Giants are dialing up the blitz and its already paying off

Dennard Wilson cast aside his reputation, listened to his players’ feedback and found his inner Brian Flores.The NFL ends up with stationary quarterbacks in RPO offenses, defensive ends in outside linebacker stances and man-to-man cornerbacks dropping into zone coverage because play-callers who initially claim they will adjust to their personnel often end up jamming a square peg into a round hole.Get texts from Paul Schwartz with all the latest Giants news and insights, exclusive to Sports+ subscribers.

Wilson joined the Giants with a low-blitz reputation after two seasons as defensive coordinator for the Titans and stayed true to it in his first three games calling the defense.Since then, however, Wilson has pulled a full 180-degree turn into Blitzville, as creating pressure with a short-handed four-man front proved difficult.“Dennard has pretty much every blitz known to man in the system,” head coach John Harbaugh said.

“And almost every blitz coverage — we don’t have quite all of them, but we can get to them soon enough if we want.And he does a great job of organizing it.

It’s a great, week-to-week game-planning mindset.”The Giants ranked at the bottom of the NFL with one sack and seven quarterback hits while blitzing on just 22.1 percent of defensive snaps over the first three games.In their first two full games without injured All-Pro pass-rusher Brian Burns, the Giants blitzed the Cardinals on 51.3 percent of drop-backs and then upped the rate to 62.2 percent — often with more than one blitzer — in the overtime tie against the Commanders.The results are a combined seven sacks and 14 quarterback hits.“You saw probably more all-out pressure blitzes from two teams in the fourth quarter and the fifth quarter than you’ll ever see again,” Harbaugh said.

“Every play pretty much was ‘Zero’ blitz by both teams, it seemed like.So, that’s probably going to drive the numbers up a little bit.

But we feel like we would consider ours...