The Giants walked into Week 6 at MetLife Stadium hoping for something simple: a normal Sunday. Instead, they got another mess.
New York fell 34-27 to the Saints, a loss that looked manageable only after the Giants had already dug themselves a deep hole and then tried to claw out of it with a late surge. The G-Men were up by 10 late in the second quarter and, for a while, seemed in full control.
Then the game flipped hard. New Orleans kept stacking points, built a 34-10 lead, and forced John Harbaugh to finally pull Jameis Winston after his second interception in the fourth quarter.
That’s when J.J. McCarthy briefly turned things lively.
He finished 11-of-21 for 243 yards with one touchdown and one interception, and he gave Giants fans something to watch after three quarters of mostly flat football. But the comeback never fully materialized, even after New York scored 17 unanswered fourth-quarter points.
The damage had already been done.
The biggest issue was obvious from the start: the Giants got nothing going on the ground. McCarthy led the team in rushing with 26 yards, and Darnell Mooney was next with 20.
That’s not a typo. New York finished with 84 rushing yards on 20 carries, a number that undercuts any idea that this offense was going to control the game by leaning on its run game.
The run-game problems also made Winston’s afternoon tougher than it already was. He completed 14 of 26 passes for 152 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions while taking four sacks. After last week’s wild second-half rally against Washington, this was the other side of the Winston coin.
Harbaugh’s handling of Cam Skattebo also came into focus. Skatt has fumbled four times through five games, and that appears to have put him in the doghouse.
But taking him completely out of the offense, at least in a game where the ground attack was going nowhere, raised plenty of questions. A team built to be physical on the ground cannot afford to look this hesitant running the ball.
The result leaves New York at 3-2-1, still sitting atop the division, but this was the kind of game the Giants could have won and did not. They head to Houston next week to face a Texans team riding a two-game winning streak, with a Week 8 bye on the horizon. After Sunday’s performance, the question of whether McCarthy’s first start could come sooner than Week 9 is very much back on the table.
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Giants Have A Cam Skattebo Problem Fans Can Clearly See
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Head coach John Harbaugh pushed back on the idea that Skattebo was being outright benched, saying the usage came down to game situations and an attempt to spread reps around the backfield. Skattebo, though, has already acknowledged he felt the fallout from the turnover, and the bigger question now is whether this is just a temporary reset or the start of the Giants looking for a different answer at running back. [Read more 🡒]