The Giants’ horrific OL is wasting a potentially amazing offense

The 2018 New York Giants have a stacked offense, thanks to a group of skill players who, on paper, make their roster look like it should handle each and every contest like a freeplay game of NFL Blitz.

They’re led by a two-time Super Bowl champion quarterback whose 2018 is predicated on proving he’s not yet washed up. His top target is a 25-year-old three-time Pro Bowler who is on pace to rewrite the league’s record books and just signed the richest contract ever for a wide receiver. His hybrid tight end is a mismatch-creating monster up the seam who led the team in receptions and touchdown catches as a rookie. His backfield is led by the No. 2 overall pick from the 2018 NFL Draft — a physical freak who found ways to score from anywhere on the field in three seasons at Penn State.

But after two games, Eli Manning, Odell Beckham Jr., Evan Engram, and Saquon Barkley are borderline unwatchable while leading the league’s 29th-ranked offense. And that’s because the Giants’ offensive line appears to be an elaborate practical joke being played on the franchise. Here, for example, is Ereck Flowers doing something adjacent to blocking in Week 1:

Flowers is just part of the problem. The Giants’ blocking as a whole has put a ton of pressure on a 37-year-old quarterback who wasn’t especially mobile even in his younger days. Without time to throw downfield or space to run, this muscle car offense can’t find its way out of first gear.

After being sacked on 5.3 percent of his dropbacks in a miserable 2017, Manning’s number has exploded to a shade under 9 percent this fall. As a result, you’ve got a passer who’s completed 69 percent of his passes so far but for career-low 9.0 yards per catch. Without any time to do anything constructive in the pocket, all New York can hope for is that its litany of short passes will eventually spring for a monster yards-after-catch gain.

Advanced stats bear this out — sort of. Manning has been nimble enough to buy himself 2.7 seconds to throw each time he drops back, a number that actually ranks in the NFL’s upper half and ahead of players like Ben Roethlisberger, Matt Ryan, and Tom Brady. However, his average pass only travels 6.6 yards downfield — only seven quarterbacks are making shorter throws than the Giants’ QB so far this season. In short, he’s taking more time in the pocket to complete shorter passes, and that’s a recipe for a boring, punchless offense.

There are a few reasons behind this. Beckham, for all his downfield brilliance, also carries a lot of weight in the intermediate passing game, as a middling 12.2 air yards per target suggests. He’s not being sent deep as much as his highlight reel would suggest.

Engram and Barkley — the latter the team’s leading receiver after a rookie-record 14 catches Sunday — have been asked to stay at home more often and chip pass rushers before heading out on short routes. While the rookie tailback is getting used a ton, he’s more safety valve than actual weapon right now. After averaging 11.7 yards per catch in three years at Penn State, his NFL number is a paltry 6.4 yards.

Why so low? A big reason is because Manning has been trapped behind a sloppy offensive line — and rather than force throws downfield, he’s checking down to his third and fourth options near the line of scrimmage. That’s how Barkley can catch 14 passes in one game while only gaining 80 yards.

On Sunday, those struggles manifested themselves into a single third-quarter play. Dallas linebacker Damien Wilson blitzed his way through an ark-sized hole in the Giants’ offensive line to get to Manning in just 2.08 seconds — the second-fastest sack in the league so far in 2018. His hit jarred the ball from the QB’s hands, where it was recovered by Taco Charlton. Six plays later, Brett Maher kicked a 29-yard field goal that pushed the Cowboys’ lead to 13-0.

With Barkley split to the right, the Giants have a five-on-five blocking situation up front. Rookie left guard Will Hernandez completely blanks Wilson in order to double-team Jaylon Smith. When he realizes what he’s done, he can’t do much besides look at the multiple Cowboys who are already behind him.

New York’s management knew blocking was a concern after Manning spent 2017 getting beaten up while Ben McAdoo did whatever he could to get himself fired. General manager Dave Gettleman specifically made it the focus of his first press conference with the team. But there was plenty of work to be done after last year’s 3-13 bottoming-out.

The Giants replaced McAdoo with a quarterback guru in Pat Shurmur, then made two major moves to upgrade their offensive line. First came a massive four-year, $62 million deal to bring left tackle Nate Solder over from New England. Then the club used the 34th pick of the 2018 NFL Draft to select Hernandez, a throwback meanie who was dominant at UTEP.

But Solder has struggled away from Dante Scarnecchia and the insulation the Patriots provided. Hernandez’s learning curve in the pros has proven steep. Center Jon Halapio played well enough to convince the team to trade away 2017 starter Brett Jones (currently starting for the Vikings), but a broken leg suffered this week will cost him the rest of the season. Last year’s starting right guard, John Jerry, was released. Last year’s starting left tackle, Flowers, was not.

That’s a maelstrom that, through two games, has made the New York offensive line worse. Solder could improve as he adjusts to his new surroundings, but he’s still a player who allowed 51 quarterback pressures for the Patriots last fall and at age 30 is likely beyond the point of meaningful improvement. Hernandez will get better with every game he adds to his resume, but his impressive college performance was based off a steady diet of Conference-USA teams.

Halapio was a question mark to begin with, and downgrading from him to backup Spencer Pulley — who allowed more pressures than any other center in 2017 — is a major obstacle. Punching “Ereck Flowers sucks” into Google pulls up 31,600 relevant results. Right guard Patrick Omameh is good enough to be anonymous on a better offensive line but still bad enough to contribute to Manning’s dwindling sanity in the pocket.

On Sunday, they gave the Cowboys’ pass rush the chance to triple their season sack total. That means either players like Charlton, Wilson, and Antwaun Woods are developing into a cohesive unit faster than Dallas could have expected, or that group of Giant pass protectors is even worse than we thought.

Those are the blueprints for an offensive line able to negate the impact of one of the league’s most athletic and dynamic WR-RB-TE lineups. The Giants know what the problem is, and they tried to fix it for 2018, but those solutions have failed to take through two weeks of the season. The outcome is a borderline unwatchable offense in New York. And a quarterback who looks like this entirely too often:

And while it can be fun to see Manning’s panic face every time he drops back in the pocket, there’s nothing fun about how badly the Giants are squandering an offense with almost limitless potential at its skill positions.