SAME OLD GIANTS
JONES AND CO. PLAGUED BY FAMILIAR MISTAKES IN UGLY OPENING LOSS
BRONCOS 27 GIANTS 13
Say hello to the new Giants. Same as the old Giants.
The only difference from one year to the next was a glaring one.
There were no fans in 2020 to serve as eyewitnesses to all the crummy football the Giants put on the field at MetLife Stadium. There were fans in the seats Sunday, and so many of them, after having their enthusiasm for a new season blunted by so much lousy play from the home team, headed for the exits midway through the fourth quarter.
The trickle became a surge when Melvin Gordon raced through the semblance of a Giants defense on a 70-yard touchdown run and the parking lots were more populated than the seats as time expired on a desultory 27-13 loss to the Broncos that was even worse than that. Daniel Jones scored on a 4-yard run as time expired, for what that was worth, which is nothing at all.
“If the game’s out of control, beat traffic,’’ advised safety Logan Ryan.
“I hate seeing them have to leave the game early,’’ receiver Sterling Shepard, the Giants’ longest-tenured player, said. “You can’t help but see people lined up in the tunnels and it’s no fun seeing that.’’
Every concern the Giants carried into this season came bubbling to the surface. A lackluster offense, even with upgraded weapons. A defense that lacked an edge rusher to get off the field. The return of Saquon Barkley was no antidote. There was another example of sloppy ball security from Daniel Jones and a rare mental gaffe from head coach Joe Judge.
The Giants led 7-3 on Jones’ 37-yard touchdown catch-and-run to Shepard, but by halftime they were down 10-7 on the way to 17-7 after a 16-play Broncos drive to start the third quarter. A 20-yard pass to Shepard and Barkley moving the pile to pick up a first down created a glimmer of hope, but that was crushed when Jones scrambled to the Denver 15-yard line, had the ball punched out by linebacker Alexander Johnson and recovered by Malik Reed, Jones’ 40th career turnover.
“It’s certainly something I’ve got to improve on and I’ll learn from and keep moving forward,’’ Jones said.
That did not trigger the mass exodus, but it was not far off.
“Look, we got to earn our fans respect, point blank,’’ Judge said. “These people come out here and spend their hard-earned money, they sit in the seats, cheer for us, they give us energy. We have to give them something to cheer about. It’s not their job to show up and cheer just to cheer. Their job is to be entertained. They buy a ticket, that means they buy the right to cheer, boo, stay, leave, whatever they want to do. We got to give them something to stay for. We have to give them something to cheer for.’’
This is the fifth consecutive year the Giants lost their opener and the ninth time in the past 10 years that they sit at 0-1 after one game. The Giants do not have much time to dissect this stinker, as they head to Washington for a Thursday night game, trying to avoid going 0-2 for the fifth straight season.
The Giants had seven points, 111 total yards and 8 rushing yards in the first half and anyone hoping for some new stuff from offensive coordinator Jason Garrett was thoroughly disappointed.
On defense, the Giants made Teddy Bridgewater look like an MVP candidate. The Broncos converted 7 of 15 on third down and all three of their fourth-down attempts. Spanning the two halves, the Broncos ran 31 plays to the Giants’ four plays.
“Extremely backbreaking,” linebacker Blake Martinez said. “We had a lot of chances. It came down to us just executing the play call, and we didn’t do that. Obviously, they made us pay for it.’’
Barkley made a return from reconstructive knee surgery and had 10 rushing attempts for 26 yards, plus one reception for 1 yard. He will, no doubt, get better with time. No one knows if these Giants will be able to do that.
The Broncos got the ball to start the second half and kept it for 8:12. From the 4-yard line, Bridgewater was flushed out of the pocket and should have been dropped by Xavier McKinney. Instead, Bridgewater found Albert Okwuegbunam, who eluded a tackle attempt by Martinez for the touchdown to make it 17-7.
Judge threw the red challenge flag, wanting to know if Okwuegbunam stepped out of bounds before reaching the end zone. All scoring plays are automatically reviewed, though, and the Judge was not allowed to challenge the call, costing the Giants a timeout.
“That’s completely on me,’’ Judge said. “I know you can’t challenge a scoring play. That was a little bit more emotional, I was looking for feedback from the officials. I had to do something to draw their attention, I couldn’t get them to turn around so I threw the flag.’’
Consider it another thing the Giants did not get right in their opener.
FINALLY, Daniel Jones had the ball, after watching Teddy Bridgewater control it for over eight minutes, and he was driving, and the first “Let’s Go Gi-ants” chant came from the MetLife stands on the day Giants fans returned.
It was Broncos 17, Giants 7, and Jones had moved to the Denver 22, when he saw an opening and deployed up the middle and called on his legs for the first time.
The competitor in him told him not to slide.
He didn’t slide.
And he coughed up the football on a hit by LB Josey Jewel, and Malik Reed recovered at the Denver 15.
Same Old Jones will mean Same Old Giants.
“We gotta give them something to stay for, we gotta give them something to cheer for,” Judge said.
Until they do, disenchanted Giants fans will desert them early the way they did on Sunday and head for the exits.
Until Jones starts making wiser decisions, until he stops fumbling the damn ball, — that’s 30 for his career — the Giants will continue to lose the way they lost 27-13 to the Broncos in another Same Old Home Opener.
Asked what he can take away from his turnover, Jones said.
“Just protecting the ball better, and keeping it tight.”
Of course, he remembered to slide on his next possession and drew an unnecessary roughness penalty at the end of the scramble, and he fell to the turf two plays later at the end of a fourth-and-4 quarterback draw for 8 yards.
“I’ll look at it on film and study it, and continue to work on it,” Jones said.
It was 20-7, and now he was first-and-goal and just 7 yards from getting the Giants to within 20-14:
First down: nearly intercepted.
Second down: Saquon Barkley around right end for 1 yard.
Third down: Incomplete throwaway high for Kyle Rudolph.
Fourth down: Incomplete in the right corner for Kenny Golladay.
“We certainly expect to score more points, and expect to convert those opportunities in the red zone,” Jones said, “but we’re not gonna let ourselves get emotionally down or disappointed as a group.”
The Giants scored 13 points only because of Jones’ 4-yard rushing TD as time expired.
“We gotta figure out a way to be able to put the ball in the end zone. That’s the end of the story,” Sterling Shepard said.
A slow offensive start was predictable, given the training camp rust on Barkley, Golladay and Kadarius Toney.
But no one wants to hear excuses when the end zone was as radioactive as it was last season.
Jones was hardly the lone culprit.
Judge, who said he knew the rule but wanted feedback from the officials on whether Albert Okwuegbunam’s 4-yard TD catch on fourth-and-1 in the third quarter was inbounds, lost a timeout because he threw the challenge flag and took ownership of it.
“That was a bad mistake by the head coach,” Judge said. His team was undisciplined. Still, it was supposed to be different, this second season under Judge, all these shiny new toys the Giants brass delivered for Jones, the return of Barkley, all that.
It wasn’t different.
The Giants showed no evidence that they have learned how to win.
The sight of Barkley back where he belongs, back in his 26 jersey, back with his Giants teammates, had sent a jolt of electricity through MetLife Stadium, and it was symbolic only in a comeback sense that on the day that followed the 20th anniversary of 9/11, a tough, resilient town that got back on its feet would recognize and celebrate a star running back who got back on his.
But this was hardly vintage Barkley (10-26 rushing, 1-1 receiving) in his return from reconstructive knee surgery.
Jones (22-37, 267 yards, one TD, 6-27, one garbage time rushing TD) had one joyous moment: hopping and skipping towards the goal line, the sound of Giants fans exploding in his ear holes, leaping into the arms of Nick Gates, because he had converted three third downs on this drive and the third one had become a 37-yard catch-and-run TD to Shepard that made it Giants 7, Broncos 3.
You can look at Broncos coach Vic Fangio’s decision to go for it on fourth-and-2 at the NYG 49 with 48 seconds left in the first half that set up a Bridgewater TD pass to Tim Patrick however you choose:
Shurmur had a bag of tricks ready to win the chess game with Graham.
Or:
He didn’t fear giving Daniel Jones the ball there.
Or perhaps both.
Logan Ryan left MetLife Stadium with an untested theory that the Broncos defense would have struggled to contain all the Giants playmakers.
No one will ever know for sure — though it seems unlikely based on a small sample size — because the Ryan-led Giants defense failed to get a stop on so many third and fourth downs that the Broncos held a 10-minute advantage in time of possession in coasting to a 27-13 season-opening victory.
“You play more defense, bad things happen,” Ryan said. “We didn’t make their defense play enough defense.”
The Broncos converted 7 of 15 third-down conversions and 3 of 3 fourthdown conversions, which Ryan described as the “story of the game.” Three of the Broncos’ five scoring drives lasted at least 10 plays and two chewed up more than eight minutes of clock time.
“I believe their defense probably would’ve been bad, too, if they would’ve played longer,” Ryan said. “We just have to get our offense more touches. I felt our offense was moving the ball pretty well, and I felt bad we didn’t get them a chance to play a lot.”
Here’s the best example of how badly everything went for the Giants defense: Blake Martinez, the surest tackler on the team with at least 130 each of the last four seasons, missed a fourth-and-goal stop that would’ve prevented the decisive touchdown. He dove and lowered his shoulder, but Albert Okwuegbunam broke the tackle, navigated the sideline and dove for the pylon.
“I read and saw the scramble play, and the guy came loose,” Martinez said. “I went for his legs, and he made a play and stayed up.”
Where the Giants were conservative on fourth downs — an intentional delay of game penalty at Denver’s 38-yard line and then a punt on the first drive of the season —the Broncos were aggressive. With 48 seconds remaining in the first half, they converted a fourthand-2 at midfield that set up the go-ahead touchdown.
“They didn’t punt, they didn’t kick, they went for it — and they made us pay for going for it,” Ryan said. “Extended plays, pass rush needs to be better, but in the secondary we have to be much better at what we do.”
Allowing a half-closing score was a theme last year, even when the defense was at its best.
“We talked about it: We need to make those plays and be able to stand up, especially in the two-minute [drill],” Martinez said. “Because that’s a big momentum boost either way and obviously they came through.”
It wasn’t a surprise that the Giants offense picked up where it left off in 2020, as the second-worst scoring unit in the NFL. But it was a surprise to see the defense — especially the vaunted secondary — allow 420 yards to a journeyman Teddy Bridgewater-led offense.
Ryan’s remarkable forced fumble and recovery while staying in bounds at the 4-yard line, to preserve a 7-3 lead, was the only real highlight. He nearly did it again in the red zone in the second half, but replay overturned a Giants’ takeaway.
“I’m confident if it comes down to the defense, and the players on the defense, we’ll be good,” Ryan said. “It wasn’t our standard.”