The mood around the New York Giants isn’t a great one right now – the team has been said to have one of the worst defenses in the league following the first week of the season and it wasn’t hard to understand why. It looked like the Cowboys were able to make big passing plays at will, and the Giants gave up 35 points and ensured that the offense would have little chance of scoring enough to win the game.
Obviously, that bad early track record is something that a number of players want to turn around going into the week two game against the Buffalo Bills on Sunday.
“In the NBA, if they have a bad game, the next day they can go out there and play again. For us, we have a whole week to sit, let it marinate, watch film and soul search. I think that’s what we’ve been doing this week. We came out and worked hard this week in practice. Now we’re just getting ready to come out and get that taste out of our mouths,” second year outside linebacker Lorenzo Carter stated.
Carter was, of course, just one of a number of players on the Giants defense that was considered as having a bad game in week one against the Dallas Cowboys.
“We were disappointed, of course. But it’s just on to the next week. There’s nothing you can really do about last week but watch the film, evaluate it and then just get ready for this week. We’re going to keep going,” Carter continued.
Defensive coordinator James Bettcher doesn’t sound like a coach that intends to reuse a losing strategy – from the sounds of things, fans of the Giants can maybe expect Bettcher to try some things differently against the Bills.
“I look at it as here’s something we have to get better at, let’s go work to get better at it… We need to attack what the problem was and go work to correct the problem. Not just say we need to rush the quarterback better? The truth is how do you rush the passer better. What fundamentals and techniques do we need to improve with specifically with what guys and players,” Bettcher added.
The Giants will be up against a formidable defense themselves in week two, as they face a Bills team that gave up only 16 points to the Jets in week one. The toughness of the Bills defense makes it more crucial, of course, that the Giants don’t give up too many points when their own defense is on the field – scoring won’t come easy for Eli Manning and the rest of the Giants offense, and the game could very well be low scoring.
But that, of course, defends on the defense turning things around… It remains to be seen what will happen, but at the least, the Giants defenders have no lack of desire.