Odell Beckham says defender told him Bucs knew Giants’ plays
The New York Giants have struggled offensively this season, and head coach Ben McAdoo has admitted that play-calling has been an issue for the team. According to one opposing player, the problem in Week 4 was predictability.
Odell Beckham Jr. said this week that Tampa Bay Buccaneers cornerback Vernon Hargreaves told him during Sunday’s 25-23 loss that the Bucs knew what the Giants were going to run much of the time.
“He was just like, ‘You know, we know a lot of what you’re doing,'” Beckham said, per Dan Duggan of NJ.com.
Beckham doesn’t seem too concerned, however. He noted that the Giants ran the same offense in 2016, and they were a playoff team.
“It’s the system. It’s our offense,” Beckham said. “We were 11-5 last year and we were running the same thing. So is it really this or are we just not executing right? I don’t think we’re executing the way that we can at a higher level. It wasn’t a problem last year when we were winning games, so it’s just a matter of execution, really.”
But as Duggan reminds us, the Giants ranked 26th in the NFL last season with 19.4 points per game. It was defense that led them to an 11-5 record.
McAdoo recently explored the idea of giving up his play-calling duty, but the latest report indicated the Giants are not ready to make that big of an adjustment. What’s clear is that everything they have done to this point hasn’t worked. It takes a collective effort — or lack thereof — to lose your first four games of the season.