It’s hard to imagine a make-or-break game in Week 2 of a 17-game NFL season. Plenty of teams start 0-2 and recover. Look no further than the 2007 New York Giants, who had a head coach under fire, two terrible opening losses in which they gave up 80 points, and then fell behind Washington 17-3 in Week 3 before making a goal-line stand at the end to finally win. That team won it all.

This Giants team is not that one, though. It’s had less success and is coming off a bad season rather than a playoff season. Coming back from 0-2 seems unlikely. What, then, to make of the Giants’ 21-18 loss to the Washington Commanders?

Brian Daboll gets the blame

Apparently, Daboll didn’t get the message last year when he let Graham Gano play despite being on the injury report on Saturday, and the result was a loss to the Jets that should never have happened. Today he did it again. He could have elevated Jude McAtamney, but he chose not to.

When Gano injured himself on the opening kickoff, Daboll’s only option was punter Jamie Gillan. After Gillan missed an extra point on the Giants’ first touchdown, Daboll was forced to go for two on the Giants’ subsequent two touchdowns. They missed both, although Daniel Jones almost connected with Darius Slayton on one of them. At worst, the game should have been tied 21-21 and gone to overtime.

This continues a trend of curious game-day personnel and usage decisions by Daboll and his staff. Last week, Micah McFadden was active but never saw the field. So was Isaiah Simmons. For the second week in a row, Jalin Hyatt wasn’t targeted even once. I’m not sure how much (if at all?) he saw the field. With Malik Nabers (deservedly) getting so much attention from Washington’s defense, you’d think a deep shot to Hyatt now and then could have at least made Washington’s defense think twice.

The downside of a bend-but-don’t-break defense

When Shane Bowen was hired as defensive coordinator, his calling card was that of someone who plays a more passive, mainly zone defense than previous coordinator Wink Martindale, but who could make a defense play tough in the red zone. That is often an effective strategy.

We certainly saw that Sunday. The Commanders didn’t score a single touchdown. Ordinarily, that would be great news…but not when your run defense is bad. The defense could not get off the field and get the ball back to the offense without points going up first. Washington dominated time of possession 37:32 to 22:28. They did not punt once in the entire game.

Give credit to Washington kicker Austin Seibert, who went 7-for-7 on field goals. But the Giants’ run defense was atrocious, especially up the middle. Only one of Seibert’s field goals was over 40 yards, so the Commanders were consistently driving deep into Giants’ territory.

Brian Robinson decimated the Giants’ interior for 133 yards in 17 attempts, mostly up the middle. Austin Ekeler did damage on the outside, but only 38 yards of that was due to rushes, the rest (47 yards) was on screen passes. Quarterback Jayden Daniels had 44 yards rushing, much of it on scrambles where he broke contain. Over and over again Commanders rushers broke tackles when they appeared to be stopped, none more embarrassing than Robinson’s 40-yard scamper after he appeared stopped cold at the line of scrimmage.

For the second week in a row, the pass rush was unimposing. No sacks by Dexter Lawrence, Brian Burns, Kayvon Thibodeaux, and Azee Ojulari, and only 8 solo tackles total. Part of that is the speed and elusiveness of Jayden Daniels, and we’ll have to see Monday how many pressures they had as a group. Still, it has not been an inauspicious debut for the Shane Bowen philosophy of pressure from the front four winning its individual battles.

The offense wasn’t good enough, but it wasn’t bad

The fact that I waited until section 3 of this post to talk about the offense says it all. The Daniel Jones death watch is postponed for another week. He didn’t have a great game – he only completed 57% of his passes for 178 yards. I bet PFF will tell us Jones had a couple of turnover-worthy plays. Still, Jones had 2 TD passes and no interceptions, and he also rushed for 32 yards on 5 carries. Jones showed better pocket awareness than we saw last week. The offensive line protected him, and he was only sacked once. Devin Singletary had a costly fumble after he’d made an excellent run to get deep into Washington territory, but he had 95 yards on 18 carries and a beautiful 22-yard touchdown run.

Jones is beginning to develop chemistry with Malik Nabers. Nabers had a mostly excellent second game as a pro, catching 10 balls in 18 targets for 127 yards and his first NFL TD. A few of the incompletions were just good defense, a couple were Jones overthrows on deep passes (which he at least tried today). The one that will be talked about is the one he didn’t get on the sideline on fourth down with a little over two minutes left in the game. That turned the ball over to Washington for their game-winning drive. That said, Washington took over at the 23, so blame the defense for once again letting the Commanders march downfield.

You can say that Jones looked better today because he faced an unimposing defense. That may be right. It’s worth noting, though, that the Vikings beat the 49ers today, 23-17, and they held San Francisco to 7 points until 10:21 remained in the game. That Minnesota defense under Brian Flores is looking pretty good.

Dru Phillips looks like a keeper

After two games I don’t know if I can say that third-round draft pick Andru Phillips is a good cornerback. He only played seven coverage downs last week vs. Minnesota and was targeted twice, with 2 receptions and 14 yards surrendered. We’ll see tomorrow what his coverage stats for today’s game were like.

Wow, can he tackle. He had three last week in only 16 snaps. Today he had 7 solo tackles and 5 more assists, plus a sack, second only to Micah McFadden’s 7 and 6 (and also a sack). So between Nabers and Phillips (and Tyler Nubin, who had 3 tackles and 2 assists today), Joe Schoen seems to have made at least a few good draft picks this year. It’s early, and time will tell, but that much is looking good.