The New York Giants won their first home game of the season by beating the Indianapolis Colts at MetLife Stadium 45-33. It was the Giants’ first game scoring 40+ points in five years.
New York quarterback Drew Lock had his best game as a pro throwing for 309 yards and four touchdowns. His 155.3 quarterback rating was a single-game career-high for the five-year veteran.
With that win, the Giants snapped a franchise-record ten-game losing streak for their first victory since October 6, 2024. That win also improved New York’s record to 3-13 on the season with one game left on the schedule.
A fan should always root for their team to win, but beating Indianapolis was a bad result for one of the NFL’s most-storied franchises.
The Giants’ Week 17 Win Hurts the Team
With the victory over the Colts, the Giants went from being the sole owner of the first overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft to being in a four-way tie for the Draft’s top pick. If New York had lost in Week 17, then the Giants would still have the league’s worst record at 2-14, meaning they would control their own destiny when it comes to clinching the number-one overall pick in the upcoming draft. However, the Giants went from having the first overall pick in the draft to now having the fourth overall pick behind the New England Patriots, Tennessee Titans, and Cleveland Browns, respectively.
This is horrible news for the Giants because they are in desperate need of a franchise quarterback, and this happens to be a draft with only two really promising quarterbacks that will make an immediate impact in the NFL. Unfortunately for the G-Men, the Tennessee Titans and Cleveland Browns will likely be looking to draft a quarterback this offseason, so the Giants may have put themselves out of the running in the Shedeur Sanders/Cam Ward sweepstakes by beating the Colts.
Though the Giants no longer control their draft destiny, they still have an outside shot at landing the number one overall draft pick. If New York loses in Week 18 while New England, Cleveland, and Tennessee win, then the Giants will clinch the top pick in the 2025 Draft.
While it’s not impossible for the G-Men to earn the number-one overall draft pick, the Giants significantly hurt their chances of securing that selection. If they fall out of the top three and miss out on drafting a quarterback entirely, then the 2024-25 Week 17 win against the Colts will go down as one of the most notoriously stupid moments in New York sports history.
The state of football in New York
Football in metropolitan New York is a joke. The Bills are fantastic, but that is more of upstate New York’s/Canada’s team. When you think of New York City, you think of the New York Jets and the New York Giants, sadly.
The Jets have always been laughable and have the longest playoff drought in the NFL at 14 seasons. Even Aaron Rodgers couldn’t fix the Jets, and now there are rumors that he wants to leave New York. The Jets have no clear future under an arrogant owner who disrespects the game of football with his blatant apathy toward winning.
The New York Giants used to be the respectable New York franchise with two Super Bowls in 2007 and 2011, but they’ve only been to the playoffs twice since then. Their 2016 playoff appearance – a 38-13 loss to the Green Bay Packers – was capped off by an infamous photo of the Giants’ receiving core posing together on a boat in Miami roughly one week before the Wild Card matchup. The G-Men are 41-91-1 since that picture and have one playoff win, which led to Daniel Jones robbing the Giants of $100+ million.
The Giants used to have good ownership, unlike the Jets, but HBO’s Hard Knocks showed that wasn’t the case anymore. Not shelling out the money to keep young superstar talents like Saquon Barkley and Xavier McKinney was the beginning of a long run of Jets-like decisions. Their most recent Jets-like decision was winning a meaningless Week 17 game to hurt their chances at finding a franchise quarterback.
Only time will tell what the Jets and Giants do with their head coaches, quarterbacks, and rosters in general. Regardless, they’ll probably be the wrong choices because they’ll be made by meddling owners who have lost touch with how to run a franchise in the 21st century.
Main Image: Julian Leshay Guadalupe/NorthJersey.com / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
The post Giants Set Themselves Back Years With Win Over The Colts appeared first on Last Word on Pro Football.