New York Giants: Week 3 Bold Predictions vs. Washington
Receiver Sterling Shepard is Going to Steal the Show Again
If you look at last week’s final stats against the New Orleans Saints, you’ll see that rookie second rounder Sterling Shepard finished as the Giants leader in both receptions (eight catches out of eight pass targets) and receiving yards (117). What you probably didn’t notice, unless of course you dug a little deeper into the official game book, is that Shepard did the bulk of his damage on third downs.
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According to Inside Football, six of Shepard’s receptions went for first downs, with five of those coming on third down. That’s pretty good if you consider the Giants were seven of 15 on third downs last week and that Shepard alone accounted for 71.4 percent of those conversions.
Want another interesting statistic about Shepard?
He is tied with Victor Cruz for the most big-play pass receptions (20 or more yards) on the Giants with three. If Shepard comes up with another big-play reception this weekend, that will mark three games in a row in which he’s caught at least one pass of 20 or more yards.
Shepard, by the way, has caught 11-of-12 pass targets so far this season. Might it just be a matter of time though before defenses realize what a weapon he is and start to hone in on shutting him down?
“That’ll take care of itself,” said head coach Ben McAdoo. “He was a featured player in college. He saw some different things to try to attack him that way. Obviously defenses will start to show him a little more respect than they have, but we have some weapons that we can deal the ball.”