The New York Giants could not pull off the improbable sweep of the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday, losing 38-20. This was an ugly slog of a game on a lot of fronts. Here are the initial \u2018Kudos & Wet Willies.\u2019<\/p>\n
Jaxson Dart \u2014 The rookie quarterback\u2019s stat line \u2014 14 of 24, 193 yards, 1 passing TD, 1 rushing TD \u2014 isn\u2019t great. It would have looked a lot better, though, with some help from Theo Johnson, Darius Slayton, and the officiating.<\/p>\n
Dart did everything he could on Sunday. It was just never going to be enough. Tom Brady was impressed. That\u2019s good enough for me.<\/p>\n
Graham Gano \u2014 The Giants\u2019 placekicker made it through the game healthy after spending four weeks on Injured Reserve with a groin injury. He made field goals of 47 and 34 yards, and a pair of extra points.<\/p>\n
Brian Burns \u2014 Burns had his 10th sack, just 2.5 off his career-best, after just eight games. He is having an extraordinary season as a pass rusher.<\/p>\n
Abdul Carter \u2014 Carter will get his first full NFL sack \u2014 some day. He continues to make an impact without one. He had three pressures on Sunday, drew a holding penalty, and made five tackles.<\/p>\n
Kayvon Thibodeaux \u2014 Thibodeaux made a game-changing play, stripping Jalen Hurts of the ball on a Tush Push. He, and the Giants, just didn\u2019t get rewarded for it. Thibodeaux had a quarterback hit, a pass defensed and five tackles.<\/p>\n
After the game, Thibodeaux didn\u2019t hide his feelings about the fumble that wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Run defense \u2014 Embarrassing. That\u2019s the only way to describe it.<\/p>\n
The Giants gave up a 65-yard touchdown run to Saquon Barkley on the Eagles\u2019 second offensive play of the game. They ended up giving 278 yards rushing, surrendering more than 9 yards per rush.<\/p>\n
Barkley had 150 yards rushing on 14 carries (10.7 per carry). Tank Bigsby had 104 yards on just nine carries, 11.6 yards per attempt.<\/p>\n
By the end of the game, would-be Giants tacklers were barely offering any resistance.<\/p>\n
Kickoff coverage \u2014 The Giants entered the game third in the league, surrendering just 21.3 yards per kickoff return. Will Shipley of Philadelphia had three returns for 99 yards, a 33.0-yard average, including 41 and 32-yard returns. The Giants also gave up a 17-yard punt return to Xavier Gipson, who was briefly a Giant earlier in the season.<\/p>\n
Theo Johnson \u2014 When you are a 6-foot-6, 264-pound tight end, your job is to make contested catches in traffic. You cannot drop a ball that would give you a first down at around the 10-yard line, taking four potential points off the board. Even if there are two defenders there. Johnson dropped a ball he had both hands on before he was even hit. Too many passes get away from Johnson, who entered the game with a 10.5% career drop rate.<\/p>\n
Injury Gods \u2014 Why can\u2019t the Giants have nice things? First, Malik Nabers is lost for the season with a torn ACL. Now, exciting rookie running back Cam Skattebo has a dislocated ankle after his foot got turned sideways trying to catch a pass.<\/p>\n
Officiating \u2014 Things got so bad in the fourth quarter that the officials were laughing at themselves. Only, the performance by referee Brad Rogers and his crew was anything but funny.<\/p>\n
I have rarely given officials a \u2018WW\u2019 in the 18 years I have been running this site. I do not like venturing into discussing officiating, and try to avoid it. The officials did not decide the game, but this was still an embarrassingly officiated game at the highest level of the sport.<\/p>\n
The Kayvon Thibodeaux Tush Push play should have been a fumble recovery for the Giants. Instead, the Eagles end up with a touchdown. Darius Slayton lost a touchdown on a horrid offensive pass interference call. Kayvon Thibodeaux was called offside on a clear Jordan Mailata false start. A block in the back on Wan\u2019Dale Robinson with the defender already falling down and moving away from him. Korie Black with hit with defensive pass interference when the wide receiver basically tossed him away.<\/p>\n
There were many, many more moments of ridiculousness that impacted both teams. Nope, not funny. Not even a little bit.<\/p>\n
Darius Muasau \u2014 Maybe I will be proven wrong, but it sure looked like Muasau didn\u2019t fill his gap on Barkley\u2019s 65-yard touchdown run. Oh, and in the early, unofficial Pro Football Focus analysis he finished with a defense-worst 31.0 grade and four missed tackles.<\/p>\n
Darius Slayton \u2014 Two catches for 26 yards, and he was robbed of what should have been a 68-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter on a phantom offensive pass interference call. Slayton, though, missed two catches that should have been made. One was a clear drop. The other a deep ball in the second quarter that led to a punt when the Giants could have been in scoring position.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York Giants could not pull off the improbable sweep of the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday, losing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[12269,9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":["post-17706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-kudos-wet-willies","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}