2.5 unit
*released Tuesday
The Cardinals come into Sunday playing their second 1pm ET game in three weeks – they went to Cincinnati in Week 5 and squeaked by the Bengals by 3, flew home to Arizona last week and beat the Falcons 34-33, and now play in New York. That’s a tough travel situation for any team, let alone one with a rookie head coach.
The close wins over the Bengals and Falcons aren’t impressive because both are bad teams and the New York Giants are better than both of them. The Giants come in with 3 extra days of prep after a Thursday Night Football game vs New England where they were they were completely short-handed, yet fought all night and pressured Brady for 4 quarters. This defense is far from perfect and showed a lot of flaws early in the season, but they have fought more and been on the field less since Daniel Jones started playing. They strip sacked Brady for a fumble return TD and were about .1 seconds away from strip sacking him again in the 4th quarter of that game.
The offense gets back Saquon Barkley and Evan Engram today. Arizona is terrible defending tight ends. They’re bad defensively in a lot of areas and Daniel Jones should do what he wants vs this defense, even with Patrick Peterson returning from suspension. Golden Tate is also active for the Giants now after his suspension.
The Cardinals give up 4.7 yards per carry and that sets up Saquon for a big day in his return. Arizona just gave up 356 yards, 4 TDs, 0 INTs to Matt Ryan on 30/36 completions. They haven’t beaten anybody yet and lost by double digits to both the Panthers and Seahawks prior to a 3 point win over the Bengals and a 1 point win vs the Falcons after Atlanta missed an extra point to tie the game.
The Giants should be able to move the ball early and often and I think the defense does just enough in a game where Kyler Murray is going to have to chase points. Giants get the win and cover in a big home game today.
