Time for Eli, Giants to get to the points
For Manning to keep job, the offense has to get going
Eli Manning can keep starting at quarterback for the Giants if he starts winning games, and that means winning right away on Monday night at San Francisco.
Because Manning lost to the Niners’ C.J. Beathard head-tohead last season in Santa Clara, and dropping this decision one year later to third-stringer Nick Mullens should just about do it.
So just one question then: how are the Giants going to start winning, exactly, to fend off the inevitable for their two-time Super Bowl winning QB? The Giants are not the Atlanta Falcons.
The Falcons started this season 1-4, lost six key starters to seasonending or long-term injuries, and still have pulled to .500 in an impressive bid by this year’s Super Bowl hosts to finish respectably and possibly challenge late.
Atlanta (4-4) has surged so well that the Falcons just added veteran pass rusher Bruce Irvin for $1.5 million over their final eight games to try and make a run. The NFC South will be tough to climb with the Saints (7-1) and Panthers (6-2) ahead of them, but the Falcons have hope.
The Giants (1-7), despite being a pretty healthy team, can’t say the same. And it’s not just because they’d need to win seven of their final eight games to avoid a losing record. No.
The Giants can’t share the Falcons’ hope because Manning ’s offense can’t score points.
Matt Ryan’s Falcons are averaging 28.5 points per game following last week’s 38-14 dismantling of host Washington in Landover, Md. This happened just one week after the NFC East’s first place team smothered the Giants, 23-20, at MetLife Stadium.
And that score really was 23-12 until a garbage-time Giants TD, the way many of their scores have been falsely propped up by meaningless late conversions.
The Giants — ready for this? — have scored 73 points combined in the first three quarters of their eight games and 77 points in the fourth quarter. Not all but many of those fourth-quarter points have been scored when the defenses backed off and softened and the points didn’t matter.
To put that a different way: the Giants en- ter the fourth quarter of their games with an average of 9.125 points. Incredible, right? Their 18.8 points-per-game average somehow still is misleading.
Manning has been culpable. The offensive line has been increasingly atrocious. Evan Engram and Sterling Shepard both had big drops against Washington. Odell Beckham Jr. and Saquon Barkley have some nicelooking stats, but they ring hollow.
And history shows their starting field position will revert after the confusing release of punt returner Quadree Henderson.
This is not to say it’s hopeless that the Giants find some wins down the stretch. There are reasons to believe they can make progress at points in the second half of the season.
They have players, for example, like starting corner B.W. Webb, who hustle and have proven resilient. The journeyman veteran plays every snap like his career depends on it.
“I don’t have the fortune of taking plays off, taking downs off,” Webb said Tuesday after the team’s first post-bye practice. “I’ve gotta keep playing, man. Every time I step on the field, that’s my resume. And that’s something I always think about. No matter our record or how we’re doing in the game, every time we step on the field I want to put my best foot forward and keep playing.”
The Giants also should put a slightly better offensive line on the field thanks to last week’s waiver claim of ex-Rams guard Jamon Brown, a 16-game starter in 2017 who became an unlikely casualty of L.A.’s deadline trade for Jaguars pass rusher Dante Fowler.
“Yes, it was shocking,” Brown said Tuesday. “I think it was shocking even to the (Rams) for making that move, just based on the conversations I’ve had with some of the staff members in the organization. At the end of the day, the dream lives on. I have another opportunity right here in New York, and I’m going to make the most of it.”
And the Giants may benefit from a softer second-half schedule, too, starting with two beatable opponents in the Niners (2-7) and Tampa Bay Buccaneers (3-5).
That said, however, if the 2019 NFL Draft took place right now, the Giants would have the second pick for a second straight year, behind only the tanking Oakland Raiders, ahead of this Niners team at No. 3.
That’s because they consistently have put an unacceptable product on the field in 2018, which is why it’s difficult to believe Manning and his offense can simply flip the switch and avoid Kyle Lauletta’s NFL debut much longer.