Because it was an example of the line not magically being better. They still had issues. I don't even know what you're arguing. I think they were a bad line in front of Eli and Warner. Eli took fewer sacks and Warner was struggling. What are you disagreeing with? They gradually continued to improve throughout the year and Eli finished pretty strong if I remember correctly. But that doesn't mean they were a cohesive, effective unit to start the year and for much of it leading up to the switch at QB.
Are you saying that you think the line was good or fine? Did you watch any of the first 9 games of that year?
actually it was the ONLY example of the line not being magically better. The other games Eli started the sacks were 1, 1, 2. 0, 2 and 1. So there was precisely one game where they gave up more than 2 sacks with Eli and you picked that one game.
With Kurt at QB there were only 2 games where they gave up as few as 2 sacks, the numbers were 4, 2, 2, 4, 3, 6, 5, 7, and 6. Now if your claim is the OL was getting better as the season went on and that's why sacks came down for Manning how do we explain that the 4 worst sack games came in succession right before Kurt got benched? Shouldn't that improvement have been apparent and the sacks were coming down as the season went on? My opinion is the sacks would have gotten even worse if they hadn't changed Qb's and protected Kurt.
yes I saw more than one of those games that year and I fully agree that the national media kept telling us the Giants had a bad OL, right up until Warner went to the bench and it became apparent he had a lot to do with all the sacks.
I do think that bad OL was good enough for Barber to get over 1500 yards rushing and 13 TD's but maybe they were all just good run blockers and horrible pass rushers, until Eli took over.
That's it for me I hope we play the best QB for winning games whichever that is.
