If the Giants were playing with house money Saturday, then their 2022 season ended when they rolled a seven, but the dealer had blackjack and another 17 in a 38-7 loss to the Eagles in the NFC Divisional Round.
“Crash landing here, give Philly credit. They did everything better than we did today,” head coach Brian Daboll said after the game. “Tough game, we really got beat in all facets. Wasn’t one thing in particular, we just didn’t get it done. They get to move on, and unfortunately, we don’t.”
“Just the amount of work we put in…to go out like that, it’s not a good feeling,” added safety Xavier McKinney.
The Giants were routed 48-22 at MetLife Stadium two months ago, but their second-string held Philly to a 22-16 win in Week 18, and they already had a win over a higher seed in their pocket after beating the Vikings in Minnesota last week.
Sadly, the Giants came out flat in this one and got fully flattened, down 7-0 before they got the ball and, after turning it over on downs on a highly-questioned fourth down call on the Eagles’ 40 on their first drive, they were down 28-0 and in the locker room at the half without another first down.
In fact, Daniel Jones was intercepted by James Bradberry on the second play of the second drive, and after that, the Giants had four straight three-and-outs, their next first down coming when Saquon Barkley broke a third-and-2 run for 39 yards with 11 minutes left in the third.
You don't really give yourself a great chance when you're down three or four scores. And that's all of us,” Barkley said. “We all could have done a better job today, and it starts with myself.”
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That set up their only touchdown, but they had just 71 yards the rest of the way and, after another highly-questioned call where the Giants punted on fourth-and-6 from their 42 with 13:21 left, a defense that bent but rarely broke all season couldn’t stop an Eagles run game that carved out a 15-play, 70-yard field goal drive that took almost eight minutes off the clock and all but iced the game.
"It sucks. This year was special,” Barkley said. “Not how we wanted it to end, and sad that it’s come to an end, but we’ll go back and get ready for the offseason and see where we can improve.”
It’s hard to really blame any one facet of the team, as they were all culpable for the poor effort. The defense’s only first-half stop was after the Bradberry pick, but by the end of the game, the Eagles had run for 268 yards, averaging over six yards a carry, and had more than 400 yards of total offense.
The Giants’ offense, meanwhile, got nothing going consistently; Barkley’s 39-yard run was nearly half of their 88-yard touchdown drive and almost two-thirds of his 61 yards. Daniel Jones, who had a lot of designed runs last week, was sacked almost as much as he ran (five sacks versus six carries), and he threw for only 135 yards on 15 completions, with one interception and one fumble.
And, the one chance the Giants maybe had to get it going, when they strip-sacked Jalen Hurts on the drive after their own TD…the Eagles recovered, took another two-plus minutes off the clock, and held Big Blue to that controversial punt early in the fourth.
“They hadn’t scored yet in that half, and I was counting on the defense to maybe get a three-and-out because they were backed up, but they went out and had a long drive,” Daboll said. “Probably could’ve gone for it, but we weren’t really executing well enough to do that either, so yeah, that’s what we did.”
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And now, house money or not, the Giants’ dream season that saw them go 9-7-1, make the playoffs in Daboll’s first year, and beat Minnesota on the road for the first playoff win since their last Super Bowl victory ends with a nightmare, a storm cloud where you can only try to find a silver lining.
“Any time you put your heart out there and give it your all, and fall short, it hurts,” Julian Love said. “Especially with this team and our story this year…a very unfortunate way to end the season.”
“I'm proud of the guys, the way we competed. I'm proud of the coaches, the staff members. You only really do this for one reason at this level. It hurts when you lose,” Daboll added.
But as one of the most famous lines in literature goes, this is the way the world ends: not with a bang, but a whimper.
"I’m disappointed. I wish we could've done a better job, wish I could've done a better job. I feel like crap. It's an honest as you can be,” Daboll said. “You work extremely hard to get to this spot, and you do not take it for granted, because it is hard to get to this divisional round. I feel for the players because we put everything we had into it, but we didn’t get it done.”
Added Love: "Every year there’s one goal for each team, but only one team gets that satisfaction of reaching it. I don't believe in moral victories. People can say, 'oh, you made it far, people didn't expect much of you.' Well, we expected a lot of ourselves this year, we just fell short.”
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And thus begins, in earnest, an offseason where the two key components on offense, Jones and Barkley, are set to become free agents, and both coordinators have already had some overtures for head coaching interviews.
Will this year be the beginning of something special, or the oasis in a desert inside the Meadowlands?
“I definitely do (think something special is building),” said Isaiah Hodgins, one of the bright spots of a rough second half. "You can just tell the culture's changing. You can tell people want to win. The work is there, and I think we're going to remember this day going forward and use it as motivation for next year.”
Follow Lou DiPietro on Twitter: @LouDiPietroWFAN
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