The Giants had the NFC East right there for the taking, and they let it slip away in the ugliest way possible.
A home win over the Commanders would have pushed New York to 6-2-1 and given the Giants real breathing room over the second-place Cowboys, who sat at 4-5. It also would have landed a major blow to Washington’s division hopes. Instead, the Giants coughed up a fourth-quarter lead and fell 24-21, dropping to 5-3-1 while the Commanders moved to 3-5-1.
Yes, the roster issues were obvious. Gilberto Manzano wrote about how the loss laid bare the Giants’ lack of talent, even after the team tried - and failed - to address it at the trade deadline.
But this one wasn’t just about personnel. John Harbaugh’s decision-making played a big part in how the night unraveled.
The first questionable call came on the opening drive. After J.J.
McCarthy couldn’t connect with Isaiah Likely on third-and-7 from the Washington 37-yard line, Harbaugh sent out the punt team. That’s the kind of move you almost never see from that far into enemy territory.
The spot was too deep for a field goal try, as Dominic Zvada’s miss from 33 yards on the next possession later showed, but the Giants still handled the situation badly. If Harbaugh didn’t trust Zvada from that range, the better answer was to run the ball on third down and leave himself a more manageable fourth down to attack.
He had another chance to be aggressive early in the fourth quarter and went the other direction again. With New York down 17-14, the Giants faced third-and-3 from the Washington 46.
McCarthy’s throw to Theo Johnson fell incomplete, and Harbaugh again chose to punt. A fourth-and-3 is no easy pickup, but this was the sort of spot where Cam Skattebo could have been used on third down to give the Giants a better shot.
Maybe he gets the first down. Maybe you run it again on fourth.
Punting from the opponent’s side of the field while trailing late, though, was a timid call.
New York did get a stop after that, then grabbed the lead on a 66-yard catch and run by Likely.
But the Giants still couldn’t finish. Jevon Holland intercepted Jayden Daniels on the next Washington possession, and Skattebo picked up solid yardage on first and second down as New York tried to bleed the clock.
Then Jameis Winston got stuffed on a quarterback sneak on third down. The Giants use the bigger Winston for sneak situations instead of McCarthy, and that set up a bizarre fourth-and-1 from the Giants’ own 11-yard line.
They never snapped the ball. The whole point was to try to draw Washington offsides and steal a first down. The problem was the Commanders were never going to bite on Winston’s ridiculous cadence.
“Get ready! Get set!”
Winston yelled. “Hut one!
Hut two!”
That was normal enough. Then came the real spectacle.
After fullback Patrick Ricard went in motion, Winston added, “Who let the dogs out? Who, who, who, who, who!”
Winston later told reporters the team had practiced that cadence and that he came up with it himself. Harbaugh defended the idea this way: “That’s part of the cadence,” Harbaugh told reporters. “Teams do jump in that situation sometimes, so that was the idea.”
Even with all of that, the biggest problem remained the same: the Giants didn’t do enough with the takeaways their defense handed them. They intercepted Daniels twice in the fourth quarter but couldn’t run the ball well enough to close the door.
That opened the path for Washington, helped along by a dreadful 12-yard punt from Jordan Stout just after the two-minute warning. McCarthy’s interception in the final minute finished it off and kept the Commanders alive in the division race.
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