his backside. He would utilize play action to keep the linebackers and safeties guessing to create mismatches for his playmakers on the outside. This never happened. Long-developing routes and multiple reads with back-ups at two key positions set Eli up for failure.
To top it all off, Huffnagel’s play calling was terrible. I was hard pressed to see the Giants run the ball on consecutive plays more than two or three times in a game. We clearly did not run the ball enough. This was shocking, almost moronic, considering how successful the running game was this year, even though Tiki wasn’t Tiki of ‘05. Or maybe he was…and Huff never let us find out. Huffnagel’s “pass to set up the run” style was absolutely absurd. And his lack of creativity or reluctance to deviate from his plan at all, made the offense predictable and easy to read from a defensive standpoint.
All in all, this falls on Tom Coughlin. He should have pulled the plug on Huffnagel in week 10. That said, I don’t know if new Offensive Coordinator Kevin Gilbride and new Quarterbacks Coach Chris Palmer will be much better. I don’t think that the mechanical issues are all as bad as they are made out to be. In the playoffs this year I saw Tom Brady and Peyton Manning make plenty of bad throws and throw interceptions off their back foot and across their body. It happens. Let’s not forget the great throws Eli has made off his back foot or from an ill-advised position to get a first down or win a game in his short career (Denver in ‘05, Philly this year).
In addition, his interception numbers this year are big time misleading. Seven of his interceptions were either dropped by a Giants receiver (five) or tipped at the line of scrimmage (two). If you turn those into incompletions (instead of turning them into completions, touchdowns or penalties, as two others could have been called defensive pass interference), his numbers look much better: 24 touchdowns, 11 interceptions, a quarterback rating of 82.57. But I’m not writing this to say what if. And this isn’t baseball. Statistics don’t tell the story in football.
We’ve seen Eli play great at times. We’ve seen him manage the game in bad weather. We’ve seen him not look so good as well. But when your last name is Manning, you’re drafted number one and you play in New York the bar is set high. Unfortunately for young Eli, his handlers have done a poor job of putting him in a position to succeed. Meanwhile, his colleagues, Big Ben and Phillip Rivers, have been fortunate to fly under the radar in small markets on run happy teams with great defenses and vanilla offensive schemes that are very young quarterback safe. The last three years have been valuable learning experiences for the youngest Manning. If the coaching staff ever figures this thing out, I’m pretty sure Easy E will prove that we got the best quarterback of the bunch. 48 touchdowns in two years isn’t bad.
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