The Giants scored their first touchdown in more than eight quarters of play on Sunday.
That was the “good” news…and there was plenty of bad, as that TD came with 3:50 remaining in a game they were already down 34-3, against a relaxed defense, on a drive that was kept alive by an unnecessary roughness penalty after the Eagles had made a fourth-down stop.
The story of the New York football Giants, who used two ineffective quarterbacks and needed that drive to top 100 yards of offense FOR THE GAME in a 34-10 loss to the Eagles that officially knocked them out of playoff consideration for 2021.
“It's not good enough. Point blank. I'm not going to make excuses and try to church it up. The reality is this – you play to win the game. You coach to win the game and to give the players an opportunity and a chance,” head coach Joe Judge said afterwards. “While there are things in every game that you say are positive which you can build on and there are individual or unit performances where you say, 'Okay this is what we're looking for.' Collectively it's not good enough. So we have to do better next week.”
Judge, who has given quite a few quotes this season that make many wonder if he’s watching the same game as the rest of us on a regular basis, will likely get crushed for saying in the opening statement of that postgame briefing that special teams was strong up until Jalen Reagor returned a punt 29 yards I the second half to set up a Philly score.
Fair, but to use his words, there’s no point in “trying to church it up” – it takes all three phases to win, and on Sunday, the Giants’ offense was putrid and the defense finally broke in the second half after playing 45 strong minutes against the Eagles this year.
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When special teams is the highlight, something is wrong – but over their now four-game losing streak, the Giants have scored 46 points with just four touchdowns, 21 of the points and three of the four TDs against the Los Angeles Chargers.
Otherwise? Six field goals and a garbage time touchdown against the Dolphins, Cowboys, and Eagles, and if you want to go back to the Giants’ bye, they’ve scored 69 points in six games on just six TDs. No need to church it up: the Giants stink, and if not for a defense that had perhaps their best game in the Joe Judge era on Thanksgiving weekend, they’d be 0-6 since their bye.
And yet, there’s apparently still some good, as evidenced by the full quote from Judge in his open:
“Obviously we didn't do enough to have success today on the field. I thought for the most part that our defense did a good job of keeping us in the game. Up until the [Reagor] punt return our special teams did good things in terms of field position and giving us opportunities to make plays. We couldn't get anything going offensively today. We obviously have to have some kind of production in that phase to compliment the defense and the special teams when they're making plays for us. Ultimately it wasn't good enough. We have to go back to work this week and there are a lot of things that we have to improve on. I'm looking to see these guys finish strong and go out competing. We had a good week of work with the guys and I count on seeing the same thing this week going into Chicago.”
Unfortunately, a good week of work doesn’t seem to mean much, now or at the end of it, when his quarterback choice is a journeyman with less career NFL wins than Judge or a virtual rookie who looked every bit the part Sunday.
“Obviously you have to get significant play out of key positions. We have to execute everything better. Offensively nothing was really good enough today. We have to make sure that we come back to work and give ourselves a chance. We have to capitalize on the opportunities that are in front of us,” Judge said when asked if bad QB play affected the rest of the team. “When you watch the tape and talk through different plays and scenarios, you say, 'Okay we've got this, this, this. We've got to get back to this and give ourselves a chance and make sure we don't lose an opportunity on this again.' The emphasis has to be on getting back to something when it's there, but you have to capitalize on the opportunities when they give them to you.
Most teams in this league are not going to give you a second swing of the bat. When something is there the first time, you have to make your shot.”
The problem is the Giants aren’t making any shots right now, in almost any phase of the game. The defense has been better, but even if Judge or any of the players won’t say it outright, it certainly felt that once the Eagles went up 20-3, the game was all but over, considering 21 points against Los Angeles is the most the Giants have scored since the bye.
“The encouraging thing is that when I kept talking to the skill group and the offensive line on the sideline, and we talk about going back out there saying that it's a two possession game and we're going to get back in this, they still have the right look in their eyes and they're still going out there to compete. They're still going out there to fight the entire time,” Judge said. “At one point it was a 17 point game, and I had to talk to them and tell them, 'Here's where we're at. It's three possessions and this is what we're looking at. We're approaching the fourth quarter right now and this is what we're thinking about. We're thinking about four-down territory, on-side kicks, different situational calls.' They're locked in and they're glued into that right now. They understand that we're going to go out there and we're going to fight until the end.”
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Here’s a tip for Judge, though: Floyd Mayweather is arguably the best pound-for-pound boxer ever, and still, 23 of his 50 fights went to a decision. Translation: “fight” means nothing when the fight is over well before it ends.
“You put in all this work and you want to win. But at the end of the day it's our job to show up again and put our best foot forward every single week,” said quarterback Mike Glennon. “When we come to work, we have to be all-in and that's what I see. Although the results aren't what we wanted, the preparation and mindset I don't think has fallen off at all which is good to see.”
The Giants officially have just two games left for platitudes and fight and progress and all the other Joe Judge buzzwords, before the real work begins to build to 2022. Until then, Giants fans, enjoy one last Judge-ism on how hard his 4-11 team is working ahead of and through one clunker after another.
“I saw our guys fighting. I'll watch the tape and anything that I see in terms of loaf or anything, obviously we will address. But I saw our guys out there fighting and pushing on through. Obviously I've talked all the time about how you have to play and build a team, so I'm proud of a lot of guys of how they're pushing forward, how they're playing, and how they're competing.”
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