The New York Giants and Detroit Lions are each coming off tough losses in which they failed to score on offense in Week 1 of the pre-season. Now both teams will attempt to bounce back when they clash in week 2 of the exhibition schedule. The Giants and Lions combined for just 20 points in their Week 1 with Detroit losing 16-10 to the Oakland Raiders while New York fell to the Cleveland Browns 20-10. While it’s only exhibition play, both teams will be playing with a little more urgency as they attempt to get in the win column.

NFL Point Spread and Betting Analysis

We don’t know a whole lot about new Lions head coach Matt Patricia as last week was his first pre-season game. If it’s any indication, it didn’t look like his team really pressed the issue in Week 1.

As for Pat Shurmur, we have a decent trend now as he’s 3-6 in pre-season action. His teams are actually 2-1 in Week 1 and 1-5 in all other weeks.

New York Giants

The biggest question mark for the Giants heading in to this week is the status of rookie running back Saquon Barkley, who left practice on Monday with a leg strain. The expectation is that New York will be very careful with their new franchise running back – especially after watching the division rival Washington Redskins lose Derrius Guice to a season-ending injury. The Giants managed 134 rushing yards in their exhibition loss to Cleveland but struggled to move the football through the air. We actually projected that in our preview last week as they don’t have much quality depth behind Eli Manning.

The passing game will be an even bigger focus this week regardless of Barkley’s status. Manning is coming off his first pre-season action in three seasons but completed just 4-of-7 pass attempts for 26 yards before leaving against the Browns. Manning could see more playing time this week in front of Davis Webb. The quarterbacks combined to go just 22-of-45 for 176 passing yards last week.

Detroit Lions

The Lions could also be without their rookie running back Kerryon Johnson after he ran for 33 yards on four carries against Oakland. It will be interesting to see how much the Lions use him after he played a whopping 40 snaps in the opener.

The Lions had Jake Rudock and Matt Cassel under center in their pre-season opener and those two should see extensive playing time again this week. They combined for just 139 passing yards in total, which is fairly ugly.

On defense, the Lions failed to record a sack versus Oakland. That might be more of a sign of effort than anything else.

Giants vs. Lions Prediction