Beckham ruled out of Redskins game with quad injury
After a 1-7 start, the Giants have refused to quit under firstyear head coach Pat Shurmur. They have since won three of four games and are favored to beat the Redskins on Sunday. Running the table and salvaging the season with an 8-8 record is attainable.
And yet, with New York’s playoff hopes still hanging by a thread, the elephant in the room remains.
Quarterback Eli Manning may or may not return in 2019, the final year on his contract. Regardless, he turns 38 years old in January and has shown several signs of decline. A successful search for a successor requires prudence and no stones unturned by the Giants.
Entering the 12th game of the schedule, Shurmur will not divulge internal discussions on the franchise’s plans to eventually play or not play backup quarterback Kyle Lauletta.
“And I may never present those answers,” Shurmur said this week. “There’s billion-dollar businesses that have issues of the day they don’t share with the world, and I don’t think our business is any different.”
Shurmur repeatedly says the Giants are trying to win every game, which would lead fans to believe Manning will start the rest of the season. But that’s a platitude in the NFL, and the coach also acknowledges that “maybe” the team shifts gears once the playoffs are no longer a possibility.
To put in perspective how farfetched they remain: The Giants are three games back of Dallas for first place in the NFC East. One more Cowboys win eliminates the Giants, since Dallas has already clinched a tiebreaker. The Eagles, who are two games ahead of New York, can only win one more game for the Giants to have a chance at the division. And their Wild Card hopes are equally bleak.
Manning bought himself more time with a 30-27 overtime victory against the Bears last Sunday. But the intriguing pregame development was that the Giants promoted Lauletta, their fourth-round pick out Richmond this year, to No. 2 quarterback. He was inactive for the first 11 games of the season.
“We evaluate every step every player takes, everything they do all the time, and I’ve said all along he had a long way to go,” Shurmur said. “He came from a small program, he did enough things in the preseason to say he’s good enough to make our team, but we needed to see more from him in order to feel confident in giving him a jersey, and he’s done some things behind the scenes that have given us more of that confidence.”
Lauletta, the seventh quarterback selected in the draft, may not be the Giants’ future quarterback. Odds are he isn’t. But no one knows for sure. The bottom line is the front office can’t sufficiently move forward in the offseason — whether it be surveying the upcoming draft class or free agency — without a proper evaluation of the rookie.
At some point in the final three games, that will likely become the priority. But the Giants are focused on changing the culture after last year’s 3-13 debacle that led to the dismissals of head coach Ben McAdoo and general manager Jerry Reese in Week 14.
“There’s no quit in this team and even early on in the season, we never quit,” wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. said. “I guess maybe they just fought harder than us. We lost those games three, four points, five points, instead of winning them. Maybe if we dug down one or two series more, the outcome would’ve been different, but that’s NFL football. This team’s got a lot of fight in them and we’ve been showing that a lot more since the bye week.”
Since the Giants committed 11 penalties and scored only 13 points in a home loss to the Redskins six weeks ago, New York is averaging 29 points over four games — the only loss materializing after a blown 16-point lead in Philadelphia two Sundays ago.
“Offensively, I think we’ve found the running game a little bit more,” Manning said. “A little bit more play-action. Probably not as much of being in shotgun on first and second down, and dropping back. That’s helped us eliminate some of those negative plays. So now, just be able to stay in good down and distance, convert on some third downs, stay on the field a little bit longer. The defense has done a great job of getting some turnovers as well.”