PHI 24 NYG 19

I am fortunate to have been unable to post until ~14 hours after this game was over. So much anger and frustration filled my typing fingers. It would have been very hard to maintain a semblance of objectivity through it all.

This loss was some kind of brew. As professionals, I certainly hope and trust that the Giants players and coaches (I have given up on smug Reese) can learn from this experience.

So what are the things to learn? It all goes back to that book I keep quoting, The Score Takes Care of Itself, by Bill Walsh. The referees are going to be a part of the 20% of the game you cannot control, and you better outscore the opponent using the other 80% or else you MAY OR MAY NOT WIN. The Giants did not do that last night, and they lost.

This offense, as everyone knows all too well by now, is limited in its ability to dig the team out of holes. It would be one thing if the Defense had put them there, but as we saw last night, it was the Offense (Eli) who did that. Remember the Vikings loss in Week 4? The Eagles loss had an eerie similarity to that one against purple.

Here is the recipe:

1. The Giants Offense arrives in a slumber, still asleep from the trip on the bus.
2. Combine one scoring drive with one turnover (vs the Vikes, it was a special teams fumble by Harris), before you can blink the score is 14-0.
3. The Vikings and the Eagles both finish the game with 24 points.
4. The Offensively Offensive Offense has a hard time coming back unless all is perfect.

Jordan Raanan of ESPN noted how the Giants have been outscored 88-51 in the first quarter this season, a pretty important stat considering the Giants are 10-5 this season. Oh wait, the Head Coach says that stats are for losers, so I guess we won’t be learning from him about slow starts.

I don’t like talking about penalties too much because I really do believe that the luck should even out in the long run. It is an excuse, a crutch, and it takes attention away the things the team could have done to have won despite the bad calls. That is still true. It is true more than ever. What I want to talk about here is how uneven the officiating was. Apparently one referee noted to a Philadelphia defensive player how they were going to let them play. So only 6 penalties were called all game. The Eagles got one penalty called (a 5 yarder, I think false start or something equally innocuous). So there is a lot to that referee’s admission. The lack of continuity was pretty stark. It was pretty clear the refs were calling stuff on the Giants that they were not calling it on the Eagles. By the end when Shepard got mugged and did not get any help, it was already long past a fair fight. At least we had the decency of Cris Collinsworth to impartially tell us that the Emperor was indeed not wearing any clothes and that that was clearly pass interference.

The NY Giants outgained the Eagles 470 yds to 286 yds. Yes everybody, the NY Giants Offense was ~2 football fields better than the Philadelphia Offense. This is what happens when you are on the road but kick 4 FGs instead of collecting TDs. Incredibly, the Giants were in the Red Zone on all of those failed attempts, finishing the evening 1-5 in that key stat.

Adding to the hidden yardage of the evening, Jenkins picked off a pass and ran it into the end zone for a TD, generating 7 points without a hint of Offense. So the NY Giants Defense certainly was (once again) not the problem.  The Defense made a stop on 4th and Goal at the 1 after another turnover and did more than enough to win the game.

Eli Manning did his part to lose the game. This is the Eli who (against the Vikings, 2007) through 4 INTs in an ugly loss. He did the same thing that day that he did vs the Eagles- he telegraphed the ball. Jenkins played Centerfield just like Darren Sharper and collected 2 picks. If Eli does not get this coached out of him, the Giants are going nowhere in the playoffs. It is bad enough to have to overcome an anemic Offense, it is another thing entirely to overcome these turnovers too.

On Day 3 of the Draft, the Giants selected RB Paul Perkins. Our draft analyst Wonder made a startling prediction that day in May about the Round 5 pick: