Notebook: Giants turn attention to Seahawks

The Giants’ two deepest advances into Dallas territory were to the 20 and the 3-yard line, but they settled for field goals each time. All six of their touchdowns have been scored from inside the 20-yard line on 12 opportunities, a 50% success rate the predictably puts them in the NFL middle (tied for 17^th).

Those charged with improving those numbers believe the Giants are on the cusp of a scoring surge.

“Yeah, for sure,” said right tackle Jermaine Eluemunor. “If you watch our games, we’ve moved the ball in every single game. Obviously, the Vikings game we could have moved it a little bit better, but we were still moving the ball in that game. If you watch the Vikings now, a lot of teams struggle against that defense. I feel like we played a pretty good game against them, just weren’t clean enough and didn’t execute enough. But then you watch the other three games, we’ve moved the ball up and down the field on all three of those teams and all three of those teams have really good defenses. So, I think that we’re really close and I think that we’ll see that this week.”

Slayton is tied for third on the team with 10 receptions and his 12.2-yard average is the Giants’ highest among the five players with at least four catches. He also insists if the Giants stay on their current path, the points will come.

“I think we’ve done a pretty consistent job of moving the ball over the past three weeks, specifically,” Slayton said. “I think outside of game one, I think last three games, we’ve moved the ball really well. We’ve gotten into scoring position fairly consistently. We just haven’t been able to finish in the red zone like we wanted to, obviously, this last game, specifically.

“But I think on offense, we’ve done a good job establishing the run game at times. In the Washington game (on Sept. 15), we ran it really well. We ran it pretty well against Cleveland. Not as great against Dallas, but most of that was self-inflicted wounds. I think we’ve also done a pretty good job on offense of being efficient. I think we’ve wanted to maybe hit some of the more explosive, bigger plays. We’ve hit a couple of them, obviously could have hit more, but we’ve done a good job of being efficient, moving the chains and sustaining drives.”

The Giants surely must improve their running game, which generated just 26 yards on 24 carries against Dallas.

“I think we just didn’t execute as an offensive line how we needed to, like we did in the last two games (when they rushed for 129 and 112 yards against Washington and Cleveland),” Eluemunor said. “It was just little things where guys took turns not doing the right thing. Like me, there was two, three plays I could have done a better job on. And I’m sure there’s other guys that feel the same way. Dallas, they have a pretty good defense. They’re really fast at the ball and they have a bunch of young guys that are pretty good. But I think it was more so what we did more than what it was that they did and so we’ll improve those things this week and be ready for Seattle.”

Is Slayton frustrated it hasn’t yet happened?

“I don’t know if that’s the word,” he said. “I would just say eager – eager to get to the point where we do put it together and we go out there and we put a full four quarters together and it all comes together.”