Super Bowl 2012: Projecting the Impact of the New York Giants’ WRs

The New York Giants have a trio of talented wide receivers, two of whom ended the regular season in the top 15 in receiving yards.

With the team set to face the New England Patriots and their 31st-ranked pass defense in the Super Bowl, there is no doubt that the Giants’ receiving corps is going to have a huge impact on the game.

Out of seemingly nowhere, Victor Cruz has emerged as one of the Giants’ most dangerous offensive players. He had zero catches in 2010, but in 2011 rose to No. 2 on the depth chart after stepping in for an injured Mario Manningham.

In the regular season, Cruz had 82 receptions for 1,536 yards and nine scores. In the postseason, he had just 28 receiving yards against the Atlanta Falcons, but his production increased in the following two games, with 74 yards against the Green Bay Packers and a whopping 142 yards on 10 receptions against the San Francisco 49ers.

All of Cruz’s yards against San Francisco came in the first half; in the second half of the game, they switched corners and also put a safety on him, effectively shutting him down.

If the Patriots have to commit that much coverage on Cruz in the Super Bowl, then they’re going to find themselves burned by the Giants’ other two receivers.

However, he suffered a shoulder injury late in the NFC Championship Game. Depending on the severity, Cruz might be limited at the Super Bowl. He has two weeks to recover, however, and should be at full health by the time February rolls around.

If Cruz is held to less than five catches though, then that likely means a big day for fellow receiver Hakeem Nicks.

Nicks is also nursing a shoulder injury that should be fully healed by the Super Bowl, which is good news for a team that is going to need his playmaking abilities.

In 2011, Nicks caught 76 passes for 1,192 yards and seven touchdowns and has been on fire in the postseason, catching six passes for 155 yards and two scores in the team’s wild card win over the Falcons, seven receptions for 165 yards and two more touchdowns against the Packers and five catches for 55 yards against the Niners and their physical defense.

Nicks is in a great position to have the biggest day of any of the Giants’ receivers in the Super Bowl. He should be targeted no fewer than 10 times against the Patriots and could easily notch well over 100 receiving yards and a pair of scores.

Giants vs. Patriots: Can Tight Ends Win Super Bowl 2012?

The old cliche is that defense wins championships, but it seemed that old adage had been turned on its ear in 2011, with a number of teams fielding offenses that were putting up an unprecedented number of yards and points.

A lot of this was accomplished the old-fashioned way: a quarterback throwing pass after pass to his wide receivers. But something has been shifting in the NFL in the past two seasons, and it came to a head this year.

Tight ends are more crucial than ever in the passing game, and having one or more who are talented enough to make big plays as well as assist in blocking for receivers and running backs can give a team a very real edge over its competition.

Both the New York Giants and New England Patriots have more than one tight end who will be sure to make a huge impact when they meet in Super Bowl XLVI, but clearly the advantage at the position goes to New England.

The Patriots’ two second-year tight ends, Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez, both made names for themselves in their rookie 2010 seasons, but it was 2011 that saw them fulfill the potential that the Patriots saw when they drafted them.

Gronkowski ended the 2011 regular season with the single-season tight end yardage record, with 1327 on 90 receptions, and his 18 total touchdowns are the most of any receiver or tight end this year. He’s big and strong, hard to tackle and extremely reliable, with no lost fumbles this season.

In the playoffs, Gronkowski has continued his dominance. He had 10 catches for a whopping 145 yards and three scores in his team’s 45-10 blowout win over the Denver Broncos. In the AFC title game, he had five receptions for 87 yards against the Baltimore Ravens.

Hernandez is more versatile than Gronkowski, with the tight end not just catching passes but also running the ball, especially in the postseason.

Against the Broncos, Hernandez was targeted six times, catching four passes for 55 yards and a touchdown, but he also had five carries for 61 yards and was the team’s leading rusher in the game.

Against the Ravens, Hernandez had three carries for only nine yards, but led the team in targets, with 11, and receptions, with seven for 66 yards.

Though Patriots quarterback Tom Brady still favors elusive slot receiver Wes Welker, the addition of Gronkowski and Hernandez has drastically changed New England’s offense.

If New England defeats the Giants in the Super Bowl, it’s going to have a lot to do with the contributions of its two tight ends, without question.

When the Giants lost tight end Kevin Boss to free agency in the 2011 offseason, it seemed impossible for the team to find a replacement for the considerable role he played on their offense.

Instead, they found success in a tight-end-by-committee approach that saw Jake Ballard, Travis Beckum and Bear Pascoe each make contributions to the team this season.

Ballard is clearly the team’s top tight end, with 38 catches for 604 yards and four scores in the regular season, but all three men had catches in the postseason, with Pascoe’s lone playoff catch resulting in a touchdown in the NFC Championship Game.

If the Giants want to further confound a weak Patriots secondary in the Super Bowl, they might need to take a page out of New England’s playbook and have two tight ends on the field in a number of passing and running situations.

Though that Patriots secondary was 31st in the league in the regular season, they’re going to be well-prepared for the Giants and their three-headed tight end corps. Should Eli Manning not find his primary target open, he would be well-served to look to his tight ends to bail him out.

A single touchdown by one of his three tight ends could make all the difference in the outcome of this game; indeed, the contributions of all of the tight ends fielded by both teams are going to be the most important in this year’s Super Bowl.

Clearly, there’s more to a top offense than just having an elite quarterback, a big-play wide receiver or a league-leading running back.

A talented, versatile tight end is quickly becoming a must-have for any team with championship hopes, and it’s going to come down to what the tight ends do, and do not do, in Super Bowl XLVI that will ultimately determine whether the Patriots or the Giants win it all.

4 Reasons the New York Giants Should Be Confident Heading into Super Bowl

The New England Patriots are three point favorites over the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLVI, however, the Giants have more than just an outside shot of pulling off the upset win and defeating the Patriots in the big game for the second time in four seasons.

No one thought at the beginning of the season that the Giants would make it this far. Now that they have, there’s every reason to believe they have what it takes to defeat the Patriots and be NFL champions once again.

In the following slides, I detail four advantages the Giants have over the Patriots in this year’s Super Bowl.

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Super Bowl Predictions 2012: Why Rob Gronkowski’s Injury Won’t Harm Patriots

New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski suffered an ankle injury in the third quarter of his team’s AFC championship game win over the Baltimore Ravens last Sunday. It looked serious at first glance, and he indeed left Gillette Stadium that night with his foot in a walking boot.

Gronkowski, we now know, suffered a sprained ankle but not a high ankle sprain. There is some ligament damage, as is the case with any sprain, but with two weeks to recover and a relatively mild injury, there’s a good chance Gronkowski could be close to 100 percent when his team meets the New York Giants in the Super Bowl on February 5th.

But even if his recovery doesn’t go as planned and Gronkowski is limited in the game, the Patriots’ chances to win aren’t in as much trouble as it first seems.

Gronkowski’s emergence in 2010, but especially in 2011, has a lot to do with the Patriots’ ability to make do with the personnel they have available. Quarterback Tom Brady has thrown passes to a dizzying array of receivers and tight ends in his 11 seasons with the team, and has done so at a consistently high level despite the lack of stability.

And this season, he has some serious weapons at his disposal, ones who can more than make up for Gronkowski’s production, if not his considerable presence.

Gronkowski broke the single-season yardage record for a tight end this year and his 18 touchdowns are both the most recorded by a tight end in a season and has the second-most of any offensive player who isn’t a quarterback or kicker.

He’s made a major impact in the postseason as well, with 10 catches for 145 yards and three scores in the Patriots’ divisional round win over the Denver Broncos and five catches for 87 yards against the Ravens in the AFC championship.

It seems impossible that the other members of the Patriots offense could compensate for him being off the field or limited in the Super Bowl, but that’s not the case.

They have another extremely capable tight end in Aaron Hernandez. Hernandez is even more versatile than Gronkowski, able to assist in run and pass blocking, catch passes and carry the ball like a running back.

He won’t run you over like Gronkowski, but he’s got the speed of a traditional wide receiver and can blow past defenders, giving them little chance to immediately tackle him.

Hernandez has often proven the more difficult matchup for defenses. If Gronkowski is on the field, but is less than healthy, Gronkowski’s presence can easily serve as a decoy to draw coverage away from Hernandez, who would ultimately be on the receiving end of Brady’s passes.

There’s also wide receiver Wes Welker. Though Hernandez and Gronkowski made household names of themselves this season, Welker is still Brady’s most reliable receiver. While Welker has not had more than 55 receiving yards in the postseason, and just one score, he’s clearly going to be heavily involved in the team’s Super Bowl game plan.

Welker averaged 98.1 yards per game in the regular season; his low postseason production can be attributed to the success the team had passing to Gronkowski against the Broncos (a known mismatch going into the game) and the difficulty the Patriots had moving the ball against the Ravens and their top-tier defense.

The Giants defense is quite similar to that fielded by the Ravens and it could yet again be a struggle for Brady to have enough time to throw an accurate pass, but there’s no doubt that he will be able to connect with Welker a number of times, with significant results.

But the main reason that Gronkowski’s injury won’t damage the Patriots’ chances to defeat the Giants is simply because the Patriots are able to adapt. Some teams see one of their top players suffer an injury and the team as a whole cannot respond.

There’s a lack of depth, perhaps, or maybe even a lack of imagination on the coaching staff’s part that doesn’t allow them to see the ways they can utilize their other, healthy players to mitigate for the loss.

The Patriots don’t suffer from this lack of imagination, as evidenced first by the way they’ve revolutionized offensive strategy by practically taking traditional wideouts out of the equation and what they’ve needed to do this year on defense.

For a number of reasons, New England ended up having to field a defensive secondary made up of practice squad players, unknowns and also-rans. They’ve struggled, certainly, with the Patriots pass defense ranking 31st in the league in the regular season.

But they’ve found ways to make it work. Cornerback Sterling Moore started in just six regular season games for the team and didn’t do much to stand out.

However, from Week 17 through the AFC championship game, he’s broken up two passes per game, including what would have been a Lee Evans Ravens touchdown, one that could have won the game for Baltimore, last week.

Patriots players know when to step up, and the Patriots coaching staff knows just where their many components on the roster will fit best. With or without Gronkowski, the Patriots are still the Patriots. They adapt while teams around them struggle to catch up.

If Gronkowski isn’t on the field in the Super Bowl, or if he’s not fully healthy, the Patriots will still find a way to accomplish what they set out to do. Should they lose, it won’t be Gronkowski’s injury that causes it.

Oakland Raiders Need Star Power, Settle for Coach Dennis Allen Instead

The Oakland Raiders have decided on making Denver Broncos defensive coordinator Dennis Allen their head coach, just two weeks after new general manager Reggie McKenzie joined the team. McKenzie’s first official decision was to fire Hue Jackson, preferring instead to hand-pick his team’s new head coach.

Much of the speculation regarding who would take over in Oakland revolved around a number of Green Bay Packers coaches, with McKenzie having been the Packers’ director of football operations since 1994.

However, the team decided to go with someone from within their own division, selecting the relatively-unknown Allen after meeting with him twice in the past 10 days.

The addition of Allen signifies yet another vestige of the Al Davis era coming to an end. Allen is the first defensively-minded head coach the Raiders have had since John Madden. Davis preferred to handle much of the defensive responsibilities himself, leaving the offense to his head coaching hires.

This hasn’t been the best strategy for Oakland, especially in recent years, breaking the top-15 in yards allowed just twice and languishing in the 20s and 30s in points allowed since their 2002 Super Bowl appearance.

It won’t take much improvement to make the Raiders serious contenders in the AFC West, considering the inconsistency shown by all four teams in the division in 2011. However, for the Raiders to become a true threat in the NFL, they needed to make a bolder coaching hire.

Allen is best-known for his ability to turn defenses around by increasing their sack rate and takeaway ability.

His defensive approach gives up a lot of yards, but his hallmark is to put pressure on quarterbacks and blanket receivers. This was evidenced by his time in Denver, where he increased their sacks from 23 in 2010 to 41 in 2011 and when he worked with the New Orleans Saints, when they gave up nearly 358 yards per game but were third in the league in interceptions in 2009.

In 2011, the Raiders defense was ranked 29th in both yards and points allowed, and clearly needed an upgrade at defensive coordinator. Allen would have been well-suited to take that role in Oakland, but instead McKenzie decided to give him control of the entire team.

On offense, the Raiders are in much better shape; they just need everything to come together.

Quarterback Carson Palmer is ostensibly going to be the team’s starter in 2012, considering everything they gave up to snag him in trade in 2011, and he’s got a glut of young, fast-receiving talent to work with. Running back Darren McFadden will likely be with the team, and healthy, next season.

It makes sense why McKenzie chose to go with a head coach who has defensive experience, but it is rather surprising he chose the relatively unknown Allen over Packers defensive coordinator Dom Capers or another of the big-name coaching candidates on the market.

The Raiders didn’t need to make a flashy move at head coach, certainly, but it would have given them a bit more ammunition in their quest to return to relevancy in the league.

In the end, Allen must have preferred the competitive advantage that comes from snagging a member of a divisional rival’s coaching staff rather than going with a more known and celebrated name.

Perhaps Allen will one day prove to be a savvy hire, but for now it seems like a safe choice for a team never traditionally known to take a conservative approach about anything.

Giants vs Patriots: 3 Storylines the Media Will Hammer Us over the Head with

With two weeks’ worth of time to fill between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl, there’s going to be a lot of talk about the same topics when it comes to the big game.

It doesn’t hurt that this year’s Super Bowl is a rematch of the 2008 game between the New York Giants and New England Patriots.

Considering both teams come from major media markets, there’s little chance that the NFL media is going to shy away from battering us all over the heads with the same Super Bowl-related topics day in and day out.

Here are three Super Bowl storylines that are apt to be discussed ad infinitum over the course of the coming days.

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Pro Bowl 2012: This Year’s Pro Bowl Is Worth Your Time

The NFL Pro Bowl always sounds amazing on paper. The league’s biggest stars, all playing together on common teams in an attempt to showcase their talent and prove which conference is the best in the NFL.

In practice, though, few fans truly care about the Pro Bowl.

Giants vs. Patriots: 4 Underrated Players to Keep an Eye on in Super Bowl 2012

The Super Bowl presents a great opportunity for otherwise marginal players to make names for themselves by pulling out the big, unexpected play that can shift the tide of the game.

The last time the New York Giants and New England Patriots met in the Super Bowl in 2008, everyone remembers the catch by Giants receiver David Tyree that secured his team the victory.

While Tyree was cut in the offseason, he made a major impact on the game, even though he’d accomplished very little in the regular season.

With that in mind, here are four players who haven’t been the most flashy this season, but are more than capable of making their presence felt in the Super Bowl.

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