Best Of Giants on WFAN: The Harbaugh Effect is Showing

Craig Carton (0:00)

So, let's talk more about this Giants game. We were screaming about the Jets early on, how brutal that was.

I know that it's Jameis Winston. I know that it looks ugly at times, but these are games over the last number of years that the Giants would end up losing, including last year, by the way, because they'd get so close, and then they'd blow it, end of a game. They'd give up a touchdown. You're talking back-to-back games now where the defenses come up with a huge turnover to win a football game. And yeah, you want to look at it glass half empty half. They were that close to losing to the Titans. They were that close to losing to the Cardinals. I'm not looking at it at all. You win these games, all the adversity, no Brian Burns, no Jackson Dart. You're up against it late in the game, a guy like Deonte Banks who has been absolutely crapped on him for good reasons since he's been drafted here because he's never fully lived up to his potential with that interception. I mean, that's as good as it gets. And by the way, Arvell Reese, first couple of weeks look confused. Now is a, I mean, he is a massive force on that defense and he was showing it again yesterday. And maybe Brian Burns, you want to go silver lining, Brian Burns being out and them using Arvell Reese in different ways has unlocked him a little bit. But this, I mean, they're three in one. They're first place in the NFC East. And that, above all, is the thing that should be talked about with the New York Giants. It's just the Jameis, if you're going to take anything of how this team is going to be going forward, it's the Jameis experience. How much of that can you tolerate before you want to go somewhere else because you think there's a better option in JJ McCarthy? But as much bad as he was giving you yesterday, he gave you just a little more good, and that's all you need from him.

Chris McMonigle (1:39)

Yeah, there are times where he throws the ball where I'm like, man, what happened to his arm? And it's hard to watch, but then there are other times where he just comes back and, you know, he has the ability to forget. Like in the real time, some quarterbacks were overwhelmed by the interceptions, other ones just forget and they move on. And maybe it's just because he's been around for so long and this is kind of the way that he has played his entire career that, you know, he can overcome those interceptions.

The one part of this whole thing, and I told you this when they hired John Harbaugh that he was going to fix. The first thing that he was going to fix was going to be special teams. That was going to be it. The kicking game was going to be priority number one. We got to get a punter. We got to get a kicker. We got to get that part of the game short up so we don't lose games because we don't have a kicker. We have a lousy punter. We have bad coverage teams.

That's his background. He completely has changed the way that that part of the game has been played for the New York Giants. It plays such a big part into their field position, the ability to feel good about your kicker making game winning kicks or important kicks at the end of the half. So, all of that is part of why the Giants are 3-1 right now. That and the fact that they got two turnovers late in games against two teams that they are comparable to, all right? And I would agree with you in your assessment of Arvell Reese. I saw him highlighted last night on a highlight package of all the things that he was doing yesterday. The guy's a tackling machine and you could see the athleticism and they had him get Jeremiah Love on the sideline. And these were two guys that were picked in the top five picks. And there wasn't a chance that Jeremiah Love was going to get away from Arvell Reese. So it was good to see Arvell actually starting to learn more. And maybe there is a little bit of a silver lining that yes, they did put him at the end of the line a couple of times. But they also had him rushing up in the middle and he was going against the guards and the guards couldn't stay with him. They just could not set... Space on a football field is really hard to come by. But when there is a little bit of space, especially for a faster, more athletic linebacker against the heavy set guard with shorter arms, they can make moves in that space. It's amazing how he was able to do that and fight off a couple of their offensive guards yesterday and get pressure on Jacoby Percet. There was one where he was actually locked up with one of the tackles. They threw a pass, I think it was to Jeremiah Love. He came off the tackle and ran down Jeremiah Love behind the line of scrimmage. Yeah. I mean, that's the kind of thing I think that they saw at Ohio State. That's the type of athleticism. They were hoping to see transfer to the football field.