The Giants spent a lot of money signing defensive ends Jason Pierre-Paul and Olivier Vernon this offseason and Pierre-Paul talked a lot about how much better he’d be at bringing down quarterbacks now that he’s not playing with a club on his right hand anymore, but the team’s sack totals have not skyrocketed.
The team has nine sacks through their first seven games with their defensive ends combining for 2.5 of them. The Giants are 31st in the league in the category, something that head coach Ben McAdoo believes only matters to the dregs of society.
“We say it all the time: Stats are for losers,” McAdoo said, via Newsday. “We need to make the quarterback uncomfortable. We need to make him move, make him chatter his feet, make him early or late with the throws. Numbers are numbers.”
While McAdoo may be averse to quantitative analysis, there are some of those blasted numbers that make his larger point. The Giants are 10th in the league in points allowed and 12th in yards allowed while allowing quarterbacks the fourth-lowest passer rating of any defense in the league.
As long as they can continue to have that kind of success, it doesn’t really matter where they rank compared to other teams when it comes to sacks. That said, they did have three of them against the Rams before spending Week Eight on a bye and McAdoo would probably be OK should they repeat that performance against Carson Wentz and the Eagles this Sunday.
