The New York Giants have won two straight games since starting the season 0-6 and now they have a chance to add another number to the win column on Sunday as they face the Oakland Raiders at MetLife Stadium for their week 10 matchup after coming out of a bye and they will have reinforcements in the rushing game with Andre Brown, Brandon Jacobs and Peyton Hillis.
The Giants have struggled to rush the ball this season and after winning two straight games they are looking much better and getting healthier and with Brown coming back they have the chance to turn it around against a Raiders team that gave up a ton of yards last week against the Eagles. Jacobs is the team leader with 154 yards and that's pretty bad, while the team is ranked 30th in rushing yards per game with less than 70 yards. Michael Cox, Hillis and Jacobs along with Brown should open things up for Eli Manning and it should help on third downs, where the team has faced so many third-and-10's that it's hard to count.
Brown was expected to be the starter at running back in the preseason, and while the Giants weren't being looked at as a Super Bowl favorite, but many saw them as a possible playoff team and one of their strengths was supposed to be an improved rushing attack with David Wilson and Andre Brown, with the veteran likely starting. Like the old saying goes, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. Well, god had the last laugh on this one.
Brown had an up and down preseason after coming back from a broken leg suffered in 2012 and when he had a fumble issue in the third preseason game, Coughlin decided that he would play his possible starter in 2013 in the final preseason game of the season. Coughlin obviously didn't know that Brown would break his leg, or that his team would be 0-6 this season, but that one move may have drastically changed the destiny of the 2013 Giants.
While no one can actually know if Brown would have gotten hurt early in the season anyway, one thing everyone DOES know is that he would not have been hurt if he did not play in that fourth preseason game on the schedule. If he was not on the field for that game, maybe he starts Week 1 against the Dallas Cowboys and maybe David Wilson doesn't fumble his life, the Giants season and his possible career away in that game. Maybe that doesn't balloon into six turnovers and a loss to the Cowboys. Maybe Brown is healthy and the Giants pull out that game and then somehow beat the Broncos in Week 2.
No one knows if that is how things would have turned out, but one thing everyone knows is that Brown would not have been hurt if he was not on the field for the fourth preseason game. The Giants currently rank 30th in the league in rushing yards per game and just recently got their first 100 yard game of the season and now they are so banged up with Brown, Wilson and now Brandon Jacobs out, they were forced to take a free agent off the pile in Peyton Hillis.
