Why the Giants will beat the Steelers, why they won't and a prediction

The road warrior New York Giants are back in action tonight against a Pittsburgh Steelers team that has the 80th best defense in the league and was very difficult to play against at home.

While the Giants have had better luck on the road than at home this season, they have struggled in prime-time games. Quarterback Daniel Jones is 1-14 in such games, having thrown just 12 touchdowns versus 20 interceptions.

Still, head coach Brian Daboll believes Jones gives the franchise the best chance to win right now, so Jones will lead the offense, for better or worse.

How will this turn out? It probably won't end well for the Giants if the offense, which has scored just 10 points in the last two games, doesn't get out of its slump. But let's go through the scenarios.

If the Giants want to have a chance of staying close enough to win, they'll have to take advantage of the Steelers' banged-up offensive line, which has already lost three players to injuries this season and two others who are banged up enough to miss time.

If you capitalize on this matchup and the Giants' defense, the strength of the defense and the team in general, can attack quarterback Russell Wilson with some consistency, there's a good chance he'll make a few mistakes, and if he does, they'll have to the Giants profit from it.

Last week against the Jets, Wilson was pressured on 41.9% of his dropbacks and went 4 of 11 (36.1%) for 74 yards. As part of the pressure, it's important to keep him from escaping the pocket, which the Jets managed to do by limiting Wilson to just one tackle.

However, according to NextGen Stats, Wilson had more than 2.5 seconds to throw the ball on 21 of his 29 pass attempts, resulting in 11 completions for 205 yards. The Giants have the highest sack rate in the league (24.4%) and the seventh-best pressure rate (55.1%), but they need to make sure Wilson doesn't have an escape hatch to gain yards through his legs.

The Steelers have the league's second-best run defense, and while the Giants' offense hasn't been balanced lately, the danger here is that if Pittsburgh can continue to impose its will against the Giants' rushing attack, it will making the team one-dimensional, a situation the Giants simply couldn't overcome this year as their running game was neutralized.

You don't feel better than Steelers pass rusher TJ Watt (18), who is one of three different Steelers edge defenders with more than 10 pressures (Nick Herbig, 14, and Alex Highsmith, 11 are the other two) . What's worse is that all three players generated at least five of their pressures, according to NextGen stats under 2.5 seconds.

Herbig won't play in this game, but Highsmith and Watt will. The Giants offensive tackles had a lot of trouble against speed rushers.

As it looks like Joshua Ezeudu will be starting for the second time at left tackle for the outed Andrew Thomas, and the injured (groin) Jermaine Eluemunor (questionable), who has stated he is playing despite his “questionable” injury status, looks that way from Very bad matchup that the Giants will have to overcome.

However, it should be noted that the Jets did a good job of containing Watt's pass rush last week.

According to NextGen Stats, right tackle Morgan Moses held Watt under pressure on 39 passes while the Jets averaged 2.49 seconds to get the ball out of quarterback Aaron Rodgers' hands.

The Giants will likely try to do the same with Daniel Jones and the tackles; The question is whether they will be able to do so.

The Steelers have scored more than 30 points in each of their last two games, both victories over the Las Vegas Raiders (32) and the Jets' defense (37), which was touted in the preseason as a potential Super Bowl-caliber unit.

While it's not unrealistic to expect the Giants to be able to hold the Steelers' offense to around 20 points, it's the offense that has scored 10 points in the last two games and that's why 3% of experts chose the Giants to bring about the turmoil that is the greatest concern.

Steelers 23, Giants 17

More coverage of the New York Giants

Join the New York Giants in the SI Community!