Blunders, Eli picks bad spot
bounced back and smashed Beckham in the face. He was not wearing his helmet and wouldn’t say after the game where he got the gash on his right cheek. What happened? “I don’t remember,” Beckham said. The kicking net had no comment. Manning came over to see why Beckham was blowing up.
“I was trying to figure out what was going on, why he was getting frustrated,” Manning said. “He was getting catches, he was making plays and we just need everybody to stay calm. We don’t need to get rattled. We don’t need to get fired up.”
By the time things were sorted in a game full of mistakes, Manning had the ball at his own 25 with 1:51 left and the Giants down
Bby two. Jay Gruden had lost his nerve on third-and-3 at the Giants 17 on the first play after the two-minute warning and ran Matt Jones rather than trusting Kirk Cousins to throw the ball to try to pick up a first down and then eat up the clock before attempting the winning field goal. Jones lost two yards. McAdoo used his first timeout Dustin Hopkins kicked a 37-yard field goal, his fifth of the game.
Manning led game-winning drives to twice beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl. There was a lot of confidence in the huddle.
“We needed a field goal and we’d been moving the ball well,” Manning said. “Most of the day, hit some good plays, getting completions, so it felt like we were in good shape.”
Beckham was called for offensive pass interference on second down, wiping out a seven-yard completion to Shepard. On a third-and-14, Manning hit Cruz over the middle and he turned it into an 18-yard gain. McAdoo used his second timeout. The Giants were at the their own 39 with 1:09 left. Manning needed another 29 yards to set Josh Brown up with a 50-yard field goal attempt to win it.
Manning had time, the weapons and the track record, but he tried to force the ball on a quick slant to Shane Vereen. No chance. He saw linebacker Su’A Cravens, so he was not fooled. But Cravens cut off the route and intercepted the pass.
“The guy made a good play,” Manning said. “Shane had a little inside breaking route and the guy undercut it and I didn’t think he’d be able to get all the way underneath on it. Bad decision by me. Should’ve gone onto my next progression. Guy made a good play and it was unfortunate.”
Vereen is an accomplished receiver coming out of the backfield. He caught 11 passes from Tom Brady in the Super Bowl two years ago. Again, forget about progressions on what was a four-yard pass. Get the ball to Beckham, Cruz or Shephard. ravens had apologized to Gruden for not coming up with an interception earlier in the fourth quarter preceding the field goal that put the Giants ahead 27-26. This time he made a nice catch.
The Beckham-Norman fireworks never happened. They were both warned before the game and Beckham believed there was a zero tolerance policy with him. If it came all the way from Roger Goodell, that’s a good thing. Those two Eli Manning throws in the fourth quarter were not.
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