The Giants’ old-school ground game gave Baltimore’s NFL-leading rush defense a lesson in yesterday’s 30-10 rout.
From Brandon Jacobs getting the better of linebacker Ray Lewis on both of his first-quarter touchdowns to Ahmad Bradshaw’s fourth-quarter breakaway, Big Blue punished the Ravens on the ground like nobody has in years.
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“I actually think that Ahmad Bradshaw ran better than Jacobs did. It’s (not) really that it’s so tough to bring either of them down, it’s just that the holes they were running through were so big,” Ravens defensive tackle Trevor Pryce said. “The holes were gaping. Gaping!
“If you give any NFL back holes like that, he’s going to look like Gale Sayers. It wasn’t so much that they were ultra-special, but it was more that we were ultra-bad.”
The Ravens made Jacobs, Bradshaw and Derrick Ward look like Gale Sayers, Jim Brown and Walter Payton. A rush defense that had allowed an average of just 65.4 yards per game was gashed for 207, the Ravens’ worst day since Oct. 5, 1997.
“Hell yeah, we’re going to take this game personally. If we didn’t take it personally, it’d mean that we didn’t care,” said Ravens defensive tackle Justin Bannan.
Defensive back Samari Rolle admitted the physicality of the Giants made the difference.
“We let (Jacobs) get to the edge, and the strength of our defense is in the middle,” Rolle said.
Baltimore hadn’t allowed a team to rush for more than 76 yards this year, but Jacobs had 70 in the first quarter before hurting his knee, and Bradshaw started left and cut back up the middle for a 77-yard run in the fourth.
On the Giants’ first drive, Jacobs bounced off Pryce and cut outside for 36 yards, setting up his first touchdown plunge. On the scoring play, Jacobs was tripped up by Lewis, but fell into the end zone. On the next drive, Lewis hit Jacobs at the goal line, but couldn’t stop the 264-pounder’s momentum.
“When you’ve got a guy 4 yards behind the line of scrimmage you’ve got to make that play. We make those plays 1,000 times out of 1,000 times,” Lewis said. “We had problems with overpursuing. That’s something that we don’t do, bottom line. We don’t let backs get outside and that’s something that we pride ourselves in, but they were able to do it.”