Giants' Coughlin on defense getting to the QB: 'That hasn’t happened much'

New York Giants' defenders can't get their paws on opposing quarterbacks and the team is getting burned as a result.

The Giants have only racked up 19 sacks this season, good (or bad) for 26th in the NFL and their top-two pass rushers, Jason Pierre-Paul and Mathias Kiwanuka, have only managed a mere 3.5 and 2.5 sacks, respectively.

“Quite frankly, we have called pressures,” Giants head coach Tom Coughlin told The New York Daily News's Ebenezer Samuel. “Pressures have been aborted or not performed very well. How would you like to be the guy who is sitting there calling pressures. And we call pressures and nothing happens so you’re vulnerable in the secondary even more when you do that. You’re not getting home. How would you like to be the guy calling those plays?

“We’d like to think we would be a better team with pressure,” Coughlin said. “There are a bunch of guys up front that are supposed to be known for that.”

Kiwanuka, for his part, isn't disagreeing with his coach's assessment. 

“That’s fair,” Kiwanuka said. “We’ve gotta get there. We’ve gotta get the numbers up, and we’ve got to work on that this week.”

The only game where the Giants defense put serious pressure on the quarterback was during their Week 4 victory over the Washington Redskins, when they sacked Kirk Cousins twice, while hitting him eight times.

Unfortunately, they haven't been able to replicate that performance.

“You can talk about pressure all you want,” Coughlin said, “but we’ve got to have people who get to the ball, get to the quarterback. That hasn’t happened much.”