After Sunday’s loss in Philly, one of the positives Giants head coach Joe Judge noted in the opening statement of his postgame media session was that special teams did a lot of good things.
Apparently, that includes a play where most people, including some of the players on the field, were confused as to why it happened.
On one of Riley Dixon’s punts during the game, defensive back Darqueze Dennard, who was just signed this week, appeared to have a chance to down the ball inside the five yard line, but put his hands up and let it go for a touchback.
Some of the Giants seemed to look at Dennard with their hands up wondering why he would do that, but as Judge explained Monday, Dennard had to, because he was an “illegal” player at that point.
“In Darqueze's defense a little bit, it's been a handful of years since he's played gunner; he did a good job for us yesterday, but got a little fogged up on the rules,” Judge said. “You can’t be the first toucher if you go out of bounds. The second he ran out of bounds in that situation, I was actually walking down the sideline yelling in his ear 'Don't touch it, don't touch it, don't touch it,' because that's an illegal touch penalty and inside the five it becomes a touchback anyway right there. In that situation, the other players have an opportunity if the ball kicks back, but it bounced in the end zone.”
So, Judge understands why linebacker Cam Brown, among others, reacted the way they did, perhaps not knowing that Dennard had gone out of bounds.
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“Cam, after he reacted to playing through the returner, didn't have an opportunity to really make that play. It's something that we've got to make sure that we don't make that mistake as a guy in our gunner and downing position,” Judge said. “Any time a guy gets knocked on the white, we always do a job of just reminding him to make sure you don't be the first toucher, especially in a plus-50 situation.”
So no, absolutely not a lack of effort, but actually, a strong sense of awareness thanks to the help of the coaching staff.
“It was absolutely not effort. He got knocked out of bounds, he knew he couldn't be the first toucher and he made sure that he didn't get the first toucher penalty, especially inside the five-yard line where there would be no chance of having anything better than a touchback,” Judge said. “You have a lot of communication in a game with guys on the perimeter, especially your gunners because they're close enough to you. You try to help them out and give them some coaching points with the ball in the air. It's amazing how much communication you can have in the middle of a play with somebody.”
All that said, though, Judge didn’t have the same praise for the effort of Dixon himself, who has been one of the busier punters in the league (his 64 through 15 games is tied for fifth in the NFL) but has a 38.9 yard net average that is 23rd among 29 punters with at least 38 punts (2.5 per game) after a Sunday that saw him average just 36.8 yards per kick on eight punts.
“The biggest thing with Riley is knowing when you've got to pull the balls away from him because he'll kick his leg off when he has a bad ball. He's going to chase that until he feels it's perfect and gets it fixed. Riley's got a lot of ability and obviously, yesterday wasn't his best day punting. It doesn't mean that we've lost confidence in him as a player, it doesn't mean that we're going to do something as far as moving on from him as being our punter, but obviously, we expect a little bit more out of him as a player,” Judge said. “The one thing that's tough for Riley is he does everything he can do to prepare for it, and he has great results in practice and through warmups, and he's just got to carry it over to the game.”
Judge did, however, praise Dixon as a hard worker, the same way he does many of his players.
“Riley is a guy that works unbelievably tirelessly and he's a great teammate, a fun guy to coach,” Judge said. “I could go through the technical things and the things you can coach him on film, whatever it may be. But you see the week before, Riley has had some phenomenal punts for us, done a lot of things to help our field position. He's been a strength of our team; our coverage unit has been very good this year overall. But when you don't have good execution from the specialists, the coverage also isn't going to have good execution, as well. We've got to tie those two aspects together and make sure that we eliminate mistakes on the field.”
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