EVERY professional lineman, offensive or defensive, will tell you for as long as you will let him, that football games are won and lost on the line of scrimmage and nowhere else.
Well now, after witnessing the dominance in the trenches by the New York Giants in their upset win over the New England Patriots on Sunday, we may actually have a proof for this theory.
With much ado, respect, and apologies to superstars such as Milt Stegall, Charlie Roberts and Kevin Glenn, quite frankly, without exemplary play from the men in the trenches in front of or behind them, they don't have the time or opportunity to throw touchdowns, run for touchdowns, or catch touchdown passes. They cannot function and showcase their abilities to their fullest without a solid performance by the men that make up their offensive line. And looking at Sunday's contest, while the ground games were pretty much a stalemate all night long, it was the impact of the best pass rushing front seven in the NFL that won this game for the New York Giants.
Few would argue, even after this game, that Tom Brady is a superior quarterback to Eli Manning -- but as a byproduct of being sacked five times, hit another 10 times and pressured countless other times, it made him hurry his throws and become almost skittish in the pocket. Randy Moss may have been the best receiver on the field on that day, but if Tom doesn't have enough time to let his routes develop and set his feet because of how frequently he is being crushed, it simply does not matter how good Randy is.
Furthermore, the New York Giants do not have anything close to the best secondary in the NFL. Man for man, once again, I'm sure they would defer to the New England Patriots in this talent pool. They don't have a Champ Bailey or an Al Harris or even a Rodney Harrison, but they don't need one because they have the best defensive line the NFL has seen for some time. And when their defensive line puts on the kind of show they did on Sunday and gets after the quarterback like they did in the biggest game of the year, it makes every position on the field for New York that much better.
First and foremost, the front seven of the Giants made the Patriots a one-dimensional team by taking away the running prowess of Laurence Maroney. And with the run game bottled up and a non-factor, that eliminated the effectiveness of the play-action pass and consequently turned the heat up even more on Brady -- as these sack fiends no longer had to respect the Patriot running game.
Pound the ball
Notably, while the offensive line of New York wasn't able to pound the ball against the Patriots like they had hoped, they did, more often than not, give Eli enough time to be proficient in the pocket. While the Patriots offensive line had trouble simply blocking one-on-one and picking up the blitz, the Giants were almost flawless in their blitz protection packages and never gave up on any of the plays, which is how Eli was able to escape disaster and make that game-changing play to David Tyree while seemingly sacked in the fourth quarter.
While no one will argue that the Patriots had superior talent at virtually every so called "skill" position on the field, they lost the game because New York's offensive line protected better than New England's did, and New York's defensive line consistently got to the quarterback a step quicker than the Patriots could.
While clearly the kind of dominance the Giants displayed from their front seven cannot be counted on in a game-in and game-out basis, as quite often turnovers and time of possession have larger degrees of impact than any one position on the field, in the instances where their gun sights are dialed in to the degree that was evident Sunday, they by association, made the rest of the Giants the best football team on the field and in this instance ended up winning them a Super Bowl.
Doug Brown, always a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears Tuesdays in the Free Press.
PREVIOUS
