What's Wrong With Brandon Jacobs?

This year, I drafted Jacobs with my first pick. Last year, in only 13 games, he had 15 TD's. Last year, both Jacobs and Derrick Ward finished top five according to footballoutsiders.com. When two RBs are in the top five, that tells me the production of the RBs is mainly due to the system and the offensive line, more than the talent of the backs. With the Giants having this fantastic O-line, how could I lose with Jacobs.He's the main back, gets a ton of carries, a physical runner, always scoring TDs, and only 27 years old. Yet, in the first four games, Jacobs has been awful, ranking 28th among all RBs in the Yahoo! player rater and only had one TD. So what gives?

We could all listen to the "Matthew Berry" approach. He says that teams are putting eight in the box and daring Eli Manning to throw because of his "no name receivers". While I'm sure that's part of it, that still doesn't explain why Jacobs is doing so shitty considering he's getting a considerable amount of carries. So I decided to look back to see why I liked Jacobs to begin with: the offensive line.

Last year, the Giants ranked 4th in the NFL in run blocking. This year they rank 10th. Well, sure, there's a drop off, but having the 10th best rushing offensive line still seems pretty good to me, so I looked even further.

Last year, C Shaun O'Hara and LT David Diehl ranked #1 in pass blocking. What makes it even more impressive is that these dudes played right next to each other, meaning I'm sure Jacobs and other Giants RB had a fun time running through massive holes created by O'Hara and Diehl. LG Rich Seubert also did his share ranking 5th among LG's. This means the entire left side of the offensive line, was pretty much amazing. I'm going to exclude the right side because RG Chris Snee and RT Kareem McKenzie ranked 20th and 24th respectively among their positions. It seems clear to me that the Giants were able to run so effectively because of the left side of their O-line.

But now let's take a look at that left side. O'Hara is ranked 16th, Diehl is ranked 14th, and Seubert is ranked 24th. This is a drastic decline. Ironically this year, the right has performed well because Snee ranks 7th and McKenzie ranks 9th. But still, this is nowhere near the productivity of last year.

So what explains the drop in productivity from this offense line? That I don't know. Maybe over the course of the season their numbers will even out. Maybe teams realized how good the left side was and how bad the right side was and opponents focused all their energy on the left leaving the right free and making them look better and the left look worse. If you have an answer, please let me know.

All I know is that, as a Brandon Jacobs owner, I'm pissed