Weatherford And The Special Teams Battle

[NEP4Life]

There's been a lot of discussion about offense and defense, Brady and Manning, and the Welker non-catch.

Not nearly enough credit has been given to Weatherford and the Giants special teams, IMHO.

7 of the 9 Patriots drives started at or inside the Patriots' 20.

In comparison, 8 of the 9 Giants drives started outside of the Giants' own 20.

Average starting field position...
- Patriots: 15.9 yard line
- Giants: 24.6 yard line

It's like the Patriots spotted the Giants a first down on every single drive.

In a game as close as this one, that's absolutely huge.

 

[ickz]

I seriously believe that Weatherford should have been MVP.

 

[PATSYLICIOUS]

They outplayed us bigtime on ST and that hurt us alot. The pooch punts were obviously huge. Especially the first one.

Also huge was the sequence where Edelman returned a kick to the 16, we go 3 and out, then a bad punt gives the Giants a start in our territory.

The kickoff after we went up 17-9, they returned it to the 35. That was pretty big as just a couple first downs got them in FG range.

All 3 led to Giants points, ST played a huge role. Disappointing as our ST's had outperformed theirs this year and I was counting on that to work in our favor.

 

[sambam94]

Pats D not being able to force 1 3 and out set it up for their kicker...Field position killed the Pats.

 

[doesntmatter1]

The giants punter had a hell of a night but gostowski was pissing me off last night. The first time we kicked off short and jernagin was able to return it to the 24 I was like okay that dude is quick and shouldn't be allowed to try again. Here is what i was thinking before he even returned the long one.Um didn't our kicker use to kick the ball deep into the endzone all the time last year. And to boot, he got an extra five yards this year so wtf.

 

[SyN65]

Giants special teams dominated the game. THAT I can admit. How many times did we start inside the 10?