Giants Pre-Season Game 2

The Giants and Jets were back at it again in the second annual Metlife Bowl and the Giants ended up walking away with a 26-3 victory. The Giants defense looked a lot better this week, but the first team offense struggled to get the ball in to the end zone, despite the 5 receptions for 51 yards by Victor Cruz. Eli Manning also had a pretty ugly interception in which he tried to through the ball out of bounds but it ended up going right to Laron Landry instead.

On a side note, in case you haven't noticed, Laron Landry likes to work out a lot. You can look at the picture he tweeted about 4-5 months back as evidence of his serious workout plan. I would absolutely love to see Tebow and Landry in a cage match (no homo.) Landry would probably start of swinging trying to rip Tebow's head off, who would obviously do nothing because of his religious background. In the end, Landry probably murders him easy.

Laron Landry Being Large

Back in terms of the game, it was a pretty up and down one for the Giants. They did a lot of good things on defense especially in the secondary. Corey Webster is obviously solid and I was happy with the progress of both Prince Amukamara, and the rookie out of Virginia Tech, Jayron Hosley. Hosley probably had the play of the game with his pick six off of Sanchez. But where the Giants really excelled was where they always do, in the trenches. 

This defensive line unit is no doubt, in my somewhat biased mind, the best in the league, and I love how Defensive Coordinator Perry Fewell shuffles them around. There is no team who puts more pressure on the quarterback on third down than the Giants. During the regular season they'll even throw out all four of their D-Ends at once, with Justin Tuck, Osi Umenyiora, Jason Pierre-Paul, and Mathias Kiwanuka on third down in their NASCAR set. The first unit finished the first half with three sacks, two by Pierre-Paul and a half sack by Osi and Tuck each. The Giants all in all finished the game with 7 sacks, while the Jets only finished with 14 completions. 

Metlife Bowl Trophy

As for the offense, I was not impressed by anyone out there but Cruz. He continues to play as though he has something to prove, I guess because he does. He wants to go out there shut everyone up about this "one year wonder" talk, and cash out at the end of the year. Eli played ok, but like I said earlier he had an ugly interception. This game may end up being significant later on because the Giants starting running back Ahmad Bradshaw injured his hand in the first quarter. The X-rays were negative, but this could be another one of those nagging injuries for a while. One of the only bright spots of the game on offense was the play of the rookies. Although Wilson didn't look as good as he did last week, Reuben Randle continued his good play with an impressive 49 yard catch over a defender and Joe Martinek, the Rutgers product, also had a nice 14 yard catch and dive into the endzone. 

MVP of the game was obviously Larry Tynes. Dude is an absolute legend. The former Ottawa Renegade has kicked the Giants to two Super Bowls, and added four out of four field goals and two extra points, shouldering the load, in tonight's game. 

Sticking with the special teams play, T.J. Connelly of the Jets is probably the worst punter in New York since Matt Dodge (it's ok to talk about now.) Conley had a 19 yard punt followed by a punt of 23 yards. Now that's what I call consistency.