GROWING PAIN
Misery mounts with Giants’ agonizing loss
TAMPA, Fla. — The Giants didn’t have a catchy slogan attached to them heading into this year, the “[Stink] for Sam” jingle the Jets had. But four games into this 2017 season, they have gone another way.
They just stink on general principle.
“We need to win a damn game,” Ben McAdoo said.
One of these weeks, they will, maybe next week, when the 0-4 Chargers come 3,000 miles east to play the now 0-4 Giants in a game that may conjure memories of 2003, when they were both 4-12 and battled for position, elbows at the ready, for the right to pick Eli Manning.
The Chargers won that battle, the Giants won that war, which is a good memory in this time when it’s awfully damned hard to remember the last time either of them won anything. For a second straight week the Giants fell at the final gun. Last week it was a surreal 61-yarder by Jake Elliott in Philadelphia.
This time it was a 34-yarder on the soggy turf of Raymond James Stadium, a nervous boot by ex-Jet Nick Folk that just curled inside the upright for a 25-23 Buccaneers win that buried a few more layers of sod on top of the winless Giants.
The Giants: alleged Super Bowl contenders as recently as four weeks ago, now the bearers of a 3 percent chance by most playoff probability predictors to even see the postseason.
“There’s a 1 percent chance you can play in the NFL,” Odell Beckham Jr. said. “So anything is possible.”
That was the theme all around the moribund Giants’ locker room, because what other course could any of them take?
The Bucs jumped on them early, 13-0, but they left an awful lot of points on the field (seven of them thanks to a botched PAT and two missed makeable field goals by Folk) and by the time the Giants seized their first lead of the game, 17-16, on a 4-yard pass from Manning to Wayne Gallman Jr. ( more on him in a second), it seemed believable that this could be a similar catapult to the Week 3 game in Washington in 2007, the 17-3 hole that became a 24-17 win that became the moment when that team began to believe in itself.
No such luck this time, though. It turns out the defense could hold neither skinny lead nor the 23-22 advantage Eli gave them with 3 minutes and 16 seconds left in the game on a 2-yard chuck to tight end Rhet Ellison. Remember, this defense was one of the most fearsome in football a year ago. That was supposed to be the foundation of all the big dreams about 2017.
And when it mattered most, twice, it allowed Jameis Winston to carve his way up and down the field. First for a four-play, 57-yard drive that put the Bucs up 22-17, then for the nineplay 59-yard rush that set up the winning 3-pointer.
“Nobody expected this, but we have only ourselves to blame,” tackle Damon “Snacks” Harrison said, looking as dejected as he’s ever looked as a Giant. “I can’t put my finger on it, it’s not a lack of effort, we’re just not clicking right now.”
Told of the hard arithmetic facing his 0-4 team now, Harrison shook his head.
“Guys in this room,” he said, “are going to keep each other accountable.”
If there was a bright spot to be found other than Eli, who played well (30-for-49, 288 yards, two throwing TDs — and one running one! — and no interceptions) it was Gallman, pressed into service when Orleans Darkwa couldn’t play and Paul Perkins was banged up early. He only gained 42 yards on 11 carries but the way this offense has sputtered on the ground, the numbers pop like Rice Krispies.
“We challenge each other every day on the practice field to get better,” the rookie out of Clemson said. “I expect that out of myself.”
The practice field may help the Giants rediscover their mojo; the arrival next week of the similarly stagnant Chargers might be a lot more useful. McAdoo is right: for now they can’t worry about how many teams have gone from 0-4 to the postseason. Interestingly, it was the Chargers’ 1992 ancestors that did that, thanks to a 11-1 finish.
As Lloyd Christmas once observed: “So you’re telling me there’s a chance?”
At this point it’s a dumb question to ask. And a dumber one to debate.