Takeaways from New York Giants' Week 8 Loss
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The New York Football Giants took another heartbreaking loss on Monday Night as they lost to the Kansas City Chiefs 20-17. The Giants watch as Patrick Mahomes navigated a game winning drive under 2 minutes to go in the game to set up kicker Harrison Butker to kick the field goal with 1:07 left. The Giants have fallen to 2-6 and out of the minds of most people as a relevant team. The Giants loss was a lot more of the same as they played well enough to win, but did just enough to beat themselves. But as always, the Villain has your breakdown of the Monday Night loss.
Another huge game from the defense
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This is two straight weeks of solid performance by the Giants defense. The defense had a tall order in front of them trying to contain Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs high-powered offense. Defensive coordinator Patrick Graham came up with a great game plan to try to contain this Chiefs offense. Let's be clear, Patrick Mahomes is not himself. Mahomes struggled to get any consistent offense going and just didn't want to take what the defense gave him. But the Giants defense did a great job to confuse and disrupt the timing of the Kansas City timing offense. Graham decided to play Cover 2 deep and not allow anyone to get behind the safeties. Then it was up to the linebackers and corners to come up and make tackles on crossing routes and stick routes.
The secondary played their best game of the season by far aided by a brilliant game plan. It's one thing to have a game plan against the Chiefs, it's another thing to execute it. The Giants secondary get major round of applause as they have been torched all season, but came up huge last night. Julian Love intercepting Patrick Mahomes in the end zone stopped of potentially back-breaking drive by the Kansas City Chiefs. Adoree Jackson was the key in not only corralling Tyreek Hill but coming up and making plays. Jackson had 12 tackles and didn't allow Tyreek Hill to get loose in the secondary. James Bradberry also play the brilliant game shutting down any other receiver opposite Tyreek Hill and coming up to make tackles and plays. Safety Logan Ryan forced a fumble by star tight end Travis Kelce to get the ball back to the Giants and keep them within a touchdown. Darnay Holmes almost ended the game on a interception, but we'll get into that later. All in all the secondary as a unit executed and made it tough for the Chiefs offense to generate points.
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The defensive line also played a solid game as Leonard Williams continues his impactful play. This was his third straight solid game as he totaled 1 sack, six tackles, one tackle for a loss, forced fumble and a hit on Patrick Mahomes. While the Giants didn't get home on sack very often, they were able to get Mahomes off his spot and disrupt the timing of their offense. Quincy Roche had added three tackles in a QB hit. Defensive tackle Austin Johnson continues to be a solid run-stuffer in force in the inside to pair with Dexter Lawrence.
While the defense wasn't completely perfect and did allow a mental mistake to ultimately be their undoing oh, this was one of their best performances of the season. No one expected the defense to slow down Patrick Mahomes and that's exactly what they did.
Offense struggled but made it interesting
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The offense struggled Monday night, but started to find a rhythm when it needed to. You can see the injuries are starting to mount and really limit what this offense can do. Devontae Booker had one of his best running games for the Giants as he tallied 60 rushing yards on for yards per rush attempt. He ran with power and purpose and help keep the Giants ahead of the sticks at times. He finished with 125 total yards of offense and we needed everyone.
Daniel Jones had an up-and-down game for the Giants. He did throw one interception that was a call back to his old habits of staring down receivers, as he never saw LB Willie Gay thing into the pass pattern. But all in all Daniel Jones, amid some pressure finish with a decent game; going 22 for 32, 222 passing yards, 2 touchdowns and the before mentioned interception. The Giants were finally able to cash in on touchdowns in the redzone as both TE Kyle Rudolph and Even Engram go into the end zone. Rudolph finally got his first Giants TD on a 4th down call from Judge and Garrett.
Daniel Jones doesn't have any of his weapons to speak of as Saquon Barkley, Kenny Golladay were not available. Kadarius Toney left the game with a hand injury but returned. Sterling Shepard left the game with a quad injury and receiver Dante Pettis left the game with a shoulder injury. It would have been nice to see Evan Engram step up a little bit more, but getting a touchdown late in the game to put the Giants ahead is about as good as it gets.
Jason Garrett tried the best he could to mix the play-calling. He was able to get the ball downfield to John Ross on a nice catch (despite pass interference), and sprinkled in a trick play. But the offense couldn't sustain drives as it was killing itself with mistakes. But all in all Garrett called a solid game.
Mental mistakes committee to plague the Giants
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It was more of the same mental mistakes that's been killing this Giants team for all season. Speaking to Giants fans during a game last night, it's clear the Giants find new ways to mentally kill themselves and take when's off the board.
Joe Judge is the leader of the Giants as head coach but I'm putting most of the blame squarely on his shoulders. Joe Judge showed how inexperienced he can be and while he talks a good game he isn't producing. Joe Judge showed horrible clock management and that's something we just can't allow to happen. He burned all his timeouts in the game and left the Giants in a horrible spot. Some people are calling his conservative decision making on fourth downs a killer, I'm not going to lay that on him. But a 2-5 team needs to be a little bit more aggressive. He preaches situational football in awareness but can't practice what he preaches as the timeout usage killed them.
What's Joe Judge's excuse, the headsets were going out. For Judge to blame his poor clock management to faulty headsets is utterly ridiculous. To quote Judge, “We are having headset issues. This has happened in every game so far. We deal with the league and they keep telling us there are different software updates or whatever it is, but we had to call two timeouts today because we were trying to send the deals in personnel wise and you got half of the headsets not getting reception.” That can't be the reason why you had to call two timeouts to send in the right personnel. That's a lame excuse an unacceptable at this point.
The lack of discipline of this team is really they're ultimate undoing, and Joe judge who is supposed to be a disciplinarian is letting the team down. The Giants committed 10 penalties for 88 yards last night oh, and it cost them the game. Aforementioned interception by cornerback Holmes was taken off the board by an offsides called by defensive end Oshane Ximines. Not to say that would have won the game, but it would have put the Giants in great position to get a 30 to 40 yards and kick a game-winning field goal.
That whole sequence was a backbreaker as the Giants had the Chiefs first in 20 in their territory. The offsides call, then the phantom face mask call put the Chiefs near midfield and in position to kick the game-winning field goal. But before that the Giants had a chance to get points on the board. On third down Daniel Jones, who had pressure in his face, hit fullback Elijhaa Penny in the flat for a nice 20-yard gain to put them near midfield. But Penny was called for unsportsmanlike conduct, taunting to push the Giants 15 yards back. Then the drive ultimately stalled and the Giants had to punt it to the Chiefs offense.
These are undisciplined plays. You shouldn't have in week 8. Joe Judge didn't make the bad plays, but he's the coach and by now should be getting the team to be more disciplined. How much longer can this go on oh, how much more can we shoot ourselves in the foot before I foot is blown off?
Where do we go from here?
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The Giants season isn't over yet, but you can start putting this one in the trash. The schedule doesn't get any easier in a win last night would have had them feeling good going into a tough raiders game. Now with the tradeline deadline approaching, it's time to start unloading pieces. I'm looking for receiver Darius Slayton and Tight End Evan Engram to be on the move. Engram hasn't been a fit here as he is typically hurt and plagued with drops. Despite injuries, Slayton still will find it hard to get touches on this offense with all the receivers they have. It might be wise to move him to get some draft capital. The Giants have a tough game against the Las Vegas raiders coming up with no signs that they can fix their mistakes. These mistakes have haunted them all Year, Joe Judge has talked about correcting mistakes all year, but we've seen no changes all year. See a pattern? On to next week.
