New York Giants Badly Missing Prince Amukamara

The New York Giants have had to play a lot without Prince Amukamara in his career. The 2011 first round draft pick has only played a full 16-game season once in his career, missing 22 games in his career, including this season. While it is frustrating how much playing time he has missed, the Giants have always seemed to have a safety net in place.

At the beginning of his career, it was a luxury pick almost by the Giants. They had veterans Corey Webster and Aaron Ross already in place, so the injury didn’t hurt as much. Last season when he missed half the season, the Giants had loaded up at defensive back with players such as Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, Zack Bowman and Walter Thurmond to go with Amukamara and Jayron Hosley. Injuries may have ravaged the position, but there was at least a safety net in place; there is no net big enough to save the Giants from the injuries they had last season in the secondary.

This season though, there was no such net in place. People pointed at the safety position as the weakness, as they dropped like flies in the offseason. While that dominated headlines, the Giants had a bigger problem; cornerback depth. Beyond Rodgers-Cromartie and Amukamara, there was very little to be excited about. If either of them got injured, it would cause a problem. Well, that happened once again to Amukamara, and the Giants are feeling the effects of that loss.

With Amukamara sidelined, the Giants have been forced to rely on borderline NFL talent, and that is putting it nicely. Trying to replace Amukamara has been Hosley and Trevin Wade. They are already facing an uphill battle because they are being stretched out as starters, but the game plan is doing them no favors.

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With the pass rush nonexistent all season, Steve Spagnuolo has been forced to blitz a lot to try and manufacture pressure. That has left his defensive backs on an island in one-on-one coverage more often than a coordinator would like. With Rodgers-Cromartie and Amukamara back there, that does not hurt as much as both are capable defenders. But with one of them missing, the Giants are being exposed.

That was on display the first two weeks without Amukamara, when Sam Bradford went for 280 yards and Matt Cassel put a little bit of a scare into the Giants with 227. The punctuation mark came this past weekend though, as Drew Brees dissected the Giants secondary like a surgeon. The players he picked on the most? You guessed it; Amukamara’s replacements.

Brees threw for an absurd 505 yards and seven touchdowns. He finished the game with a passer rating of 131.7 despite throwing two interceptions (a fumble originally ruled a fumble by Willie Snead was changed to an interception later on). While Brees obviously picked on a lot of different Giants defenders en route to those stats, two that he made problems against was Rodgers-Cromartie and Trumaine McBride. Rodgers-Cromartie recorded his third interception of the season, while McBride made his first.

Brees probably regretted throwing at them at all, as they are the only veterans the Giants have at corner. With how great a game he had, it is hard to imagine what he had done had he targeted Hosley and Wade more. According to Pro Football Focus, when Brees threw at either of those two players, he recorded a perfect 158.3 passer rating. They were targeted 11 times, and Brees completed 11 passes for 216 yards and four touchdowns; ouch is one way to explain that.

While it is tough to say how much of an impact Amukamara would have had, you can be sure that Brees wouldn’t have had the freedom to throw it around as he did against the Giants current group.

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This is a trend that could continue for the Giants until Amukamara gets back on the field. They catch a slight break this upcoming week going against rookie Jameis Winston, but they could be in a load of trouble the following week against Tom Brady and the New England Patriots.

Amukamara was expected to miss about four weeks, a timetable that will be hit this week. The Giants can only hope he is back in time to play against the Patriots because it will be tough to stomach another performance like the one the Giants secondary put on in Week 8.

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