Are the Giants going to win another game this season?
The immediate reaction after what transpired on Sunday: Perhaps not.
“Understand that no one is going to feel sorry for us,” Daniel Jones said. “It’s up to us to fix it and to move forward. Everything we want to achieve is still out in front of us.”
What they want is still achievable. What the Giants want and what they get, well, that might be two very different things.
There was nothing to be extracted from a dismal performance to make anyone feel encouraged about the state of a team in a free fall. Asking the Giants to knock off the best team in the NFL was asking too much but the way the Giants capitulated in an embarrassing 48-22 loss to the Eagles at MetLife Stadium was certainly not a performance to uplift the spirits of anyone invested in how the Giants fare in 2022.
“Sometimes you get your ass beat,” Julian Love said.
“We got our ass whupped, point blank,” Saquon Barkley said.
Barkley started after speculation surrounding a neck issue that cropped up late in the week. His workload was limited and he stayed on the sideline once the score grew so lopsided. Barkley finished with nine rushing attempts for 28 yards and two receptions for 20 yards. It was smarter to save him for what comes next.
The Giants are 7-5-1 and their Week 15 meeting with the Commanders (also 7-5-1) at FedEx Field is a rematch of the Week 13 20-20 tie. Next Sunday night’s game stands as the most important game of the season for both sides — almost a playoff eliminator for the loser.
“We got to win this f—ing game, that’s all I got to say,” defensive end Jihad Ward said. “This is a must win, so we got to do what we got to do.”
What the Giants have to do is shake whatever has infected them for more than a month. They are 0-3-1 in their last four games, headed in the wrong direction as the season turns for home.
The Eagles (12-1) clinched a playoff berth. The Giants received a break when the Seahawks (7-6) were beaten by the Panthers. If the season ended today, the Giants would be the No. 7 seed in the NFC playoff chase, just ahead of the Seahawks.
The first tangle with the Eagles showed the Giants how far they are from competing with an elite opponent. Daniel Jones (18 for 26, 169, 1 TD) had no help. Jalen Hurts (21 of 31, 217 yards, 2 TDs) was a force with his arm and his legs (7-77), and the Giants had no answers for running back Miles Sanders (17-144-2 TDs). Receivers A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith both caught touchdown passes. The Eagles ran for 253 yards.
“Tough game,” coach Brian Daboll said. “Credit to Philly; that’s a good football team over there. They pretty much did everything better than we did.
“We got beat handily. It was 48 to whatever it was.”
Whatever it was was not close to good enough.
Form held right from the start. The Giants managed to achieve a first down on their opening series on offense but Jones was sacked twice in the first five snaps. Hurts completed 9 of 10 passes for 64 yards on a methodical 14-play, 84-yard drive that took 8:05 off the clock. The Eagles picked up six first downs and finished the deal with Sanders’ 3-yard run to make it 7-0.
The next time the Eagles got the ball, Hurts scrambled for a first down on third-and-6 and then continued to shred the sagging Giants secondary and a particularly struggling Fabian Moreau. On fourth-and-7, the Giants seemingly were going to limit the damage to a field goal but Hurts fired 41 yards to Smith for a touchdown. Smith ran past Darnay Holmes but Love raced over to try to intercept the ball and whiffed on it, allowing Smith to walk into the end zone.
“I read it perfectly, I thought,” Love said., “Ball was in the air. I thought it was slightly overthrown, so I thought I had an easy ‘Catch it’ opportunity. I didn’t realize his positioning. I just misjudged.”
What followed was perhaps the ugliest moment of the season for the Giants. Punter Jamie Gillan dropped an accurate snap and then kicked the ball after it bounced on the turf. That was an illegal kick and the 10-yard penalty put the Eagles on the Giants’ 33-yard line. Not for long. Hurts on first down saw Brown motor past cornerback Nick McCloud and let it fly. Brown caught the ball before safety Jason Pinnock could provide any help and it was 21-0, much to the delight of the thousands of Eagles’ fans who made the trip north.
”We got beat; they outcoached us, they outplayed us and we got to get ready to go soon; the season’s winding down here, and we got an important one on Sunday,” Daboll said.
“Call it a rough patch, you can call it adversity, we started off really hot and now we got to figure it out,” Barkley said. “That’s life, that’s football, that’s in anything. What better opportunity than after a game, getting embarrassed on TV in front of everyone and everyone outside of us ‘The sky is falling, the sky is falling.’ What better opportunity to go against a division opponent, go to their home and try to come out with a win.”
