Giants on different path now than Eagles
The New York Giants haven’t won a game on the road against the Eagles since 2013, and they didn’t exactly get off to a good start in terms of gaining the competitive edge over their division rivals when the two teams met earlier this year.
But although that meeting was five games ago, a lot has changed for both teams as they head into this weekend’s clash, the winner poised to potentially gain ground in the division.
For the Giants, they’ve traded away two defensive starters, cornerback Eli Apple and defensive tackle Damon Harrison. They’ve also revamped their offensive line, sending former starting right guard Patrick Omameh packing and center John Greco to the bench in favor of newcomer Jamon Brown and Spencer Pulley at right guard and center, respectively.
Personnel moves aside, the Giants are also in the midst of a two-game winning streak, their first such multigame streak since Weeks 14 and 15 of the 2016 season. So with all that under their hat, they’re hoping to take that momentum into Philadelphia in hopes of snapping their losing streak at Lincoln Financial Field.
“Obviously, we’re playing better football right now,” said quarterback Eli Manning. “I think we’re running the ball better than we did.”
“We corrected a lot of things that we wanted to correct after the break and one of those was being able to score in the red zone,” receiver Sterling Shepard said.
“I think we were struggling with that first half of the season and these last two weeks has been a pretty good turnaround for us, so we got to keep that going.”
Since that Eagles game, the Giants only topped the 100-yard rushing mark once, that coming against the Eagles when they came to MetLife.
But in the last two weeks, the Giants have recorded 97 yards and 163 rushing yards respectively in winning efforts, two rushing performances that have discouraged opposing defenses from lining up their linebackers too deep in coverage.
“Yes, we’re a much different team in a lot of ways. We found a way to have two good team victories the last two weeks, so we’re doing some things as a team better, not near good enough yet, but we are different,” head coach Pat Shurmur agreed.
“We have some new faces in there certainly, so yeah we are different.”
But being different is only a small part of the overall equation. The fact remains that the earlier version of the Giants didn’t play fundamentally sound football against their division rivals, who beat them 34-13.
In that game, the Giants turned the ball over three times, allowed a host of big plays, and had no answers or the strength of the Eagles defense, their front seven.
This time around, Shurmur and his coaching staff have some answers to the puzzles that so perplexed his team in that first meeting.
“Last time we played them, I know exactly why they beat us,” Shurmur said. “We didn’t do anything that you need to do against any type of team to win. We turned the ball over, we gave them big plays, we just didn’t play well enough to beat any team, so we have to fix that. That’s more about us and less about them.”
That’s why Shurmur isn’t focusing the team on extracting revenge against the Eagles.
“We played a really good team and we didn’t play well, and we got smacked. They need to know that, so that we can worry about doing the things well that we didn’t do well in that game,” he said. “I don’t get into all the payback things. We’re going to play this team twice a year and maybe in the playoffs if we’re both in the playoffs, so as we go, we’ve got to approach each time we play them with the mindset we have to do what we have to do to win that game.”
SERIES HISTORY: 168th regular-season meeting. Giants lead series, 83-82-2. The two teams met in Week 6 on Oct. 11 in MetLife Stadium, a 34-13 Giants loss. The Giants are 38-44-1 against the Eagles in road games on the road and haven’t won in Philadelphia since 2013 when they topped their division rivals 17-7.