Hey, we actually have five top defensive plays to discuss this week for the Gillette Pro Glide Top 5 Defensive Plays of the Week sponsored post. It's the 'Top five plays by New York Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul edition.'
Pierre-Paul was, in reality, a one-man defense for the Giants in Sunday's 37-34 victory over the Dallas Cowboys. He had the game-winning blocked field goal, and pretty much every other defensive play the Giants made that is worth mentioning. Let's go through the best of them.
1. The Blocked Field Goal: We know the situation. It is Dan Bailey's second attempt after a Tom Coughlin timeout negates his game-tying 47-yarder. Pierre-Paul, lined up in the middle, steps quickly to his left at the snap, muscles between two Dallas blockers, leaps and gets his left hand on the ball. Game over. Giants win.
2: The Safety: Pierre-Paul does to Doug Free what DeMarcus Ware has to David Diehl for years. Pierre-Paul simply blasts past Free to the outside, spins Romo around with his right arm as he flies by the Dallas quarterback and sends him stumbling into the end zone.
3. The Forced Fumble: With Dallas at its own four-yard line, Felix Jones breaks up the middle on a shotgun draw. JPP flashes across the field, gets his left arm on the ball at the 10-yard line and pops it into the air where it settles nicely into the waiting arms of Deon Grant. The Giants get a field goal.
4. The Third-Down Sack: With the Giants leading 22-20 in the third quarter, Pierre-Paul bails out defensive coordinator Perry 'Three-Man rush' Fewell. On a third-and-nine from the Dallas 46 with only three rushers, Free barely gets a hand on Pierre-Paul as he makes a devastatingly sudden move to the inside. Pierre-Paul is on Romo so fast that the guard assigned to help double team him can do nothing but watch him zoom past.
5. Chasing Down Felix Jones In The Flat: I could not find this one on tape, but I remember it clearly. On a swing pass to Jones out in the left flat, Pierre-Paul reads the play and finds himself one-on-one with the running back in the open field. He makes the play, of course. Like the fake field goal he stopped in New Orleans, this is a play defensive ends are not supposed to be able to make.