Brandon Jacobs' Injury is Good for Giants

Oct. 18, 2011 - PRLog -- Despite a slew of injuries and a brutal home loss to Seattle, the Giants find themselves at 4-2 and atop the NFC East. In the early part of this up and down season, it's been New York's traditionally sound, tough running game that has been lacking. But, finally, that wasn't the case on Sunday.

Via ESPN:

For a change, the New York Giants didn't have to rely solely on Eli Manning's arm. They are heading into the bye week with hope, now that they've found a running game.

Ahmad Bradshaw ran for season-high 104 yards and a career-best three touchdowns and Lawrence Tynes kicked a go-ahead 23-yard field goal with 1:32 remaining to give the Giants a 27-24 victory over the Buffalo Bills on Sunday.

“This is a huge win for us,” guard  David Diehl said. “Coming into this game, we had a lot of things on our minds, with No. 1 being getting the run game going. Ahmad had a huge game for us, over 100 yards, three touchdowns and he ran hard all game…”

Is it a coincidence that Big Blue's ground game excelled when Brandon Jacobs was out and Bradshaw got over 20 carries?

I think not.

Now, it's obviously not all Jacobs' fault that the running game wasn't performing. And Bradshaw is far from perfect; he struggled last game without Jacobs. The new faces and injuries to the offensive line are more important than the backs who line up behind them.

Just ask Derrick Ward.  

But Bradshaw is a better running back than Jacobs. It's not even close.

During the broadcast yesterday, Phil Simms actually said, “Brandon Jacobs hurt might even be a blessing”.

Why? Because he knows how good Bradshaw is.

The benefit of Jacobs is his intimidating presence. He's supposed to use his size and toughness to wear out opponents and get those extra yards. He's not supposed to ever go down on first contact. You look at him and would think that he's a perfect goal line back, someone who can push the pile into pay-dirt.

The problem is that Bradshaw does all these things better than Jacobs- plus more.

Besides at the goal line, where Jacobs has never been great despite being given the opportunity from Day 1, this was not always the case. He used to be the intimidating bull that defensive backs had nightmares about. His reputation is still based off this:

To see the video and read the rest of the article, visit http://www.charged.fm/blog/post/1076/brandon-jacobs-injur...