On the first drive, we were getting gashed by Jones scrambling while Barkley/Breida picked up chunk yardage too. But once they got within 10 yards we decided to turn up and the Giants basically did nothing for the rest of the entire game. For me, it wasn’t so much that we were dominant but how we were dominant. A lot of players put us on notice as players that have progressed.
Bell and Juanyeh were standouts and all of our corners made big plays. There was not a single player in the secondary that didn’t show something, and we’ve still got Wilson and Lewis to add to the group. The defensive line was utterly dominant and there was no drop off with the 2nd string with Armstrong, Golston, and Fowler have four sacks combined.
Offensively it wasn’t world-beating like the defense but not bad considering the conditions. I was pleased to see Pollard with 5.0 YPC, Dowdle 4.0, while Turpin looked a decent point of difference coming out of the backfield. The run game overall was pretty solid. In the pass game, there were a lot of drops and Dak missed some targets but we also saw big plays from Cooks and Lamb which was kind of expected. Truth be told, I would have liked to see Tolbert, Gallup, and Ferguson do a bit more but we at least saw a functional offense that should at the very least be above average.
What we saw from that defense though….we don’t need much more than average on offense for this team to go far.
