New Orleans Saints Forums - blackandgold.com - Giants' Bradshaw key for showdown with Saints

Now, it's the Giants' turn to test the Saints in a match of undefeated teams Sunday in New Orleans.

Unlike the Jets, whose rookie quarterback Mark Sanchez received his "Welcome to the NFL" wakeup call from the Saints just over a week ago, the Giants come equipped with a Super Bowl MVP quarterback in Eli Manning, who will be making his first-ever appearance in his hometown Superdome.

Not only are the Giants established as a legitimate Super Bowl contender with a defense every bit as tough as the one the Jets brought to town, but they have something the Jets didn't have. The Giants have running back Ahmad Bradshaw, who turned 12 touches of the football into 165 yards of offense and two touchdowns in the Giants' ridiculously easy 44-7 rout of the Raiders on Sunday.
Of all those yards Bradshaw gained, the most important one might have been the 1-yard touchdown he scored on his first play of the game after coming in for injured running back Brandon Jacobs, who had a "burner" after being held to one yard on second down from the Oakland 2-yard line and no gain on third down on the Giants' opening drive.

Some of the Giants' problems in what coach Tom Coughlin calls the "green zone" have come from Jacobs' struggles to score from close range. But instead of settling for a field goal at the end of their impressive march, Coughlin called Bradshaw's number, and he wormed through a hole created by fullback Madison Hedgecock and into the end zone for a touchdown that said the Giants were taking charge from the outset.

"Down there, there's not a lot of room to run," Hedgecock said of the goal-line play. "So, if everybody gets a nose on their man and you have a small little [hole] where a guy is going to plug, that extra guy we can't block is the tailback's man, and it's whether he beats him or not. I know on that one, I felt like I got enough of my guy to give [Bradshaw] enough room to make him miss or get low enough."

Bradshaw got his pads low and then twisted through the opening to score. He made the tough plays like that one, and his next four plays were a 17-yard run, a 19-yard touchdown run with a brilliant cut at the line of scrimmage, a 23-yard run from his own 6-yard line and a 55-yard gain on a simple swing pass left. Bradshaw later added runs of 19 and 24 yards.

It might be easy to discount Bradshaw's success against a weak team like Oakland, except the Raiders actually have a lot of talent and speed on their defense. "He's a little guy, but he's scrappy," Hedgecock said of Bradshaw. "He's tough; he makes the first guy miss a lot of times, and he's hard to bring down. Being a good change-of-direction back, I believe that, when Bradshaw got in there, maybe they overran it because they were flowing so hard."

If Bradshaw can make the Saints miss in the same fashion, the Giants should enjoy a far more productive day on offense than the Jets did in the Superdome. That doesn't mean that Jacobs shouldn't start. He's a battering ram, the meat tenderizer who can pound the Saints' defense and soften them up. But maybe Coughlin mixes Bradshaw in earlier for a change of pace.

Considering he only practiced on Friday last week because of a foot injury, it was all the more impressive. The key, Bradshaw said, was "just focus. When I'm not practicing and I'm sitting back watching Brandon and how the defense plays us in practice, it's just a mental thing to be able to read the flow of the 'backers."

In other words, he saw it all in his head before it came out in the game. The Giants just hope Bradshaw has similar visions of success against the Saints.

Giants' Bradshaw key for showdown with Saints