Jermaine Eluemunor wants his former head coach to watch.
When the Giants face the Steelers in Week 8, Eluemunor challenges Bill Belichick — the longtime Patriots head coach who blasted Big Blue’s offensive line on “The Pat McAfee Show” Monday — to zero in on that same unit.
Focus on Eluemunor’s matchup with star edge rusher T.J. Watt at right tackle, even.
Notice what Eluemunor sees in the Giants’ run- and pass-blocking: that the line, despite what Sunday’s blowout loss to the Eagles displayed and what metrics suggest, has been “pretty damn good.”
“We’ll see what Bill’s saying after that,” Eluemunor said during an appearance on WFAN on Tuesday.
Because following Sunday’s game, Belichick’s analysis consisted entirely of criticism.
Joshua Ezeudu, who started in place of the injured Andrew Thomas at left tackle, “shouldn’t be playing left tackle.” Evan Neal, a first-round pick in 2022, “doesn’t play.”
The guards the Giants signed in free agency — Greg Van Roten and Jon Runyan Jr. — are “pretty suspect.” And in general, he said, “it’s a tough line,” one that surrendered eight sacks against the Eagles and has allowed the third-most sacks (22) in the NFL this season.
Eluemunor respects the opinion and the coaching history of someone such as Belichick, but he doesn’t care about those thoughts.
“Whatever Bill thinks is what Bill thinks,” Eluemunor said Tuesday. “Everyone’s free to have their opinion. … I could care less what a coach outside the building who’s not even coaching right now has to say, and that’s not a shot toward him. He obviously is a legendary coach, but yeah, I could care less about what someone outside the building has to say about a unit when we’ve been one of the best in the league.”
Though that might have been the case at times this year, with the Giants allowing 14 sacks across the opening six games prior to their Eagles debacle, that outlook changed significantly when Thomas underwent season-ending foot surgery last week.
The Giants sat tied with the Lions for the No. 14 pass-blocking grade and possessed the third-worst run-blocking grade through seven games, according to Pro Football Focus.
They lost their franchise left tackle. They needed to experiment with Ezeudu in that spot for a second consecutive year, and it backfired when he allowed a pair of sacks in the opening quarter and three pressures overall — though Eluemunor thought, as did head coach Brian Daboll on Monday, that the third-year lineman settled in after the rough start.
“A lot of times with a young guy, it’s kinda like trial by fire and you have to go in there and get burned to realize what you have to do and what you have to work on in order to be better,” Eluemunor said.
But Daboll left the door open to a change Monday.
He didn’t commit to starting Ezeudu at left tackle against the Steelers, but the Giants don’t have many options outside of bringing in another player — they worked out former first-round pick D.J. Humphries on Tuesday — or shifting someone like Eluemunor across the line.
Eluemunor, the 29-year-old who spent 2019 and 2020 playing under Belichick and “disliked New England,” said last week that he preferred to stay on the right side, and he doubled down on that sentiment Tuesday.
It’s difficult to even compare what the shift from one side to the other resembles, he added. It happened last year with the Raiders, when 779 of his snaps came at right tackle and the other 125 occurred at left, but he described that scenario as different from the one he’s currently navigating.
Eluemunor even suggested the Giants could leave him “on an island” and shift extra help left, if needed. That, in the eyes of Eluemunor, should capture his level of comfort and belief in his ability to excel at right tackle.
And this week, it would mean isolating against Watt — the 2021 Defensive Player of the Year and reigning runner-up who Eluemunor has already faced before.
If that’s the case, and even if it’s not, he hopes Belichick tunes in.
“Last year I [moved to left tackle] because I was under certain circumstances and I was really trying to show people my value,” Eluemunor said. “And this year, I feel like I’m showing my value at right tackle and just how good I can be there.”
