BIG BOO
ANEMIC GIANTS FALL IN DALLAS
ARLINGTON, Tex. — Unacceptable.
The Giants are not allowed to put a product this poor on the field anymore. This 20-13 loss to the Cowboys was too much.
Not after a 3-13 season in 2017. Not after blowing up their front office and coaching staff and retooling the roster around Eli Manning to make a playoff run now. Not after drafting Saquon Barkley No. 2 to jump-start the offense. Not with Odell Beckham Jr. healthy and capable of taking over games.
How then, could this happen on Sunday night, on national television against an unimposing Cowboys team? How could GM Dave Gettleman overhaul this roster in his preferred image and rid the locker room of last year’s bad influences, and assemble a team so similarly lifeless and hopeless on offense and prone to huge mistakes?
Not only does this type of performance not suffice for a team with playoff aspirations. It doesn’t even suffice for an NFL team with aspirations of simply winning a game. Naturally, plenty Giants players were ticked off.
“Just not good enough,” Manning said. “Obviously guys are disappointed, some guys are getting frustrated — as we should. But we can’t let that affect our preparation or our practices. We’ve got to bounce back. … Nothing is going to get fixed by complaining. We just need to step it up, make a difference and fix some things.”
The futility of Pat Shurmur’s offense is most jarring, of course, with Manning checking down all of his passes even when he has time, and the offensive line proving ill-equipped to handle even the simplest pass rush ploys, surrendering six sacks. “We didn’t do anything well enough on offense to win this game,” Shurmur said.
Rookie guard Will Hernandez added: “It’s just unacceptable. We have to get better, and we have to win.”
Janoris Jenkins and the Giants defense did set the night’s ugly tone by giving up a 64-yard Dak Prescott touchdown pass to Tavon Austin on the Cowboys’ third play from scrimmage. Jenkins said he slipped.
James Bettcher’s D, despite settling in through the middle of the game, also did not force a turnover and then allowed Prescott to engineer a 14-play, 82-yard fourth-quarter drive to eat up 8:23 of clock for an Ezekiel Elliott touchdown at 5:51 to shut the door on the game at 20-3.
The offense’s ineptitude, though, was this game’s story and especially striking coming off of Ben McAdoo’s offense’s embarrassing performance last season. Except on Sunday night the Giants had a healthy Beckham and their prized new back in Barkley and still were easily bottled up.
Manning’s drought to open the season without a touchdown pass dragged to 118 minutes and 28 seconds until he hit Evan Engram for an 18-yard TD to draw within 20-10 with 1:32 to play.
And the Giants’ offensive players and Shurmur acknowledged that the Cowboys simply sat back with two deep safeties and forced the Giants to throw underneath. And save for a 37yard completion to Cody Latimer (his first target of the season) in the third quarter, the Giants couldn’t push the ball down the field.
Sterling Shepard didn’t have a single target until two minutes remained in the first half.
“You’ve just got to get it to your playmakers and you’ve got to make a play. That’s the bottom line,” Shepard said when asked how to combat the Cowboys’ defense. “I couldn’t give it to you schematically on how to do that, but when I look at it, that’s what I see: just get it to your playmakers and let ’em go make plays.”
After McAdoo’s 2017 Giants lost 19-3 here in Week 1, Sunday’s lack of production felt especially nauseating because the Giants paid Beckham all that money on his contract extension but weren’t able to free him or target him frequently enough to take advantage of the talent that erupted for 11 catches and 111 yards in the Week 1 20-15 home loss to the Jaguars.
“Whatever it is we need to do, we need to find it soon,” Beckham said. “They just outplayed us.”
It began with Manning frequently checking the ball down early, often to Barkley, even when he had good protection. But that protection would not last. Manning eventually took hits and sacks from all sides, sacked four times in the first half alone.
Nate Solder, Hernandez, Patrick Omameh and Ereck Flowers all were victimized by DeMarcus Lawrence, Taco Charlton and the Cowboys’ front. Hernandez’s mistake led to a Manning third-quarter fumble. Fullback Shane Smith also was responsible for two sacks surrendered in one drive alone late in the first half.
Center Jon Halapio was seemingly the only lineman not directly victimized on a pass rush, but when he badly injured his right leg and was carted off in the third quarter, it took backup center John Greco only two plays to get beaten. Lawrence flushed Manning from the pocket, and Manning took a major hit from LB Jaylon Smith.
Linemen like Justin Pugh and Weston Richburg were bid good riddance essentially when the Giants let them walk in free agency, but those were two good players and the line that remains so far has been worse.
The offense gained only 79 yards in the first half on 32 plays, good for 2.5 yards per play. It went 2-for-9 on third downs in the half, largely because either Manning consistently threw the ball below the first-down marker or because the Cowboys disrupted with pressure up front.
Barkley tied a rookie record with 14 receptions, but it amounted to only 80 yards, mostly on short checkdowns. He broke seven tackles, Beckham broke three and Wayne Gallman broke one, but it wasn’t enough.
“Every time you lose, it sucks,” Barkley said.
Until Barkley’s 10-yard run on their final drive of the first half, in fact, Manning was the team’s leading rusher with two carries for three yards. Confusingly, Shurmur punted on 4thand-1 down 7-0 in the first quarter from the Giants’ 48yard line but a couple drives later went for it on both 4th-and-1 from the Giants’ 35 and 46 yard lines, getting both.
Why draft a running back No. 2 overall and not be confident in gaining that first down on the 48? Or better question: why draft a running back over a QB of the future if your team isn’t close to ready to winning now?
Since 1990, only 28 of the 231 teams (12%) that started an NFL season 0-2 have made the playoffs in the current playoff format, per Elias Sports Bureau. NBC also showed that teams starting 1-1 have a 41% chance of making the playoffs since 2002, while teams that fall to 0-2 have only an 11% chance. The Giants can’t be thinking about the playoffs, though, and they probably won’t have to at all this season. They should be thinking about putting a competent product on the field and winning a game.