The New York Giants host the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday at MetLife Stadium. The 2-2 teams are having very different seasons despite having the same record.
The Giants benched their veteran quarterback in favor of a rookie, and the Vikings’ quarterback can’t seem to find his receivers anywhere on the field. The Vikings do have the sixth ranked defense in the NFL, but that may not be enough to slow down the Daniel Jones train.
Here are three things the Giants need to do to ensure victory in Week 5:
Find a way — any way — to slow down Dalvin Cook
Dalvin Cook has the second-most rushing yards in the NFL. His 410 yards on the season is one yard shy of tying Carolina Panthers running back Christian McCaffrey. Cook is responsible for five of the Vikings eight rushing touchdowns and is largely the reason for their wins over Atlanta and Oakland, while Green Bay and Chicago found a way to slow him down to get the win.
Hopefully the Giants watched the film from those games religiously to see how they slowed him down.
The Giants’ secondary is suddenly figured out how to play, and with the drama between Kirk Cousins and his receivers, it’s unlikely the passing game will be a big factor.
Still, without Ryan Connelly, Alec Ogletree and Tae Davis, the Giants will struggle to keep the ground game at bay, but if they can find a way to slow down Cook, they will have a much better shot at winning.
High percentage passes to Golden Tate
The Giants are finally getting one of their biggest acquisitions of the off-season to join them on the field. After a four-game suspension for having a banned substance in his system, 10-year veteran Golden Tate is returning to the field.
Tate has long been known not only for his ability to catch the ball, but for what he can do after the fact. The 2015 season is the only season where Tate averaged less than 10 yards per catch (9.0). And it’s not that quarterbacks are throwing him the deep ball on every reception, it’s his ability to shake a defender and gain additional yards once the ball is in his hands.
If Jones can throw high percentage passes in Tate’s direction, he won’t be sorry. Not only will it reflect well on his passing stats, but it will give the Giants a fantastic shot at winning the game because of Tate’s almost unrealistic ability to find additional yardage after the catch.
Limit mental mistakes
The Giants average 53 penalty yards per game on offense and 50 on defense, which is killing them on both sides of the ball. But it’s not just penalties, there has been a ton of blown coverage on the defensive side of the ball.
Now, that is improving each week and last week wasn’t as bad as previous weeks. However, in a game where they will struggle to stop the run game due to multiple injuries at the linebacker position, it is imperative that the secondary doesn’t make silly mistakes this week.
