No more.
Quit asking.
That is what safety Xavier McKinney wanted to convey not long after the Giants did what they continue to do best this season: Hang in, stay close, get stronger and leave the field with more points than the other side.
The 23-17 victory over the Jaguars pushed the Giants to 6-1 in a season when getting to six wins after 17 games was not something even some of the most optimistic fans thought was a given. The Giants went into Jacksonville with a three-game winning streak and yet the Jaguars, 2-4 heading into the game, were favored by three points. The Giants winning as underdogs is a theme that has been repeated over and over this season and it is not a theme many of the Giants have embraced with any gusto.
Especially McKinney.
When will the Giants be shown any respect? Who cares?
“I really don’t even care for that question anymore,” McKinney said. “I’m kind of tired of answering it because it’s the same thing every week. Obviously, we know that. I really don’t care. We don’t care as a team.”
Go ahead and view the Giants as an upstart team exceeding expectations. This group has never carried itself that way. Brian Daboll, the first-year head coach, has never painted his team with that brush. The turnaround he has fashioned is remarkable, and if you loaded him up with truth serum he might actually admit he is surprised this has taken hold so quickly and that all these close games are going the way of his team.
This is part of the plan, though. Daboll dares the opponent to hang tough for the full 60 minutes. The Giants have a 58-22 scoring edge in the fourth quarter this season. Daboll has seen his team never get too far behind to where he has to make dramatic alterations to the game plan. Hall of Fame receiver Randy Moss used to say, “If we’re even, I’m leaving.” It is evolving into the same thing with the Giants. If they are even with you, they are soon leaving you behind.
“That’s a [Daboll] thing,” safety Julian Love said. “Bring them to the deep end and see if they can swim. He’s been saying that all year. After those first few games we realized what we have to do. Bring them to the deep end. And then we drown them.”
This was the approach the Giants took late in the game, wearing the Jaguars down with a rushing attack that started slowly (Saquon Barkley had 18 yards in the first half) and finished with a flourish (Barkley ended with 110 yards). Offensive coordinator Mike Kafka called the same running play over and over again in the fourth quarter and there is no greater show of force when the same play keeps working.
“I don’t know if they realized that it was the same play until probably like the fifth or sixth time, to be completely honest,” Barkley said. “Was it demoralizing? I don’t know. Just I can tell when you lean on defense, when you lean on defense throughout the game, you can feel them starting to soften up, and take them to the deep water and drown.”
This is what it is like to get drowned by the Giants: They ditched their passing game in the fourth quarter and tried to grind the Jaguars into the ground. They ran it 17 times for 130 yards. They had five runs of 10 or more yards. They grinded out eight first downs. Only one team (the Cowboys) survived the deep end.
More that came out of the Giants’ fifth comeback victory of the season:
— The Giants have a four-game winning streak with a margin of victory totaling 23 points.
— The Giants are 3-0 on the road, the first time since 2009 they won their first three road games in a season.
— It was actually sort of funny and cute to hear how contrite Daniel Jones was about what would be considered a fairly mild show of emotion after Marcus Johnson dropped a fourth-down pass in the third quarter that would have given the Giants at least a first down on the Jaguars’ 1-yard line — and possibly a touchdown if Johnson secured the ball and pushed his way into the end zone. As he trotted off the field, Jones looked back and shouted “Catch the ball.”
None of the Giants were put off by this, except for Jones himself.
“I want to be composed in those situations,” Jones said. “I’m competitive, it was heat of the moment. I think you get fiery. Obviously, you want to score there. I’ve got a lot of confidence in him and I don’t want to do that to any teammate.”
As he grows in the job — he has never played better than he has in the first seven games of the season — Jones has remained himself. His head coach, Daboll, said Jones is “really even-keeled, he’s been that way since I met him.” He said Jones is “like a cucumber,” which presumably means he keeps his cool.
“I think it’s a great attitude to have,” Daboll said. “I wish I had more of it.”
— Trevor Lawrence is a big dude — 6-foot-6, and 220 pounds — and he can run it. He did not need much early in the fourth quarter when he lined up on fourth-and-1 on the Giants’ 20-yard line. The call was for a quarterback sneak and Lawrence was pushed back as soon as he took the snap, stopped in his tracks by Jaylon Smith and Julian Love. The Giants knew what was coming and that made the difference.
“Obviously, they were kind of ready for that,” Lawrence said. “We had run a couple early in the game and they made some adjustments, so it’s the same thing. Good on them. Obviously, that was, whatever, fourth and half a yard. You just hope you can get a little bit there. We just weren’t able to. It was a good play by them.”
— Landon Collins played for the Giants for the first time since the back end of the 2018 season. He actually played more than expected. Elevated from the practice squad and not having played all season — he was signed a few weeks ago — it figured that Collins would play 10-12 snaps. Collins was on the field for 23 of the 71 snaps on defense and on his first snap he tackled Travis Etienne on a screen pass short of a first down. Collins was used in the dime package, playing a hybrid safety/inside linebacker role. Figure his playing time will increase from here on out. Rookie safety Dane Belton was also on the field for 23 snaps and the starting safeties, Xavier McKinney and Julian Love, were out there for all 71 snaps. Defensive coordinator Wink Martindale has shown his hand. He prefers versatile guys who can tackle.
— At the start of the season the Giants were going with a rotation at left guard, with Ben Bredeson and rookie Josh Ezeudu both getting work in the games. Ezeudu struggled a bit and it evolved into Bredeson’s job on a full-time basis. Another rookie, Evan Neal, was a Day 1 starter at right tackle. Losing Bredeson and especially Neal in the first quarter could have short-circuited the plans for the offense. Ezeudu ended up playing 61 of the 77 snaps on offense at left guard and backup Tyre Phillips received his first playing time, logging 58 snaps at right tackle. Because of this sudden shift, there were some packages Kafka threw out. But Phillips and Ezeudu held their ground. Down the stretch, Kafka went almost exclusively with the running game, with Barkley mostly operating on the right side. It worked. In the past, digging this deep into the offensive line depth was a precursor to failure.
