A LOT TO OFFER
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Wink Martindale told FOX reporter Pam Oliver that the Giants defense faces a harsh reality every time it takes the field.
“He said players need to embrace the challenge of what he said was the need to outplay the opponents’ offense and their defense,” Oliver reported during Monday’s first quarter.
Saquon Barkley then threw cold water on any notion that a 33-25 Christmas Day loss to the Eagles might have closed the gap between the Giants
(5-10) and their NFC East rivals in Dallas (10-5) and Philadelphia (11-4).
“We didn’t close it. It clearly shows,” Barkley told reporters afterwards. “We played the Cowboys twice, got beat. Fought a really good game here, got beat. I’m not saying anything negative.
That’s the truth. If this team, this franchise wants to go where we wanna go, we gotta start winning these games.”
The gap between the Giants and Eagles actually has gotten significantly larger the last two years even with
Philly’s recent slide.
The Giants had a 2-2 record against the Eagles under
Dave Gettleman and Joe
Judge in 2020-21, outscored by only 80-71 in those games.
They are now 0-4 against the Eagles under Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll, outscored 141-70, with an Eagles visit to MetLife Stadium upcoming in Week 18.
But as Barkley correctly noted, it’s not just their top rivals; the Giants are having trouble winning most of their games. The offense has scored a total of 90 points in the team’s 10 losses.
The shutdown of tackle and former No. 7 overall pick Evan Neal on injured reserve prior to Monday’s loss was a reminder of how the O-line and offense were never assembled to succeed from the jump this fall, either.
“We could make it about Philly. We could make it about Dallas. And that’s the truth,” Barkley said. “And I know we gotta be better. We gotta beat these teams. But we also didn’t do enough this year in other games to win. And we could make a whole bunch of excuses, but at the end of the day it’s the NFL. We didn’t do it.”
The offense is the primary problem and has been all along.
Daboll must start Tyrod Taylor the final two games against the Rams and Eagles after benching Tommy DeVito at halftime. Taylor gives the Giants the best chance to win and always did.
The Giants are averaging only 14.3 points per game this season, ranked No. 31 in the 32-team NFL ahead of only the New England Patriots (14.1). But their 214-point total includes three defensive touchdowns: pick-sixes by Jason Pinnock, Isaiah Simmons and Adoree Jackson.
So in reality, the offense is responsible for 193 points in 15 games (12.8).
DeVito’s Giants offense had scored a total of 12 points, with no touchdowns, across the Giants’ last seven quarters of football as they entered halftime at Lincoln Financial Field on Monday. In the second half, Taylor was short on a couple of throws, so he had some miscues. But his 69-yard bomb TD to Darius Slayton was a reminder that Daboll had left his best quarterback on the bench for reasons unknown.
And remember: Taylor didn’t take reps with the first-team offense all week, because Daboll named DeVito the starter immediately after the Giants’ 24-6 blowout loss to the Saints in New Orleans.
Maybe working with the starters would have helped Taylor and this anemic offense run by Daboll and Mike Kafka. It certainly couldn’t have hurt.
“He’s earned it,” Daboll said after DeVito took seven sacks and scored six points in New Orleans.
LIGHTNING FAST
KRISTIAN WINFIELD, Page 40
“I’m not gonna make a week-to-week change. He’s earned it. It’s not always gonna be perfect, but he’s earned the opportunity to play.”
So much for no week-to-week changes. DeVito didn’t even make it out of Week 16.
On defense, meanwhile, Martindale sent pressure constantly. He blitzed Jalen Hurts on 63.4% of the Eagles’ pass plays.
Hurts had a 64.1 passer rating against the blitz, with 6.9 yards per completion, no touchdowns and an interception. Conversely, Hurts had a 126.8 passer rating when not blitzed, with 9.9 yards per completion, a touchdown and no turnovers.
That included a killer 32-yard completion to A.J. Brown on 3rd and 20 on the Eagles’ final touchdown drive. The Giants dropped into a zone on that play and only rushed four, including edge Kayvon Thibodeaux, who had another quiet game with no tackles and two QB pressures.
Then linebacker Micah McFadden missed a tackle on a Kenny Gainwell 22-yard run down into the red zone. Those mistakes hurt any team, but they’re impossible to overcome for a Giants team with very little offense that fell behind 17 points at half.
That’s part of why Daboll’s frustration boiled over at the officials for some questionable calls on Monday, too: the Giants are so limited that they have only one way they can win games.
The refreshing difference on Monday, at least, was that Taylor answered with his touchdown to Slayton to keep the Giants in it late. That pass had only a 47.1% chance to be completed, according to NFL’s NextGen Stats. Taylor dropped it in anyway.
That’s why if the goal is to win on New Year’s Eve against the Rams, Taylor has to start. If the goal is to try to beat the Eagles in Week 18 — just once — Taylor has to start.
Fans might be excited that the Giants now would hold the No. 5 overall pick in April’s NFL Draft if the season ended now. But these players have livelihoods, and the season is not over.
“There’s no moral victories in the NFL,” left guard Justin Pugh said. “We get paid to win games. So we gotta start winning these games.”
Giants corner Jackson reached a top speed of 20.92 miles per hour on his 76-yard pick-six, according to NFL NextGen Stats. That is the third-fastest speed on a pick-six this season in the NFL. And it is the fastest play by a Giants ball carrier this season.
Estevan Florial’s time with the Yankees is over.
The lefty-hitting outfielder, who was once among the team’s top-ranked prospects, was traded Tuesday to the Guardians in exchange for right-handed pitcher Cody Morris, the Yankees announced.
Florial, 26, played parts of four seasons with the Yankees, batting .209 with one home run, 11 RBI and six stolen bases in 48 games. He hit .230 with eight RBI and three stolen bases in 19 games last season.
Originally signed as an international free agent in 2015, the Dominican-born Florial became a touted prospect in the Yankee system due to his combination of power at the plate and speed in center field and on the basepaths.
Florial frequently produced in the minor leagues, including last season when he slugged 28 home runs with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, but failed to catch on in the majors. The Yankees designated Florial for assignment last April, but he remained with the organization after clearing waivers.
A path to big-league playing team appeared even less certain heading into the 2024 season, with the Yankees having acquired lefty-hitting outfielders Juan Soto,
Alex Verdugo and Trent Grisham in recent weeks.
In Morris, the Yankees added a 27-year-old pitcher with 13 games, including five starts, of MLB experience. Morris, who made his MLB debut in 2022, pitched to a 6.75 ERA across eight innings, all in relief, last season.
Equipped with a mid-90s fastball, a cutter he throws nearly as frequently, and a changeup with a whiff rate exceeding 40% the past two seasons, Morris boasts a 3.41 ERA with 32 strikeouts in 31.2 innings in his major-league career. He pitched to a 3.23 ERA across two minor-league levels in 2023.
Morris adds another arm to a Yankee pitching staff that has a vacancy in its starting rotation behind Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodon, Nestor
Cortes and Clarke Schmidt, and that has not replaced the relief innings provided last season by Michael King, Keynan Middleton and Lou Trivino.
After sending King and three other pitchers to the Padres to acquire Soto and Grisham, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said “onboarding pitching is gonna be important.”
“We’re in the market for pitching (to) see if we can reinforce it,” Cashman said earlier this month. “We like the pitching we have, but we also recognize that if we can add to it, it’s important to do (so). The rotation-bullpen combo, all the above, from an insurance standpoint or something established that you can plug and play with, we’re going to continue conversations in that arena.”