Evan and Tiki agree that the Giants clearly didn’t have the focus necessary to compete in a football game on Sunday, and it showed on the scoreboard, as Big Blue lost 30-7 to Tampa Bay at home coming out of a bye week.
It was an eventful bye week, as it was loaded with speculation over whether Daniel Jones would still be with the team when they took the field again, and Evan and Tiki wonder if the handling of the Jones situation played a role in the listless performance on Sunday.
Tiki says it certainly seemed to be on the minds of players during the game.
“It looked like a team that was distracted,” Tiki said. “I’m not gonna make excuses for this team. It is you responsibility as players in this leaguer to get yourself ready to play, regardless of what is going on around your team and in the clubhouse. But this was a highly distracted week. When I’m thinking about what the Giants went through this week, it’s hard to focus on football...it was ‘Man, I feel for Daniel Jones.’ All the questions and conversation was about Daniel Jones, the future of this organization, and what Tommy DeVito was gonna be.”
For Tiki, benching and eventually releasing Jones took the leadership on offense out of the locker room, regardless of Jones’ on-field performance, could have been handled a lot better by the organization, specifically the timing of it.
“It subtracts the offensive captain. That’s what it does,” Tiki said. “So who is doing it now? Is it Jermaine Eluemunor? Is it Devin Singletary? Is it Wan’Dale Robinson? Who the hell is the captain of this offense right now? By nature, it’s always the quarterback. But it’s not Tommy DeVito...it felt like it was a rudderless ship for a lot of this game.
“If I was Dabs, I would have addressed the Daniel Jones thing immediately into the bye week...Tommy DeVito didn’t know until Monday...it’s a shock to inject into your work week. You have a bye week, a do-nothing week. Do it then...because now, this becomes the talking point. Let the media exhaust it when there was no game.”