There was rampant disappointment on the faces of veterans such as Michael Strahan, Tiki Barber and Amani Toomer when word came down after nine games in 2004 that Tom Coughlin, in his first season as the Giants’ head coach, after back-to-back losses was sending Kurt Warner to the bench, despite a 5-4 record that put the team in playoff contention. The move was made to rookie quarterback Eli Manning and the vets in the room knew what that meant.
Goodbye, playoff contention, hello losing record.
No one knew what Eli Manning would become but his teammates were fairly certain he wasn’t ready to take over an NFL team and lead it to victory most weekends. Of course, they were correct. Manning wasn’t ready and he lost his first six starts – the Giants scored 37 points in his first four games – to assure a losing record. Eli broke through with his first victory in the final game and the Giants finished 6-10.
Eli and the Giants haven’t had a losing record since then but they are headed for a sub-.500 record this season. They simply aren’t good enough to win their final three games and, given the next two opponents — Seahawks and Lions — are both in first place, their best chance for another victory is in the regular-season finale against the dysfunctional Redskins, who by then might have a new coach and/or a new quarterback.
The 5-8 Giants looked disinterested and quite frankly played hard only in brief spurts in their 37-14 loss to the Chargers in San Diego, which was an easy game and outcome to predict. The heart was taken out of the Giants with their last-season loss to the Cowboys and the main reason they were able to scratch out another win was because the Redskins could not hold onto a 14-point lead because they are, well, the Redskins. There will be plenty of talk this week about the incentive to avoid a losing season but don’t put much stock in the verbiage. Actions speak louder than words and the Giants’ actions aren’t very convincing.
Other notables coming out of the loss in San Diego:
– Antrel Rolle is almost always is on the field for every defensive snap, every game but he was shaken up in the third quarter, stayed down for a moment, got to his feet and jogged off to the sideline. Was this a chink in Ironman’s armor? Rolle stayed on the side for one play and then returned, meaning he played 71 of the 72 defensive snaps. Rolle is due to make $7 million in 2014, the last year on his contract and something is going to have to be done to adjust that money to make him more salary cap friendly. There’s some chatter that perhaps Rolle will become a casualty of the salary cap but that talk is nonsense. He’s one of a handful of indispensable players and not only for his performance or his genuine leadership traits. The guy always practices, always plays and never comes off the field. Since 2008, he’s started 90 of a possible 91 games and since he’s been with the Giants, Rolle has started all 59 games. You cannot over-value that sort of durability.
– No one is getting fired over this and it is not incriminating evidence that Tom Coughlin is too old but it is worth noticing that the Giants showed no urgency as they botched things up late in the second quarter, aiding and abetting the Chargers on their third touchdown to take a 24-0 halftime lead. Andre Brown fumbled but was ruled down by contact on a run for no gain on a play that began with 2:39 remaining in the first half. Clearly this was the time for the Giants on third down on their own 38-yard line to hurry to the line and get off a play before San Diego coach Mike McCoy could get a good look at the play. Instead, Eli Manning did not rush to the line and allowed the clock to hit the two-minute warning. That pause allowed McCoy to get a good look at the fumble, he threw the red challenge flag and the call on the field was overturned, putting the Chargers on the Giants’ 38-yard line. Referee Ron Winters put 39 seconds back on the clock for the Chargers and they scored five plays later.
“They scored late on us when we didn’t make a call downstairs that we thought was a fumble,” Coughlin said. “We let the clock run down to two minutes, then they challenged and got the ball back.”
That’s an accurate assessment and not exactly a tribute to the Giants’ sideline coaching.
– How in the world does a linebacker, even a fast one such as Spencer Paysinger, get isolated one-on-one with a receiver, Vincent Brown? It shouldn’t happen but it did in the third quarter and it was no contest. Brown came free in the end zone, Paysinger did all he could to mug him for a clear-as-day 36-yard pass interference penalty to put the ball on the Giants’ 1-yard line. The Chargers scored three plays later. Was this a case of defensive coordinator Perry Fewell putting his player in an impossible position? Not quite. Paysinger called it “one of those freak plays that happen’’ and not something that’s drawn up to happen very often.
“It occurs within the defense, I wouldn’t say it’s designed or anything like that,’’ Paysinger said. “It’s a zone kind of defense, when a play breaks down, the quarterback is trying to scramble you have to lock onto everybody in your zone. Unfortunately for me he was in my zone.’’
– Three more turnovers (interceptions Nos. 19 and 20 for Eli Manning and the Brown fumble) raised the season total to an NFL-high 34. The Chargers scored 14 points off the first two turnovers. That increases the points scored off Giants turnovers this season to 116, which is 35 percent of the 334 points allowed this season. It’s a ridiculous situation, a bad brand of football that completely deflates a team because players often feel powerless to prevent the turnovers from happening.
– Sure, the numbers put up by Hakeem Nicks (five receptions for 135 yards) look great, but are misleading. His 43-yard catch off a Hail Mary that came up six-yards short at the end of the first half was an impressive athletic feat but merely statistical window dressing. It did give Nicks his 13th regular-season 100-yard receiving game, tying him with Del Shofner for fourth place on the Giants’ career list. There was a time when it appeared Nicks, who, incredibly, is only 25 years old would own every Giants receiving record, given his production in his first three NFL seasons. Now it appears he has three games left in his Giants’ career in a down season, still searching for his first touchdown of 2013.