By Ryan Dunleavy | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

There usually are two different types of cushions inside a stadium where the Giants are playing.

The one fans sit on to give extra comfort to their bottoms. And the one opposing defenses keep building into their game plan to stymie the Giants' passing offense.

They intersected in the third quarter Sunday when the home crowd stood to boo the Giants offense for not being able to move the ball against a Saints defense designed to keep the action in front of a vulnerable secondary.

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"They played a lot of soft zone," Giants coach Pat Shurmur said after a 33-18 loss to the Saints. "We just had to pick away at them a little bit.

Actually, that's what the Giants chose to do. And it's nothing new.

Soft zone coverage has been the Giants' personal Kryptonite for three years, and Shurmur's offense — marketed as inventive with the Vikings — hasn't addressed the problems that he inherited from predecessor Ben McAdoo.

NFL coaches and players like to boast about how much film study and game planning goes into any given week, but the Saints probably could have popped on SportsCenter highlights of the Giants against the Cowboys in Week 2 of this year or in most games from McAdoo's era and got the gist of what to do.

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The old excuse used to be the Giants didn't have a running back good enough to keep defenses honest.

Adding the threat of moving the ball on the ground would force sagging defenses to play closer to the line of scrimmage and open up plays downfield for Odell Beckham and Sterling Shepard.

Well, the Giants used the No. 2 pick in the NFL Draft on Saquon Barkley, who is every bit as good as advertised, could win NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year honors and still isn't forcing opponents to play man-to-man coverage or tighten up the zone.

"I think we did a great job stopping the run," Saints defensive end Cameron Jordan said. "All the sudden Eli is a pocket-mover now, pocket-scrambler? I wouldn’t call him a scrambler, but I mean now he’s navigating the pocket well instead of collapsing the pocket and all the sudden he’s escaping. I guess that happens."

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Andrew Mills | NJ Advance Media

Barkley only had 10 carries for 44 yards, including five in each half, against the Saints. He had 11 carries for 28 yards against the Cowboys, when he set a franchise record for running backs with 14 catches.

"Certainly by the looks of things here," Shurmur said, peering at a box score, "him touching the ball more would be good."

Juxtapose that with Shurmur's plan to give breathers to Barkley, like when he sat out six straight plays in the second quarter, including five straight touches for backup Wayne Gallman. He lost a questionable fumble on the fifth.

"We’ll get Saquon involved in the run game and he’s going to make big plays, so we got to block it up for him," Shepard said. "Us on the perimeter as well. It’s a group thing, so better get it corrected."

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Another common excuse for the inability to beat a soft zone is the Giants' offensive line not blocking a four-man pass rush. If defenses do not need to blitz to get pressure on the immobile Eli Manning, they can drop seven defenders into coverage against a maximum of five receivers.

Shurmur tried to combat some of that by putting Manning on the move in the preseason, but the bootlegs and rollouts have been minimized in the regular season.

And Manning wasn't under an abnormal amount of pressure Sunday. He was sacked three times, but wasn't constantly running for his life like he was two weeks ago against the Cowboys.

"They battled, but there were some plays in there," Shurmur said. "If you brought anybody up here, they would tell you they’d like to have a couple plays back."

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Elsa | Getty Images

Sound familiar?

If not for the Texans' decision to play the Giants without a soft zone — allowing 20 first-half points — where would this offense be?

Shurmur after loss to Cowboys: "We didn't do enough on offense. We didn't score enough points, especially early. We just didn't make enough plays."

Shurmur after loss to Saints: "We didn't make enough plays. We need to score more points. We need to get better."

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36 and counting ...

The Giants have not scored 30 points or more in 36 consecutive regular-season games, dating to the final game of the Tom Coughlin era, when Shurmur was the opposing head coach on an interim basis for the Eagles.

That is now the longest such dubious streak in the NFL because the Browns snapped a longer streak without 30 points (46 games) by hanging 42 on the Raiders (albeit in a loss).

To put that streak in perspective:



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Five NFL teams (Chiefs, Rams, Saints, Ravens and Bengals) are averaging 30 points per game through the first four games of 2018.

The Rams and Chiefs have scored 30 in all seven of their combined games this season.

The Saints have scored 30 points or more 19 times since the Giants last hit the mark

Five quarterbacks have accounted for 30-point games just through the air and all by themselves during that span: The five-touchdown passing games belong to Ben Roethlisberger (Steelers, 2016), Deshaun Watson (Texans, 2017), Tom Brady (Patriots, 2017), Jared Goff (Rams, 2018) and Mitch Trubisky (Bears, 2018).

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Shurmur owns up to poor clock management

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Saints defense

The Saints entered the game allowing a NFL-high 10.2 yards per pass play but made an adjustment to take away the deep passing game. The Giants allowed that adjustment to work by not testing it.

"Just staying on top," cornerback P.J. Williams said of the game plan. "Not letting them get behind us because that’s the only way teams stayed in the game with us within these three games."

Cornerback Marshon Lattimore refuted the idea that the Saints played a soft defense.

"We were playing aggressive, we just didn’t let them do it (go deep)," Lattimore said. "It’s not like we were playing pretty good defense and not letting the ball over our heads. We were playing man, but we just switched it up in between calls. I feel like we did a pretty good job of just staying on top and doing our thing. They went deep, but it wasn’t there."

Um, did they really?

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Elsa | Getty Images

What the stats are saying ...

Manning ranks No. 36 of 37 eligible quarterbacks in a statistic created to measure a team's downfield passing attack. His average completed pass is traveling just four yards in the air beyond the line of scrimmage to the point where the receiver makes the catch, according to NextGenStats.

Manning was 4-of-11 for 85 yards when throwing beyond 10 yards against the Saints, including 0-of-2 when throwing beyond 20 yards, per the analytics site. Opposing defenses are giving tight end Evan Engram (6.4), Beckham (6.3) and Shepard (5.9) big cushions in the soft zone look.

Engram (knee) did not play against the Saints and is expected miss more games going forward.

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What Eli Manning is saying ...

What were the Saints doing defensively?

"They took away all the deep stuff and made us go underneath. That was fine. We were going to just have to have some long drives and continue to play that way. There was a few times where they knocked us out of some good down-and-distance and we weren’t able to sustain some drives."

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Is there an answer other than checking down like that when they play deep?

"Yes. There are different ways, you just have to find completions. There are holes and it is just a matter of timing. The right plays and the right types of zones. You just have to be patient sometimes and work the middle of the field and work underneath. Just get in some good down and distance. You just have to keep playing that way. There is also some opportunities to have some big plays also."

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John Munson | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

What Odell Beckham is saying ...

What is preventing you from turning short gains into big plays as you have in the past?

"I have been getting double and triple teamed for the past five years, nothing has changed. Safeties over the top, linebackers dropping. Like I said, it’s really about all the pieces coming together."

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Why is the offense having so much trouble getting the ball down field?

"When you are in the middle of a game, it’s not as easy to see as it is after the game when you can watch the film. We have to get in there and watch the film and see what is going on."

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The Giants made so many changes to coaching and personnel. Are you surprised the results are the same?

"I don’t even know how to answer that. It’s definitely not the results we want, this is not the way we want to play."

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Ryan Dunleavy can be reached at rdunleavy@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @rydunleavy.