Injury-riddled Giants rapidly make their way to the abyss
The Giants’ seemingly dire situation as they entered Monday night’s game at MetLife Stadium versus the Seattle Seahawks became tangibly worse when their evening on the field was over.
Optically and by quantitative measures, the Giants are arguably the worst team in football. They are 1-3 heading into their Week 5 match-up on the road against the Miami Dolphins, and Miami has the highest scoring and most prolific offense in the NFL.
The 3-1 Dolphins average 37.5 points per game, post 511 yards—334.3 passing and 176.8 rushing, and have amassed 2,044 total yards, the most by any team through the season’s first four games in NFL history. Conversely, the 1-3 Giants are averaging just 11.5 points per game, are No. 31 out of 32 teams in total yardage (1,008), and have the worst negative point differential (-76) in the league.
The impact of 2022 Second Team All-Pro left tackle Andrew Thomas being out with a hamstring injury suffered in Week 1 and Pro Bowl running back Saquon Barkley sidelined with a high sprain of his right ankle sustained in the fourth quarter versus the Arizona Cardinals in Week 2 has been considerable.
The Giants’ substandard offensive line has been overrun by opposing defenses. Without Barkley, the Giants are without a dynamic skill player who can help alleviate the onerous burden placed on quarterback Daniel Jones. The fifth-year QB has been under siege all season and has compounded the offensive lines’ weaknesses by committing mistakes mirroring those that plagued him in his first three seasons as a pro.
His past turnover problems, an area where he made admirable improvement last season under head coach Brian Daboll, have reemerged. Jones threw interceptions versus the voracious Seahawks defense and fumbled twice, losing one.
The spectacular Seahawks rookie cornerback Devon Witherspoon picked Jones with the Giants threatening to score from Seattle’s 3-yard line and at 1:03 of the third quarter, and returned the ball 97 yards the other way for a touchdown, with the Giants trailing 14-3. Instead of potentially tightening the score to 14-10, the Giants fell behind 21-3. The No. 5 overall pick from last April’s NFL Draft, Witherspoon also added seven tackles and two sacks.
Daboll, who is in his second season as head coach with the Giants, said the Giants must continue to channel their attention to the here and now, and not harp on the negatives, of which there are many.
“When you’re in this position, you have to tell it like it is and you’ve got to move on and get ready for the next week again,” he said “Last week has nothing to do with this week. You can’t focus on stuff that happened in the past.
“You’ve got to learn from them and obviously do better. We’ve got to play better and coach better on game day. That’s what we need to do.”
It’s incumbent on Daboll and his coaching staff to make schematic changes, given the Giants’ evident personnel shortcomings. The coaches must be held equally accountable as the players for what has been a debacle of a season with less than a quarter of the schedule still completed.
The 1-3 Jets, who lost to the 3-1 Kansas City Chiefs last Sunday night at MetLife, will play the 1-3 Denver Broncos on the road this Sunday.
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