2-7 after nine games in 2023.
2-7 after nine games in 2024.
2-7 after nine games in 2025.
A season that just a few weeks ago provided so much hope that the Giants, finally with a young, talented, exciting quarterback to build around, has devolved into an all-too-familiar disaster for New York.
All the signs of being a losing, lost team that we have come to know too well in recent years were there on Sunday at MetLife Stadium in a not-as-competitive as the 34-24 loss to the San Francisco 49ers might make
you believe.
- There was a plane flying above MetLife Stadium prior to the game imploring owner John Mara to ‘CLEAN HOUSE.“
- There was another non-competitive defensive effort. The Giants allowed 34 points, couldn’t stop the run, and made 49ers backup quarterback Mac Jones look like an All-Pro, partly because they couldn’t get near him, and partly because they couldn’t cover the receivers.
- There was a flashback to the Daniel Jones dink and dunk offense, featuring the return of Wan’Dale Robinson and the stick route being run again and again and again.
- There were fans booing at times, and justifiably leaving early. That left the again all-too-familiar sight and sound of opposing fans, this time a sea of red-jersey clad 49ers fans, loudly celebrating their victory on the Giants’ home turf.
- There were decisions like kicking a field goal on fourth-and-3 down 20-7 in the third quarter that seemed an awful lot like an effort to make the score less embarrassing than one designed to try and win a football game.
- There was a listless, resigned locker room talking about needing better execution, how the team has too much talent to play the way its playing, how everyone needs to look in the mirror and work harder. All of which we have heard week after week and year after year, and all of which we translates to “we don’t know how to make it better.”
- There were players talking about guys needing to look in the mirror, while seemingly not being willing to look in that mirror themselves. Yes, Dexter Lawrence, I am looking at you.
- There was a beaten-up quarterback who has excited the fan base and has talked about not being willing to accept the negativity that has surrounded the franchise, sounding more defeated than he has at any time in his six weeks as the Giants’ starter. Not surprising after the Giants, for the second straight week, ran Dart into the defense over and over and made him take unnecessary hits at the end of a game they had no chance of winning.
- There was a head coach saying things like “the guys battled” but “nothing was good enough” when it was over.
Which leads to this: We have reached the point where it is legitimate to begin to wonder if the final eight games of the season are little more than a Brian Daboll death march.
It is clear that John Mara, especially a diminished Mara who is fighting a battle with cancer, doesn’t want to have to fire Daboll and search for another head coach. He would love it if the Daboll-Dart duo would lead the Giants out of the darkness they have spent most of the last 15 years in.
It seems increasingly apparent, though, that Daboll and his staff don’t have the answers.
There are too many highly drafted players either languishing on the bench or not playing well when the Giants have to turn to them. Too many high-priced stars not playing to their paychecks, or their reputations. Too many winnable games being lost.
Another season going — really already gone — deep into the Meadowlands swamp.
The hope generated by a couple of unexpected victories engineered by a talented rookie quarterback and some exciting young players around him, already having faded into a memory, into more deadly disillusionment.
Daboll could make a bid to salvage his job at this point by firing defensive coordinator Shane Bowen after watching the Giants defense, expected to be one of the league’s better units this season, give up 105 points over the last nine quarters.
“None of us did a good enough job,” Daboll said Sunday night. “That starts with me. We’ll continue to work at it.”
He probably should replace the defensive coordinator. The same problems are cropping up, the same mistakes are being made that Bowen has talked about for the entirety of his season-and-a-half as defensive coordinator. It is apparent he can’t fix them; that he can’t get the play out of the defense that the talent indicates it is capable of.
Maybe he should have replaced Bowen a couple of weeks ago, after the Denver debacle. Doing it now might just be window dressing; it isn’t going to change a season that is already lost. It is, though, the kind of thing coaches desperate to save themselves do.
