Falcons: PFF Focus Points: John Abraham vs. the Giants

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Quote:PFF Focus Points: John Abraham vs. the Giants

The Giants’ tackles have struggled in pass protection all season–especially against speed rushers coming from the outside–and in the Falcons’ John Abraham, here was the most productive player fitting that description over the last three to four years.

As pure pass protectors, LT, David Diehl ranked 47th in our tackle rankings while RT, Kareem McKenzie, a guy whose fall from grace has been precipitous this year, ranked 49th. I mention them both because Abraham spends a lot of time on both sides of the line. He’s one of the few players who are equally adept at rushing from the left as from the right, as is evidenced by his stats from the regular season. He came from the left 28% of the time and picked up five sacks, five hits and nine hurries in 111 attempts, while on the 56% of plays coming from the right he was excellent, although slightly less productive, with five sacks, three hits and 23 hurries on 224 rushes.

Would these guys allow Eli Manning the time to throw or would he be on his back-foot all day. Let’s see how it turned out.

The first thing to note is that Abraham played a lot more of the game than he usually does. He normally plays 66% of snaps but here he didn’t leave the field for a play until there was only 6:03 left in the game and, overall, was in for 94% of plays.

As expected, he did rotate ends and played 44% of time on the left and 56% on the right, getting nearly all his success against McKenzie.

It all started so well. On the second drive, he dipped low to go around the right tackle and sack the quarterback in 2.7 seconds, and then at the start of the second quarter, he spun inside the same player on a screen to tackle Ahmad Bradshaw for a loss.

Perhaps it’s unfair to say that McKenzie struggled while David Diehl had no problems. As Abraham came across to the former guard’s side, particularly in the first half, he was given a lot of help. At one stage late in the second quarter, Danny Ware effectively doubled-teamed him on three consecutive snaps–some might call it a chip but it was a lot more than that.

After Abraham’s initial success, things started to deteriorate and as the Giants started to run the ball his keenness to make plays got taken advantage of as his momentum was exploited to leave him out of position.

Highlight Plays:

In addition to the two plays mentioned above, Abraham made a couple of plays in the running game against McKenzie too. At 10:19 left in the second, he got inside the tackle to make stop for short gain and, with 8:48 to play in the third, he used his speed to get around the back him and stop Bradshaw for a yard.

Areas of Concern:

His worst play came with 5:55 left in the second where he abandoned outside contain in an effort to make a play. It wasn’t a great time as the game was very much in the balance and New York had had no success running at all. The area he left was then exploited for a 34-yard gain on 2-and-11 by Brandon Jacobs that eventually led to the go-ahead TD.

In addition, he wasn’t called for a penalty but was also offside on the play where Ray Edwards was flagged.

By the Numbers:

● Snaps: 62 (93.9% of all plays)
● Running Game: Two tackles on 28 running plays.
● Passing Game: One sack and three hurries on 32 rushing attempts while dropping into coverage twice. He also made a tackle, as mentioned above, on a screen.

In Summary:

It started well as he gave McKenzie a hard time but they were not going to leave Diehl one-on-one with him to suffer the same fate. As the game wore on, he took more chances, was exploited on occasion, and then rendered almost useless as the Giants ran down the clock.

https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/20...he-giants/