Notebook: Giants gear up for latest RB challenge

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – Jason Pinnock hasn’t been directly informed about the contents of the Indianapolis Colts’ game plan, but he is comfortably certain what they will do on offense when they face the Giants Sunday in MetLife Stadium.

Hint: the Colts rushed for a franchise record 335 yards and threw only 11 passes in their victory last week against the Tennessee Titans.

“You don’t fix what’s not broken,” Pinnock said this week. “So, I assume they’re gonna come and run the ball.”

Several indicators make that likely. The Colts can hand the ball to Jonathan Taylor, who was selected AFC Offensive Player of the Week after running for 218 yards and three touchdowns, including 65 and 70-yarders, against Tennessee. Second-year quarterback Anthony Richardson didn’t practice this week with back and foot injuries. He has completed only 47.7% of his passes. Should he not play, veteran Joe Flacco, who turns 40 next month, will make his fifth start of the season. Rain is forecast for Sunday. The Giants have allowed 142.6 rushing yards a game, the NFL’s second-highest figure.

The Colts will likely come out of the locker room running and keep doing it unless game circumstances force them to abandon that strategy.

“Looking at the weather conditions, J.T. is a good back, so I assume they’re gonna try and use him,” Pinnock said.

“If you go through the history of football toward the end of the year, it’s always turned into a run heavy game,” defensive lineman Rakeem Nunez-Roches said. “I think they would do that regardless of what the result was last week, but that will give them the courage to do it this week.”

The Colts were the first NFL team to rush for at least 335 yards and throw 11 or fewer passes since Nov. 20, 1977, when the Chicago Bears ran for 343 yards and put the ball in the air just seven times in a 10-7 victory against Minnesota. Hall of Famer Walter Payton ran for 275 yards on 40 carries.

The last team with 11 or fewer pass attempts in a game was Tennessee, which threw 10 passes on Oct. 30, 2022, in a victory against Houston.

The Giants have confronted an excellent running back every week recently. On Nov. 24, they faced Tampa Bay’s Bucky Irving, the league’s top rookie rusher with 920 yards. Four days later, Dallas’ Rico Dowdle ran for 122 yards against them. In their last three games, the Giants’ defense has faced New Orleans’ Alvin Kamara, Baltimore’s Derrick Henry, and Atlanta’s Bijan Robinson.

Taylor fits right in with that class. The 2021 first-team all-pro is eighth in the NFL with 1,129 rushing yards, his third 1,000-yard season. He has topped 100 yards six times this season -including in each of the last two games – and scored eight touchdowns.

Taylor’s 218 rush yards last week were the second most in a game by a player this season behind Saquon Barkley’s 255 against the Rams on Nov. 24. Taylor averaged 7.5 yards on his 29 carries. The last player with such a high average on so many rushing attempts was … Jonathan Taylor on Jan. 3, 2021 (8.4-yard average on 30 carries in a victory against Jacksonville).

Giants defensive coordinator Shane Bowen has an extensive history facing Taylor after holding the same position for the Titans the previous three seasons. In five games against Bowen’s defensive, Taylor rushed for 252 yards and one touchdown on 62 carries (4.1-yard average). His highest total was 70 yards.

Bowen said there was more to those numbers than his defensive schemes.

“He was banged up in a few of those games, so we’ve gotten lucky,” Bowen said. “Tough back. He’s a focus of what they do between him and the quarterback running the ball. We’re gonna have our hands full, and we got to know that every single down it’s going to take all 11 in this run game. Whether it’s him trying to bounce stuff on us, hitting up inside; if you give him a crease and he’s able to hit it, he’s an issue on the second level. Just the speed, the burst, the acceleration – he eats up grass pretty quickly if he’s able to get through that first line.”

Bowen admits he didn’t expect this season to prepare for an offense that threw only 11 passes in its previous game.

“You have that kind of success in the run game that they had last week, I don’t know why you do throw it,” he said. “If you’re handing it off at seven yards a clip and 330 yards later, I don’t know why you would, regardless of who your quarterback is. Go out there, hand it off and and keep plugging. There’s something to be said when you’re able to run the ball like that and control the game. The risk factor that’s involved with throwing the football at times regardless of who it is, versus being able to run the ball. There’s a lot less likelihood for fumbles than there is for interceptions in some regard.”

The Giants will settle for either – and for mitigating Taylor’s influence on the game.