How Malachi Fields elevated Giants' passing game in Houston | Blue Rush Film Breakdown

I suggest everybody go out there and buy Malachi Fields stock right now because the post-buy week stock is not going to be the same price as the pre-buy week stock. This man continues to get better and get more comfortable within this Giants offense and continues to make plays. And some are going to say, oh, he's off to a slow start. 16 catches, 248 yards and one touchdown on 30 targets. I actually think he needs more targets. On the second half of the bye week than what he got in the first seven games of the season. And he showed that in the Houston Texans game. Five targets, four catches, 87 yards. Each one of those catches were a first down. Huge first down in that win. So I'm going to show you guys how Matt Nagy is scheming plays up to get him the ball. And how J.J. McCarthy trusts his first year wide receiver in this week's Blue Rush player breakdown. All right, they ran a lot of out-breaking routes with Malachi Fields and the receivers as a whole, the speed outs, the deep bench routes, cue routes, corner routes. You saw a lot of that and I saw JJ McCarthy pull Malachi Fields and Malik Neighbors into the practice, indoor practice facility. After practice on the Thursday leading up to the Texans game to get the timing down on a lot of these throws and it worked. You saw big plays across the board when he was throwing these outbreaking routes, specifically the Malachi Fields and Malik Neighbors. So we'll watch the play here and we'll talk about how the scheme, Matt Nagy's scheme, gets his big receiver open. For an easy throw and catch it's like routes on air. It's like stealing candy from a baby. So you see him starting here in the slot. This is by disguise. You want to see what this you want the defense to declare right now. It's looking like cover three. This guy's going to have the deep third. I mean, this guy's going to have his third deep third, his third right here. And this safety looks like he's going to be the guy to play the hook to curl, the flat to curl. So now Matt Nagy motions down Darnell Mooney and Malachi Fields now becomes the number one receiver. Now with this ball right here on the hash, that means we've got all this space to the field. So motioning down Mooney now has created all this space for Malachi Fields to run this out route. It should be pitch and catch because you're running a deep out or a speed out against Against an off cover three corner. It's routes on air. It's just like stealing candy from a baby. So here at the snap, you see Malachi Fields with his right foot up. You see with the right foot up, he's going to take six total steps on that six foot, which would be the inside foot. That right foot, the inside foot is going to touch. Touch is going to... Touch, he's going to roll out, and then he's going to run. It's a speed out. That ball is coming towards the sideline. You're throwing it out there, and here's what this does. So you motion Darnell Mooney out, and he runs kind of like this, this deep over, this deep crosser. That's to hook this. Flat to curl defender, that's to keep him occupied for a bit so he doesn't just run straight under number one and try and play the out route or the hinge route or whatever you could run or throw out here. What he also does in terms of Matt Nagy is he puts Isaiah Likely on this sit route or choice route, whatever it is, whatever it is, because now this is kind of, this is also A little bit of cheese, a little bit of bait for this flat to curl, hook to curl defender because you want him to jump something and, again, not play underneath Malachi Fields. So now that Isaiah Likely has sat it down and kind of scooted out just a little bit, this now attracts this curl to flat, this hook to curl defender. So, again, instead of running underneath and trying to rob that out route, his eyes are now fixated on... Isaiah Likely, he jumps down and makes this throw even easier for J.J. McCarthy in Malachi Fields. Again, it's like routes on air. It should be pitch and catch. But quickly, let me break down something about this route for Malachi Fields. You see how he starts in this minus two. From the number split when that right foot hits the ground there he's almost at the numbers and we have a little wide departure on our stem when we come off the ball because it's not like we want to get head up it's what we want to chase this this corner we want to run at him to make him think we want this stem to look like we could be running the quick glance which will be fifth step and then keep a skinny angle a bang eight or bang eight I'll break that down another day. We can run a quick glance route where that ball's on you right away. You can run an in route where you wide depart and then you break in. There's so much you can do off of this stem. And what that does, you see this corner here because Malachi Fields is pushing at him, digging at him. He's still backing up. Now when he puts that right foot into the ground, rolls and runs. Look at the separation here. Easy throw and catch. That's third down right there. You can see it. That's a third down. Third down conversion. Big throw and catch. All right, let's go to this next one, because we've got Malachi Fields here. Neighbors in the slot, and Neighbors is the number three in the slot, likely is number two in this true slot, and then you've got Mooney out here as the number one receiver. Now you've got Malachi Fields at the X. You're moving him around in different positions. Let's see the play, and then we'll break it down. Now he runs that corner route. Boom. Throw and catch. Pitch and catch. Pitch and catch. Again, I told you, they're working these out routes and corner routes. Now he's running what, I mean, I like to call them Q routes, depending on the offense you're in, different terminology throughout the NFL and the CFL. You know, I spent eight years playing professional football. If it's a single man corner route, we used to call them Q routes. Q routes, single man. But what you're getting here is a variation of kind of like a smash concept. I know usually number one will run if it's a true smash is number two the slot runs the corner and then number one runs some sort of hitch, return, snag, whip, anything for flat control. Right now what they're doing for flat control is just releasing the back. Devin Singletary, they're releasing him to the flat because right now you're getting cover two. You're getting a cover two look, cover two look, cover two look across the board. Two high safeties playing over the top, and then these corners have the flat. So what this does, and what I like what Matt Nagy does here, you feel fine with the protection. It's four on five. You can get this back out because now it's like Malachi Fields is running this corner route out of the slot. So right when he gets here to make his break, this corner at third and five, it's about third and five right now, this corner has to honor this flat route by the running back because you can just dump it, throw it to him, and that's an easy throw and catch to get the first down. So this corner has to hold on to this flat route, which again, we call it flat control. He has to hold on And that leaves Malachi Fields one-on-one with the safety that's playing deep, over the top, and he's inside. So Matt Nagy schemed this route, this route concept, schemed his player, the X's and O's, got the Jimmy and Joe open. And now it's time for the Jimmy to run the right route, get to your spot, and the Joe or the JJ in this situation to make a heck of a throw. Put it in there put it right there in that cover two honey hole But one thing what I like about what JJ McCarthy does here look at his eyes Look how he holds this corner to the flat because if he doesn't hold this corner this corner can just kind of meddle there Have no work and then play underneath to rob the corner out, right? You see him kind of doing it late He has to honor that so that's what makes him late But also look at JJ McCarthy's head. Look at his head. Look at his eyes You can see the New York logo kind of be uh east west because his eyes are to the back You got to really make that corner look You got to really make that corner think that there's an opportunity for you to throw this flat route Because, again, now that gets him to jump it. And now you've got Malachi Fields, this receiver, one-on-one versus a cover two corner, running a corner route. And now you see him fire that there pigskin in there. Fires it in there. What a throw. Look at that. Look at the room for error small room for error small margin for error because again if he didn't hold this corner on this flat route if he didn't threaten or at least show that he could throw that flat route that corner would have came straight off ran right under this and picked this ball but instead boom another throw and catch on third down we've seen two third downs Two out-breaking routes on third downs to Malachi Fields, and you've seen two first downs so far. Last but not least, this was a big one. Big play here. Big play, big boy. Big play. And I feel like we're only going to see the best of Malachi Fields after the bye week. I feel like they're going to continue to get him targets, implement him in this offense, because one, the boy can play. Two, the boy is showing that he can deserve it. And I don't even, like, boy, I'm not in no disrespect when I say boy, like, grown-ass man. Oh, big boy play. Get off me. Oh. I told you he's a lot faster than what he looks, too. You see the way he was chopping just now. Look at that. Look at that. 47-yard catch and run. Big play. Another big play. And this one is off of, what's the down and distance here? I can't see it. Is that third down again? I think it's another third down. Yeah, this is just a single-man, single-man bench route. Single-man bench route. He is running. All right, let's break that. Let's break that down. Let's break that back. Plus two split. You got Likely in the slot. I don't know. Who is that? I think it's Fedoni. What up, Fedoni? Thanks, Tony. Again, Likely in the slot. You're going to see him push up, break down, and run this deep out or this bench route. And I'll tell you why. He ran it the way he did, boom. All right, so again, we got cover two down here. We've got cover four. We've got cover two to the field. We've got cover four to the boundary. All right, cover two to playing over the top, trying to take Malik Neighbors out of there, get somebody over the top. But we've got cover four to the boundary. Again, these two guys for cover four, he's got his deep fourth, he's got his deep fourth, and everybody, this triangle here is reading number two. They're reading number two, who is Isaiah Likely and runs a bunch of these end cuts, option routes. This safety is reading number two, and his eyes are going to turn to number two, and he's going to play him man-to-man, which makes this a man-to-man throw or a man-to-man concept. Except, um... For this corner, at this cover four corner, even though he's playing zone. So you see Malachi Fields take that in break. You see him in the number plus two, plus two from the numbers. Split with the ball on the boundary. Watch how he hits his stem. Dives in a little bit. You see here, he's touching paint. So he went from a plus two to the top of the numbers. And what that's doing now, you can run the corner, you can run the end, you can run post. Again, he's keeping that stem the same. He's keeping that stem, the stem of his route. He's keeping it the same. So no defender gets a tell on what he's running. Now watch at the top of this break. You see the explosion at the top of it and now he drops weight because he knows he's got to get out of this break and come running. Right now this corner still has the outside leverage so we know that we've got a cross face. What makes it easier is that this corner is not on us. He's not on us. There's no collision at the top of the route. That's what makes it harder sometimes. It slows down the timing of routes is when there's that collision. You got to fight to win back across or win across his face. And then you're not in your spot as when you need to be. So it made it a lot easier that the Texans are in this cover four and this corner is playing off. And he's even looking to play. He's playing through receiver to quarterback, looking like he's ready to jump some sort of route. Jump some sort of in breaking, in breaking route. You see it. That looks like he's ready to jump something, a curl or in. And again, I told you about this cover four safety, how he's going to be eyeing Isaiah Likely, number two, the number two receiver. So boom, he's jumping that in route. There's nobody. underneath because this curl the flat defender or this triangle this this defender right here who's supposed to be underneath that is holding underneath Isaiah Likely which as he should because Isaiah Likely catches a lot of passes for this offense with Matt Nagy and those guys know that so this is how they schemed up again their big body target their big receiver on second And what looks like 20, second and long, second and 20 to get him that bench route, that out-breaking route to now catch. The ball's on target. The ball is where it's supposed to be. He's accurate. He's on time. That allows your big body receiver to catch it, break a tackle, and go and get some YAC. Yeah, big boy. Big boy. Big boy. Big boy. Look at the sideline. Look at the sideline. Look at Jay Penny. Look at Tay Banks. These are guys. These are DBs. These are guys you've been going up against since the spring. Then you go through training camp. You're tired of going up against the DBs on your team. They're tired of going up against you. But they know about the work that you've been putting in. And when you see it as teammates, you see it because you know you got something in the rookie. Look at Shelby Harris here. Look at Darius Alexander here. Look at the Giants coach. Look at the staff right here. Everybody knows 88 is the next, is next up, and deserves more targets. And he's playing like it. And you can tell by the response of his teammates. That he's playing like it. The best part about what Malachi put on tape that game is, to me, is Isaiah Likely only had two catches on two or three targets, I believe. Didn't do much that game. They tried to take him away. And as you saw in one or two of the plays, when you try and take Likely away, you try and take Malik Neighbors away, somebody within that offense is going to have to step up. And who... Now, who better than a Malachi Fields with extreme catch radius is a lot faster than what people think and has sure hands. Who better to throw the football to and to emerge as that second perimeter pass catcher outside of Malik Nabers than Malachi Fields? Go buy his stock now because the kid is only going to continue to make plays and get better throughout the course of this football season. Matt Nagy knows it, this team knows it, and now J.J. McCarthy knows it.