For the first time in a long time, the Giants are set up to have their season last past the end of September.
It wasn’t going to take much for me to give up on the 2022 Giants.
After general manager Joe Schoen said, “We’re going to do the best we can with what we have,” I knew it wasn’t going to take much for me to give up on the 2022 Giants.
When the Giants’ second and third plays of the season against the Titans were runs with Daniel Jones, and when they went three-and-out to open the season, I was ready to give up.
When the defense let the Titans go 45 yards on five plays to take a 7-0 lead, I was ready to give up.
When the Giants gained 22 yards combined on their next two possessions, I was ready to give up.
When trailing by 10 in the second quarter and Jones was sacked and fumbled away possession leading to a 13-point Titans lead, I was ready to give up.
When trailing 20-13 in the fourth quarter when Jones threw an interception in the end zone from the Titans’ 8, I was ready to give up.
I have seen enough Giants games in my life, and especially over the last decade to know how this game would end with the Giants doing just enough to lose. The Giants could change the front office and the coaching staff, but with the same quarterback and largely the same personnel that hadn’t been nearly good enough in recent seasons, it seemed impossible to think Sunday would end any other way than with a winnable game turning into a disappointing loss.
But with 5:27 left in the game, the Giants did something they hadn’t done since Eli Manning’s prime, orchestrating a 12-play, 73-yard drive for a touchdown. And then they did something no Giants team has ever done, going for 2 and the possibly the win with 1:06 left on the clock.
The decision to go for 2 by Brian Daboll was something the team’s last three head coaches weren’t intelligent to process or pull off, and it’s something Tom Coughlin never would have attempted with his conservative, old-school approach to the game.
Even after taking a 21-20 lead following the successful two-point conversion, 1:06 would be an eternity for the Titans to get within field-goal range and destroy the chance of Giants fans experiencing happiness yet again. Two defensive holding penalties on the Giants helped keep the game alive for the Titans, and with four seconds left they had the ball at the Giants’ 29. Randy Bullock would come out and kick a 47-yard field goal, and the Giants would lose another game on a last-second field goal, and another Giants season would be that much closer to being over before the end of the Major League Baseball regular season. It was a game and a set up I had seen too many times. I knew how it would and was prepared for the worst.
Except this time it didn’t. This time was different. Bullock missed wide left, there was no time on the clock, and for the first time in six years, the Giants were 1-0, rather than 0-1.
It doesn’t take much for me to get excited about the Giants with them having played one postseason game in the last 10 years, experiencing four head coaches in the last eight years (including the embarrassing trio prior to Daboll) and too many consecutive double-digit loss seasons. It took one game and one win for me to believe in Daboll as a head coach and for me to start looking ahead.
Carolina at home in Week 2. Dak Prescott-less Dallas at home in Week 3. Chicago at home in Week 4. The Giants’ Week 1 win has set them up to believe and set their fans up to believe that this season could be more than just a wash and a formality to the Giants ridding themselves of bad contracts and regaining cap space for next season.
For the first time in a long time, the Giants are set up to have their season last past the end of September. For me, for now, that’s enough.
I don’t have any confidence the Giants got this hire right given every personnel, roster, draft and trade decision they have made over the last seven years. But I want them to be right. I want to have a Giants season last past September. I need them to be right.
But after his introductory press conference, I followed it up by writing Joe Judge Just Might Be What Giants Need. Judge looked and sounded like the exact type of coach any fan would want to lead their team, saying everything you want the head coach of the team you root for to say. Judge could have sold me a home in a flood zone in desperate need of a new roof, septic system and furnace at three times the asking price and I would have bought it with the way he talked that day. Looking back, he essentially did sell me that.
“What I’m about is an old-school physical mentality,” Judge said at his introductory press conference. “We’re going to put a product on the field that the people of this city and region are going to be proud of because this team will represent this area.”
That statement was enough to make me a believer. To look past his lack of head coaching experience at any level. To forget that the decision makers who hired Judge were the same people who unnecessarily fired Tom Coughlin, hired Ben McAdoo, hired Dave Gettleman, hired Pat Shurmur and retained Gettleman for four seasons.
I have always been saddened that Kyle Chandler’s character Eric Taylor in Friday Night Lights isn’t an actual person and football coach, but at his introductory press conference, Judge appeared to be giving me the closest thing to making Coach Taylor come to life. Now a week shy of two years I wish Kyle Chandler were coaching the Giants. I wish anyone other than McAdoo or Shurmur were coaching the Giants.
I couldn’t have been more wrong about Judge. I should have stayed with my initial reaction to his hiring that Giants ownership couldn’t be trusted to get a head coach hiring right, considering Gettleman and his opposite Midas touch effect would be involved in the decision. After 32 games and a 10-22 record, Judge has been an extension of the McAdoo and Shurmur Giants, and with his weekly happy-go-lucky postgame press conferences following the dismantling of his team each Sunday, he’s quickly rising the power rankings of everything that been wrong with the organization for the last decade.
Judge’s most recent unintentional comedic postgame press conference helped him make an impressive jump up those rankings. On a day in which the Giants scored three points, lost by 26 points to a team whose coach is actually going to lose his job next week, turned the ball over four times and threw for an unfathomable negative-10 passing yards, the lowest point of the day for the Giants came after the team’s 12th loss of the season.
When asked why Giants fans should have faith in him as head coach, Judge went off on a tangent for more than 11 minutes reminiscent of Billy Madison’s comparison of The Puppy Who Lost His Way to the Industrial Revolution. In no way did Judge come close to answering the question.
He instead misremembered history, created his own history, spoke in general vagueness, told flat-out lies, curated fictional stories and even swore a couple of times. He said, “This ain’t some clown show organization” in describing a franchise that gone 61-99 over the last 10 seasons with one playoff appearance (a 25-point loss). He tried to use the recent sideline fight between Washington teammates as to why his Giants are in a good place and said the lack of golf bags present in the team’s locker room means the organization is headed in the right direction. The climax of his answer though came when he said impending free agents on the team come into his office “begging to come back’ and that former Giants making more money elsewhere call him multiple times a week to tell him they wish they were still Giants.
The entire rant was cringeworthy, and unfortunately for Judge, will likely follow him forever. It’s unlikely he will ever shed those 11 regrettable minutes since the only way to do that would be to become a successful NFL head coach and eventually lead a team to a championship. The Giants are as far away from being a championship team as they have ever been and Judge is as close to losing his job as he has ever been. And if he were to lose his job, it’s hard to envision another team taking a chance on him.
But Judge doesn’t view the 11-plus minutes heard around the world from Sunday as regrettable. A day after adding a new chapter to the embarrassing last decade of Giants football, Judge claimed he had no regrets about anything he said.
“Look, I was asked a specific question about what fans were asking and I responded to it,” Judge said. “People ask me a direct question, I give direct answers.”
Again, Judge was asked why fans should have faith in him. His answer was more than 11 minutes long and at no point did he answer the question. If you were going to illustrate how to not directly answer a question, Judge’s answer to the question he was asked on Sunday would be the golden example.
After having a day to sift through the bullshit Judge spewed in their presence in Chicago, the inevitable follow-up question to his claim that former Giants who “make more money” than they did or would with the Giants call him to tell him they miss playing for him was asked. Judge declined to specify names (because there aren’t any names).
“I know this is a place that players want to play,” Judge said. “It’s a place that a lot of players are going to want to play for a long time.”
Do players want to play for the Giants? Sure, if the money’s right. Sure, if they have no other offers. But if all things are equal and the Giants are going up against any other team in the league for a coveted free agent, what kind of idiot would choose to play for this team, with this roster, under this coach, front office and ownership?
“There are obviously some things that we have to do better,” Judge said after claiming the Giants, at 4-12, are a well-coached team. “I’m not going to sit here and hide behind anything. I’m not going to sit here and say we’re perfect or anything.”
If you were to listen to the 22 postgame press conferences given by Judge after Giants losses, you would think the Giants were on a 32-game winning streak under him. Nothing is ever bad, everything is part of the process and he and his team should only be measured on immeasurable metrics like culture and personal relationships and kindness.
“Obviously, the most important thing in this league is winning,” Judge said. “So we have to do a better job putting ourselves in a position to finalize and put ourselves in position to win.”
This was the first time as Giants head coach Judge has acknowledged that wins and losses are the determining factor of success in sports. So I’m relieved to know that he knows that the goal of the game is outscore the opponent and his job is to make sure his team outscores their opponent in the majority of their games.
But in a typical Judge-ian way, his answer leads you to believe he doesn’t fully understand or comprehend just how awful he has been at his job if wins are the “most important thing.” The second part of his answer would lead you to believe the Giants’ 12 losses in 16 games have been the product of bad breaks or late-game defeats. Nine of the Giants’ 12 losses have been by double digits. Outside of their Week 2 loss in Washington and Week 3 loss at home in Atlanta when they gave away those games, and their still-hard-to-understand three-point loss in Kansas City, the Giants have been run out of every building they have played in, including their own twice. Over the last five games without Daniel Jones, they are 0-5, having been outscored 141-49, losing on average by 18 points. It’s not like the Giants were a postseason team or even a respectable team with Jones either, as they were 4-7 with the “franchise” quarterback playing, and are 12-25 with him as a starter in three seasons.
Everything about the Giants is depressing. The roster is a perfect blend of overpaid, underachieving, oft-injured and untalented players. The general manager is a week away from being removed from a job he should have been removed from at least two years ago. And the head coach who was hired despite his inexperience has done nothing other than show his inexperience at every opportunity for two seasons.
Gettleman will be gone a week from now, and someone else will have the responsibility of trying to not screw up the Giants’ coveted situation of having two Top 8-ish picks in the 2022 draft. With Judge supposedly safe from the same fate as Gettleman, it means the team’s new general manager will have Judge forced on him the way Jones and Jason Garrett were forced on Judge. This likely means the new general manager will be a name promoted from within since no coveted outside candidate would sign up to be an ingredient in this recipe for disaster. The never-ending cycle created when Jerry Reese was retained and Coughlin wasn’t, which continued when Reese was fired and Gettleman was brought back will continue once again for the 2022 season. The Giants need to hit the reset button yet again, and that means giving the new general manager his choice at head coach and his choice at quarterback.
The Giants were losers under McAdoo. They were losers under Shurmur. They have been losers under Judge as he has failed on his promise to put a team on the field “the people of this city and region can be proud of.” And for that, he has earned the same fate (even if he won’t receive it) as his two predecessors: two seasons and done.
The Giants lost to the Broncos 27-13 and have once again started a season 0-1 after an embarrassing performance.
It didn’t feel like football season on Sunday until the Giants lost. A Giants season-opening loss is as “It’s football season” as it gets. The Giants lost to the Broncos 27-13, needing a time-expiring touchdown, the ultimate garbage-time touchdown to avoid scoring in single digits.
Nick Falato of the Big Blue Banter podcast joined me to break down the Giants’ loss to the Broncos and what expectations are going to Washington on a short week.
Giants football is back! I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good thing, but it’s back with the Giants hosting the Broncos.
Giants football is back! I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good thing, but it’s back nonetheless. Relative to the rest of their schedule, the Giants have a comfortable matchup at home against the Broncos, even if the Giants are a home underdog in the season opener.
Ian St. Clair of Mile High Report Radio and Play Colorado joined me to talk about the Broncos and their expectations this season and the Giants being a 3-point underdog at home in Week 1.
This Giants season needs to be different. It has to be different. If it’s not, it will mean the end of Daniel Jones as a Giant.
I went into the 2020 Giants season wanting things to be different. Deep down, I didn’t actually think they would be, but I just really wanted a football season. Not a season that’s over when there are still leaves on the trees in the Northeast, and not a season that ends before the Major League Baseball postseason begins. I wanted what I have had twice in the last nine years, and that’s a football season that carries into December. I wanted something I have had once in the last nine years: a Giants postseason game.
The Giants kicked off their 2020 season as I was entering my 16th consecutive hour sitting in a hospital chair waiting for my wife to give birth. Just as the game and the season were starting, it was time for the baby to come out.
Five or six hours later, I’m not sure exactly what time it was, other than that it was the early hours of Tuesday, Sept. 15, I was sitting in the dark eating saltine and graham crackers and chugging water out of Dixie cups like I was Tom Hanks’ character in Castaway returning home, not having seen food in a very long time. The hospital cafeteria was closed and my only options were to either wait a few more hours for breakfast before crushing the hospital’s surprisingly exceptional French toast or to try to make a meal out of the airplane-like snacks the nurse was able to gather for me.
I wasn’t tired, and with the blinds drawn in the room, without a clock I would have had no way of knowing what time of day, or even what day it was, as if I had been in trapped in a casino. The last nearly 24 hours were a blur. I had been up for nearly all of them. It was now early Tuesday morning, and I had essentially been up since Sunday morning.
On Sunday afternoon, during the Week 1 “Witching Hour” of the 1 p.m. games and right as the 4 p.m. slate was about to begin, we were instructed to go the hospital as it appeared as though my wife was in labor. We raced to the hospital, I dropped my wife off at the entrance and then while flying around the parking lot looking for an empty space, of which there was one, I tried to force my car into a into a very tight window, like an inexcusable Daniel Jones throw, and hit the car to my right. The car ended up belonging to my wife’s delivery nurse who couldn’t have been nicer about the incident, and a few weeks later, it was resolved for only $250, which I likely would have lost anyway on the 4 p.m. games if I hadn’t been in transit to the hospital as they were being played.
My wife wasn’t going to be admitted until they ran some tests, and because she had yet to be admitted, under COVID precautions, I couldn’t enter the hospital until she was admitted. The woman in the hospital lobby told me I could wait outside. So I did that, pacing the sidewalk for 30 minutes before going to the car. I ended up spending the next four-and-a-half hours in the car (good thing I didn’t “wait just outside the door” like the hospital front desk woman suggested), before it was determined my wife was in very early labor, but wasn’t far enough along to admit her.
We got back home at 9 p.m. and by midnight the contractions started to pick up. I spent the next three hours meticulously timing them as if I were the one holding the stopwatch at the NFL Combine, and around 3 a.m., it was back to the hospital. By 4 a.m., we were in the delivery room. They had my wife doing squats on a exercise ball, while I sat in the corner trying not to suffer the same type of back injury Aaron Hicks would have if he had had to sit in that same chair for as long as I did.
Fast forward nearly 24 hours and there I was sitting in the dark in a slightly upgraded hospital chair. Despite being in the previous chair which made a Metro North seat seem like the recliners Joey and Chandler had in their apartment for upwards of 16 hours, I had avoided the type of back injury Hicks had suffered from a 27-minute spring training coach bus ride that kept him out for nearly three months of the 2019 Yankees season. I tried to quietly chew and crunch on my packets of crackers while my wife slept in an enormous and luxurious-looking hospital bed (which I would find my way into for a few quicks naps over the next two days), and next to her, our newborn son was out cold, swaddled tightly with a winter hat on, somehow full off less than a shot of Similac. I curled up in my folding chair bed to watch Giants-Steelers, which I had recorded.
The Giants lost. They could have won, and should have won, but they didn’t, in what has become the never-ending theme with the franchise for just about an entire decade. They couldn’t punch it in on first-and-goal from the 3 after a Steelers’ muffed punt in the first quarter, then with a seven-point lead and a chance to make it a two-score game, Jones threw an interception, and later in the game, while trailing, with a chance to take the lead back, Jones threw another essentially game-ending interception. It was the type of loss that led ownership to inexplicably move on from Tom Coughlin, got Ben McAdoo fired midseason and ran Pat Shurmur out of town after two atrocious seasons. On their fourth head coach in six seasons, the Joe Judge era was starting the same way the previous three had their eras end. A head coach I finally liked or wanted to like was overseeing yet another 0-1 start to the season, while Jones, who I was against the Giants drafting and have remained against, ruined yet another game.
Six days later, the Giants lost in Chicago by four points and lost their best player for the season. 0-2. A week after that they were blown out by the defending NFC champions by 27 points. 0-3. A week after only managing to score nine points at home against the 49ers, the Giants scored nine points for the second straight week in a loss in Los Angeles to the Rams.
The Giants were 0-4 and I couldn’t have cared less about them. I desperately wanted things to be different under Judge and I wanted things to be different knowing for the foreseeable future my family’s life would indefinitely be spent at home with only occasional and necessary trips out of the house. Once the Yankees season would end (and it ended early again), I knew the 2020-2021 NHL season might not start on the planned Jan. 1 date and might never start at all. I was relying on the Giants to provide a sports world escape and the only source of entertainment that didn’t require wiping spit-up or newborn poop, and instead, they were the laughingstock of the NFL, having become the worst team in the league over the last four seasons. I decided, like in recent seasons, I would watch the games with no actual emotional or monetary investment in them. My only reason for watching them had become wanting everyone to progress other than the quarterback to progress, so that maybe by spring 2021 they would have another general manager and another quarterback.
At 1-7, the Giants put together a four-game winning streak to “save” the season, highlighted by a road win in Seattle with Colt McCoy as the Giants’ starting quarterback. The winning streak and upset of the Seahawks reeled Giants fans back into believing they could win the NFC East. Some team had to win this embarrassing NFC East, why couldn’t it be the Giants?
After that four-game winning streak, I wrote:
I’m fully prepared to have my dream of Giants postseason football crushed. That’s what the Giants do. And if they are to go 1-3 or 0-4 between now and Week 17, it won’t surprise me. I won’t be upset with them. That’s who they are. I’ll be upset with myself for caring about them again this season when I should have known better.
I did know better. I wrote exactly what would happen, and despite predicting how the Giants’ season would finish, I still let them suck me back in only to crush me. After the four-game winning streak, the Giants lost three straight before winning what ended up being a meaningless win in Week 17 over the Cowboys only to have the Eagles throw their Week 17 game against Washington. Unlike many, I wasn’t upset with the Eagles for purposely losing a winnable game. The Giants had lost 10 regular-season games, blowing leads in many of them. Win one of those 10 games and they wouldn’t have had to rely on their rival to win a game for them.
So the 2020 season ended wasn’t different. It ended the way every season but one in the last nine years has ended: postseason-less.
This season needs to be different. It has to be different. If it’s not, it will mean the end of Jones as a Giant, the sixth overall pick in 2019 was wasted and these last three years were nothing other than a waste. It will be back to the beginning of yet another “rebuild” and it will undoubtedly happen with a new general manager. It won’t necessarily mean the end for Judge as he’s not tied to Gettleman or Jones, but it certainly won’t be good for his future with the team if the team is essentially no better results-wise than where they were when McAdoo and Shurmur were fired.
This Giants season needs to be different even if expectations are that it won’t be.
