Go 0-0-1, I Guess… (Giants-Commanders Week 5 Recap)
All week long, I said that a win over the Commanders would be all the ammo I needed to convince myself that the New York Giants had the inside track to becoming NFC East champions. Meanwhile, a loss against a desperate Washington team would be sobering, to say the least.
Well, after four hours, 54 evenly distributed points, and one tie, I’m not quite sure how to feel. I know damn well it ain’t sober, though.
The first half of this game reeked of so many Daniel Jones/Late-Stage Eli losses of the past. The offense was literally and figuratively stuck in the mud, going one-yard run, one-yard run, self-sack seemingly every possession, while settling for enough field goals to make the scoreboard look more palatable than the reality of the dire situation.
The defense once again deserves a ton of credit for keeping us afloat early on. After Tyler Nubin added another laughably bad downhill angle to his résumé, they really locked in and managed to survive three short fields courtesy of a pair of missed field goals and a Winston fumble, allowing just six first-half points outside of the opening drive.
Due to the improbable comeback that would follow, it’s easy to forget that the offense continued to be an excruciatingly painful watch for much of the third quarter. I don’t know how or why we continue to have so many procedural penalties week after week. It feels like we’re never set, constantly shifting guys across the line of scrimmage with two seconds on the play clock before frantically snapping the ball and praying no one jumps.
I read all summer about how hard the coaching staff worked to get Dart comfortable under center, so why can’t anything be done with a 12-year veteran? Swapping quarterbacks on these stupid JJ McCarthy packages surely isn’t helping our piss-poor management of the play clock. I hate that nonsense. Much like every wildcat play ever, IT’S ALWAYS A RUN AND EVERYONE KNOWS IT! The one exception was a 14-yard screen pass to Nabers, which was, of course, called back due to one of the aforementioned procedural penalties.
Down 13, Jameis threw an interception in the end zone that should very well have resulted in our goose being cooked. Instead, we finally became the beneficiaries of a questionable PI call that extended the drive and allowed Winston to hit Likely for the score three plays later.
Jayden Daniels would respond immediately with his second third-down, man-coverage-beating TD scramble in as many drives. While it appeared as though this would be a consistent problem for the remainder of the game, Dennard Wilson was able to adjust on the fly and keep the Commanders stuck at 27 points for the final 21 minutes of the contest.
Down 14 with 11:05 to go, the Giants would need to play perfectly on both sides of the ball to have any shot at a comeback. I already alluded to the defensive effort, but with his back against the wall, Jameis Winston and the offense were flawless in the fourth quarter and overtime.
With no choice but to completely abandon the nonexistent run game, the Giants lined up in shotgun and slung the hell out of the rock. Nabers and Likely took turns converting one big first down after another before eventually taking turns scoring touchdowns to tie the game at 27.
It pains me to abandon the run-first identity that appeared so promising with Dart, but I think we might need to shift more toward the pass-happy shotgun stuff as long as we continue to ride the Jameis Winston Express. For the first time this season, he finally looked comfortable in the pocket and was able to deliver the ball accurately. It’s almost as if the only time this offense can properly function is when we have no choice but to push the ball downfield. It will be interesting to see if we start next week’s game with this aggressive approach rather than turning to it out of desperation.
With 1:43 on the clock, I had basically resigned myself to the fact that the game-winning field goal drive was coming. I was proud of how the team fought back but knew, in my heart of hearts, that we hadn’t played well enough for most of the contest and that the loss was imminent. But Dennard Wilson would have none of my negativity, as he zero-blitzed Jayden right in his stupid, smiling face and forced overtime.
Again, nothing but kudos to Wilson, Carter, and the defense. But I have no idea how the Washington coaching staff didn’t have some sort of blitz beater ready when we had just forced a three-and-out using these same packages earlier in the quarter. What’s even funnier is that they still had no answers in overtime after being handed a golden opportunity to win the game following Zvada’s third miss of the afternoon.
The reason I’m highlighting all this coaching malpractice is simply to drive home the fact that we had no business winning this game. If Dan Quinn and David Blough were able to combine forces and produce a single sensible thought, this game never sees overtime or the two impossible choke jobs that would soon follow…
After seeing Skattebo encourage our mentally broken kicker, it felt like the storybook ending to this wild game was all but written once we got the ball back. The hard-nosed identity of this football team, which had been absent all afternoon, would be the driving force behind getting us into game-winning field goal range. Our rookie kicker would be given a chip shot at redemption, and the Giants would be 4-1 and in complete control of the division.
Unfortunately, it’s never that easy with this team, as Skattebo would inexplicably fumble while fighting for extra yards we didn’t need.
It’s a mistake that simply can’t be made, and it’s the sole reason I can’t allow myself to fully celebrate the tie. Did we deserve to win this game? Of course not. But in that situation, we had every right to, and winning in this league is too fucking hard to throw opportunities like that away.
The only optimistic approach I can take here is that I’d rather the team learn this brutal lesson in Week 5 against the dumbass Redskins than further down the line. If that’s the last late-game fumble or missed kick of the year, then you can mark this tie down as a win. But if this trend continues, be prepared for more heartache if and when it eventually matters.
The rest of the game will, of course, live in infamy for all eternity, as Jayden Daniels voluntarily ran out the clock before Washington could attempt a 40-yard game-winner of its own. The wild thing is that I was concerned about the Giants doing something similar before the Skattebo fumble. We were also out of timeouts, had reached the two-minute warning, and, if we had gone with three straight run plays, we wouldn’t have been able to spike the ball or get the kicking team on the field in time on fourth down.
I have to assume we wouldn’t have made the same mistake, but the fact that an amateur sports blogger has more awareness of these situations than NFL coaches and quarterbacks is a massive issue for anyone associated with the Washington Commanders. Even the commentators were out to lunch! As the clock wound down, I’m listening to Jonathan Vilma diatribe about how Daniels wants to kneel the ball on the hash mark for his kicker! He and anyone else who didn’t realize the Commies were fucked the second the ball wasn’t spiked should forfeit their right to mock any sort of coaching decision for all eternity.
Because of the great comeback and the fact that our opponent’s fuck-up was somehow so much more egregious than our own, it’s easy for this tie to feel like slightly more of a win than a loss. Regardless of the circumstances, this is the type of game we need to pull out if we’re serious about any sort of playoff aspirations.
With two more winnable games lined up, we simply need to be better, if for no other reason than the fact that “Go 0-0-1” makes for a heinous T-shirt design.
