Giants — again — find a way to lose a game they probably should have won
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — The New York Giants are still not ready for prime time. For the second time this season, with a golden opportunity in a prime time game against a team that could have been beaten, the Giants fell short on Sunday against the Cincinnati Bengals.
The Giants’ 17-7 loss was disappointing for sooooo many reasons.
The Giants are now 0-3 at MetLife Stadium this season, 0-2 in prime time games, and 2-17 in prime time games since Daniel Jones, Dexter Lawrence and Darius Slayton were drafted in 2019.
The NFC East is a jumbled mess
The Giants had an opportunity to even their record at 3-3 and put themselves in the middle of a wide-open NFC East race. It’s a division that doesn’t feature any dominant teams. Maybe not even any truly good ones.
Here are the division standings after Sunday:
Washington Commanders 4-2
Philadelphia Eagles 3-2
Dallas Cowboys 3-3
New York Giants 2-4
The Dallas Cowboys are on a bye week after an embarrassing 47-9 loss at home to the Detroit Lions. Will Mike McCarthy still be the coach in two weeks when the Cowboys face the San Francisco 49ers? Jones said after the game that McCarthy will stay on.
Sunday’s loss was the worst at home in Jerry Jones’ 35 years as owner of the Cowboys:
Jerry Jones on the experience of suffering the worst home loss in his 35 years as Cowboys owner on his 82nd birthday: “I think it was the just the feeling of the team having fun at our expense, Detroit having fun at our expense.” pic.twitter.com/NtCm8A7xbB
— Ed Werder (@WerderEdNFL) October 14, 2024
The loss by Dallas, in fact, made all sorts of history.
The Baltimore Ravens knocked the Washington Commanders (4-2) down a peg with a 30-23 victory on Sunday. The Commanders still lead the division, and Jayden Daniels is still awesome, but Washington is hardly unbeatable. The Giants should know. They should have beaten the Commanders in Week 2, managing to lose a game in which they scored three touchdowns and didn’t give up any.
The Eagles won on Sunday, but their 20-16 victory over the Cleveland Browns — maybe the league’s worst team — was nothing to brag about. Somebody should have told Eagles coach Nick Sirianni that, before he did this:
Sirianni is an embarrassment.
All of that mayhem in the division happened before the Giants took the field. They knew the opportunity they had. Yet, they laid another egg at home, falling to 0-3 at MetLife Stadium this season and failing to show that they should be taken seriously.
“It sucks,” said offensive lineman Jon Runyan. “We feel like we’ve been building something over these past couple weeks regardless of the result. Especially last week. I feel like we played really well last week on offense and defense. Come here and not play up to the standard that we woant and we’re at home on Sunday Night Football. It’s really disappointing.”
“Sucks” seemed to be a popular word in the locker room. Jermaine Eluemunor used it, too.
“It sucks, but we’re getting to where we want to get to. We just got to keep working,” the right tackle said. “We went next week we’re three and four. Win again we’re four and four. We’ve just got to keep going and get to where we want to get to eventually.”
The Giants, though, are not making this easy on themselves. They have now missed opportunities in winnable games against Washington, Dallas, and Cincinnati. They are 2-4 when they could be 4-2, maybe even 5-1.
Running back Tyrone Tracy called Sunday another “huge missed opportunity.”
“if you ask anybody in the locker room, we think that if we executed better offensively, we would win the game,” Tracy said. “At the same time, you’ve got to make sure to take care of the little details. This is the NFL. You can lose any given day, any Sunday, Thursday, Monday, whatever day you play.
“You’ve got to make sure, take care of the little details. Take care of the fundamentals. When you don’t do that, that’s when you miss out on opportunities to make a game-changing play or change the score or whatever it may be.”
The Giants missed yet another opportunity on Sunday night to make themselves relevant, to change the narrative that they continue to be an NFL bottom feeder.
0-3 at MetLife
At least the Giants scored their first MetLife Stadium touchdown of the season on Sunday night. Still, they were mostly inept on offense against a team that came into the game giving up 29.0 points per game, 31st in the NFL.
To only score 7 points against the Bengals is a terrible offensive performance. Quarterback Daniel Jones threw an ugly red zone interception, tossing a wobbly jump ball when hit by B.J. Hill while trying to throw the ball away.
“Trying to get the ball to the back of the end zone, got hit, got to throw it earlier or get the ball down,” Jones said.
Jones failed to connect on a couple of deep shots, and also missed on a couple of fourth-down throws.
“It’s very disappointing – just couldn’t sustain drives, execute, get into a rhythm and frustrating – I feel like we’ve taken steps and progressed as an offense,” Jones said. “Obviously, we didn’t do that today.”
Without star wide receiver Malik Nabers for a second straight week, the Giants were back to an “offense by inches” approach. They had no plays longer than 15 yards.
“I don’t know why it’s going like that,” Runyan said of the team’s offensive struggles at home. “Crowd’s been really good. I can feel the energy from them. We’ve got to give them something to cheer for.
“It’s tough like that when you score pretty much seven points in an NFL game. (9:11) You’re not going to do anything all season you do that.”
RPO issue
I am NOT going to argue that the ineligible man downfield penalty called on Andrew Thomas should not have been called. By rule, Thomas was beyond the line of scrimmage and it was a penalty, costing the Giants a 56-yard catch-and-run by Darius Slayton and an opportunity to score late in the first half.
Thomas wasn’t arguing with the call.
“It was an RPO. Similar play happened versus Seattle last week,” Thomas said. “They didn’t call it, so sometimes it’s just 50-50. Sometimes they call it, sometimes they don’t.”
Head coach Brian Daboll wasn’t arguing, either.
“It was an RPO. Run-pass option, read the defense, usually get [the ball] out of your hands quick. I thought he did,” Daboll said. “Andrew (Thomas) was blocking the run and it looked to me like it was the right call … That was a 60-yard gain that totally changed field position.”
I am, though, going to argue that the league should look at that penalty and loosen the rule. NFL offensive linemen get 1 yard beyond the line of scrimmage before being penalized. The problem is that on these RPOs — run-pass option plays — they are run blocking. They expect a run.
College offensive linemen are allowed 3 yards. Maybe that is too much, but I think I would like to see the NFL loosen the rule to give offensive linemen 2 yards. I think that would be fair, and would give linemen a better chance.
Don’t blame the defense
Despite parting like the Red Sea on a 47-yard Joe Burrow touchdown run, the defense played well.
Joe Burrow just rushed for a 47-yard TD on 3rd-and-18.
That was not on my bingo card. Holy… pic.twitter.com/cZwbRWdDUn
— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) October 14, 2024
The Bengals, averaging 28.0 points per game, had just 10 until the game’s final minute.
“I thought our defense played very good football,” Daboll said. “Missed the quarterback run early on a rush lane. But they played winning football, to hold those receivers to what we held them to in the pass game. I think (Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe) Burrow had about 50 yards rushing. But hats off to the way the defense played.”
Yes, but it wasn’t enough.
For the Giants, it was more of the same. A familiar, losing script. They tease, they show signs of progress, and then they fall short. Unfortunately, they may have now wasted their best chance to be relevant in an NFC East that seems to want to welcome them to the party.
