Extremely frustrating loss. Dallas is not a good team. This was an extremely winnable game. You do not need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that 5 FGs is not enough to win games without some touchdowns. The Giants beat themselves.
Listen to the postgame presser with Brian Daboll. It tells you most of what you need to know.
- Could not run the ball
- Controlled the passing game, but..
- Could not finish drives
- Daboll was extremely praiseworthy of Daniel Jones
- “proud of him”
- “3 games locked in, played well”
- “has done a nice job for us”
- When the beat writers asked about the missed plays by Jones on deeper vertical routes, you got the true story about Jones. He cannot hit the broadside of a barn on any route over 20 yards. Sorry. Not sorry. This year he is 2/13 on those verticals. And 1 was an “absolutely spectacular” catch off the helmet by Nabers (vs Cleveland). Against DAL there were three longer routes (1 Slayton, 1 Nabers, and I do not recall the who the 3rd was, maybe Nabers) where the Giants receiver has his man beat, if the ball is thrown in stride it could literally be 3 TDs.
- Daboll: that is something “we have to work on”
“Malik Nabers makes Daniel Jones look average.”
Dallas has owned the Giants for many years. The Giants have s***ed for many years. Last year they were beat 40-0 and 49-16. Those are a** whippings. In 2022, the playoff year, the Giants were competitive. And in the prior ~5 years before that, the Gmen were 1-9. To watch a closer more competitive game was good, but it was the Cowboys who have mostly come down to the Giants level, not the other way around. Tyler Guyton is a rookie Left tackle, and yes, he is a first rounder (1.29), but he was a turnstile. You have to take advantage of these moments. As an example, to juxtapose, Andrew Thomas is an All Pro level Left Tackle for the Giants, but his first season he was awful. So whether Guyton makes it or not as a pro for the Cowboys, you have to make them pay for starting a rookie at one of the most important positions on the field. Guyton and the Dallas OL is one of the reasons why Dallas is likely not going anywhere this season. The Giants need to win these games by taking advantage of the many plays that Guyton is torpedoing his team. (I lost track of the holding calls that Thibodeaux drew from him, 2? 3? These are drive killers, but the Giants let them off the hook.)
Another mismatch the Giants were leveraging was against Andrew Booth. Booth was a 2022 Round 2 pick from the Vikings, given up for dead after 2 years and a grand total of 2 starts. Dallas couldn’t hide him. Yet the Giants couldn’t convert the success from exploiting this weakness. When you see DAL getting whipped by the Saints and the Ravens, they are capitalizing off of guys like Guyton and Booth, while the Giants are collecting FGs.
The self-inflicted mistakes are way too numerous to regurgitate. I must mention a few as therapy; otherwise I might blow a gasket. (1) Someone please explain to me WTF Jermaine Eluemunor is doing as a Right Tackle floating way past the line of scrimmage on a pass play to the left side? Is he water skiing out there? Is he walking his dog? Illegal man downfield. These are 15-20 yard swings. (2) BBB was right last week when we noted their observation to bench the rookie TE Theo Johnson because of mental errors that were killing the Giants. He had another boner last night. He was not set before the snap. Thus, the Giants had a 15-20 yard swing where a successful play got called back by another penalty having ZERO to do with the play’s outcome. (3) The Giants had a sloppy fumble by rookie RB Tracy. (4) Before the season started we reminded everyone that the inexperienced Secondary would cost the Giants some games. Right on cue, Tyler Nubin takes the wrong angle in Safety support against Cee Dee Lamb and that goes for a TD after he gets past Deonte Banks.
OK. Stopping the vomit at 4 mistakes. I feel better now. But we need to also vent about a special mistake that had nothing to do with the Giants…
This NY Giants blog post would not be complete without mention of the phantom penalty in the first Quarter by the blind zebras called on Daniel Bellinger. This was a work of art. Someone please explain to me WTF was going on? It is the first Giant drive of the game, they are at the DAL 37, and the face mask is ON DALLAS! Yet it is called on the Giants. This is LITERALLY a 30 yard swing. After a 4 yard play, instead of it being 1st and 10 at the DAL 18, it is 2nd and 18 at the DAL 48, and that is too big a hole to dig out of. Drive killer, FG.
2.5 years ago, we wrote about a NY Jet Wide Receiver named Al Toon. Everybody knows who Jerry Rice is. For bleep’s sake, he is literally on a TV commercial last night for Uber Eats FORTY YEARS AFTER BEING DRAFTED IN THE NFL. Yet no one knows or remembers Al Toon (unless you are a masochistic Jets fan wallowing in self pity (apologies for being redundant)). Why? Concussions. Enter Malik Nabers, another highly talented WR also drafted near the top of the draft like Toon. Nabers just got his first concussion (I think he was playing with it before the play that he went out) in Week 4 of his rookie season. Al Toon had 9 concussions and faded into the Jet melancholy. I do not want Nabers get resigned to the same fate. And this is what happens to guys like Nabers when they have s*** QBs throwing them the ball. They get pounded on because they can’t get hit in stride. They get pounded on because Daboll is coaching for his life and is going to get Nabers a zillion targets. Nabers deserves all the touches. He simply needs a QB that is not going to kill him. And Jones will kill him. This is precisely why Wonder is unabashed in wanting to tank for a QB. He wants a real QB who can throw the ball to Nabers. Nabers has 386 yards in 4 games. He would have 550-600 yards right now if Allen, Mahomes, Stafford, Stroud, Herbert etc were throwing him the ball. AND A LOT LESS HITS. These hits are cumulative. Let’s summarize it this way- Malik Naber’s ceiling is going to be set by his QB, not by him. He will be able to do whatever the coach and QB are able to put in front of him. These kind of players are extremely rare. Lawrence Taylor and Jeremy Shockey are two that come to mind. That one is a legend and that the other was traded away for R2 + R5 scraps tells you how critical the situation/organization is to their development. Taylor had Parcells. Shockey’s failure to reach his limitless potential was a combination of many factors. Nabers’ career is in the Giants hands.
We will be posting a special blog during the next 10 days on concussions. Dr. Ken Podell, a concussion expert from Houston, will be interviewed. He was featured in the news earlier this month for a linked story on the new experimental helmets that are reducing concussions. We will get further insights into what is going on in this area, made even more timely by the diagnosis to Nabers.