PITTSBURGH – This was as telling a scene as any that played out across this frosty Sunday afternoon at Heinz Field: As the final minutes melted off the clock, large swaths of the stands – all the seats a bright, almost neon gold – beckoned under the stars and the bright lights.
It is a beautiful sight to see, say, when you are driving across the Fort Duquesne Bridge a few hours before a game. Football stadiums rarely inspire poetry the way baseball ballparks do. Yet the gold that dominates this football address – there’s only one team that could play here. It’s beautiful to see.
At 1:30 in the afternoon, anyway, for a 4:25 game.
At 7:30, it says something else: It says most of the 65,825 who’d paid their way in for this important clash didn’t bother to wait for the ending, mostly because they didn’t have to. By the time Pittsburgh’s Cobi Hamilton smothered Robbie Gould’s for-the-hell-of-it onside kick with 26 seconds to go, the joint was three-quarters empty. The gold was blinding.
And the message was sobering.
“They leaned on us a little bit,” Giants linebacker Jonathan Casillas conceded when the thorough 24-14 stomping was complete, the Steelers snapping the Giants’ six-game winning streak and all but knocking from their imaginations the hope of stealing the NFC East title from the Cowboys.
“Tough night at the office,” Giants coach Ben McAdoo said. “We know that’s not good enough.”
Nothing about these 60 minutes of pedestrian football was good enough for the Giants; it’s what happens when you take a few steps up in weight class. The Steelers may only have been 6-5 entering the game, but they are a few dozen furlongs clear of the sextet of tomato cans the Giants had gotten fat off of, growing a 2-3 start into what remains a healthy 8-4 record.
And look: Nobody asks you to apologize for whom you beat in the NFL, and so nobody will attach more importance to this loss than is necessary. The fact is, the focal point of the Giants’ home stretch remains where it was even before the Steelers ushered them to the woodshed Sunday:
MetLife Stadium. Next Sunday.
Cowboys in the house.
“We got Dallas next week,” Casillas said. “That’s all we’re worried about now.”
As good as the Cowboys have been, as gaudy as their record is, there’s no guarantee the Giants could have caught them even with a win on Sunday coupled with a tiebreaker-guaranteeing win next Sunday. But next week’s showdown retains a high level of intrigue for several reasons:
1. The Giants are the only blemish on the Cowboys season, and even if it sometimes feels like that happened on Allie Sherman’s watch, the Cowboys have to wonder if they match up well with a team that really took it to them, at home, on Opening Day.
2. The Giants’ own gaudy record remains their greatest ally when it comes to securing the wild card. They’re a full game clear of Tampa Bay, the only other wild-card hopeful with as many as seven wins. Getting to nine is key for the Giants; getting there while taking a second game off the Cowboys would send an awfully loud message.
3. There comes a time when you have to start playing better. The Giants still don’t score enough. The defense, which rescued them against the pretender portion of their schedule, must show it, too, can rise against a good team, bare its teeth, and be the equal of its reputation and its pay scale. And who better to do that against than the hated Cowboys?
“We need to do more,” said Odell Beckham Jr., whose famous coming-out party came on a Sunday night two years ago against Dallas at home, and who you have to believe has something up his sleeve for next week, same time, same place. “We need to find a way to score points and help our defense out.”
Said Eli Manning (decidedly outplayed by Ben Roethlisberger this day, two picks to go with two TDs, only 195 yards, a passer rating of 69.9): “It’s a challenge every week. We understand that. You can never know when we’re going to break out.”
For the Giants’ sake? Next week is as good a target as any. Win next week and you can start believing you’re as good as your record, and start wondering if you haven’t started occupying the Cowboys’ heads. The Giants’ season didn’t end in this heap, the stadium walking out on them with plenty of game left to spare, same as it didn’t end on the business end of this beating. It was just a helpful reminder.
Weight class matters. And the Giants have a week to find their fighting trim.