Through the first four games of the season, the New York Giants special teams were rock solid. That has not been the case the past two weeks as the Giants have tied the Washington Commanders and lost to the New Orleans Saints.
Sunday in the loss to the Saints, there were a number of special teams errors:
- Charlie Jones fumbled a kickoff return with less two minutes remaining in the first half, setting up the Saints in position to tie the game before halftime.
- Placekicker Dominic Zvada couldn’t send a kickoff out the back of the end zone with 2:08 remaining, That allowed New Orleans to run the ball out, using precious time the Giants needed in their comeback bid, and costing them a timeout. They could have used that timeout rather than spiking the ball on third-and-1 with :12 to play.
- The Giants had three penalties on kickoff or punt returns in the second half, negating returns by Jones of 32, 33, and 9 yards.
- The Giants gave up punt returns of 23 and 21 yards.
- For at least the second time this season, the Giants only had 10 players on the field for a special teams play.
The Giants have been good on special teams this season, but there have been cracks over the past couple of games.
Special teams coordinator Chris Horton said his units need to get back to “playing winning football.”
What happened on the Jones fumble?
“Just got to take care of the football, right?,” Horton said. “We’re in traffic. Protecting the ball. Two hands on the football. Guys came free. Again, we’ve got to block. We’ve got to make sure no one’s in his way. But at the end of the day, we’ve got to take care of the football.”
Horton said “communication” was behind not getting enough players on the field.
“That thing starts with me. It’s making sure that I’m communicating to the guys,” Horton said. “Then it’s also the players understanding, being in the flow of the game, being in the moment. We’ve got to get out there, we’ve got to make calls, and we’ve got to have everybody up. We’ve got to put an end to that. I can assure you that, man.
“Quite frankly, it’s embarrassing that that is continuing to happen. I want to make sure that we get a handle on that and we’re able to put an end to it.”
The penalties?
“They came at opportune times, situations where we could have definitely flipped the field,” Horton said. “When you get in situations and you’re talking about losing yards because of blocks in the back, those are decision-making things.
“Those are things that happen within the game, and we can coach against those things because we offer a lot of tools in those toolboxes so you don’t block a guy in the back. Balls being returned, for an example, if I’m running behind the guy, if I’m in chase mode, we call it chase mode, just turn and climb. Put your foot in the ground, go climb and go block somebody else. Returners are good enough to make guys miss at the point of attack. Secondly, if I’m in a situation where I feel like I’m going to block a guy in the back, maybe I run in between my man and the ball, and then I shield that guy off. There’s opportunities to make sure that those things don’t happen. And, again, it comes back to playing winning football and pure execution of the plays.”
The Saints’ 41-yard kickoff return on Sunday was the longest return the Giants have allowed this season.
“Before I talked about just pure execution on where we need to be. We didn’t have an edge. Every kickoff cover team needs an edge. And we had two guys that we didn’t have an edge,” Horton said. “It just comes back to just executing the plays at hand, the plays that we get. That’s all it comes down to. It wasn’t a big fire. We go in there, we watch the tape, we knew exactly what happened. We need our edge players up on the edge. The ball doesn’t get outside.”
The kickoff that didn’t get out of the end zone?
“We firmly believe that we could have kicked that ball out the back of the end zone,” Horton said. “We’ve got a guy that we believe in and feel like we can go out there and we can save those five yards and we can get that done, but we didn’t get it done. So, again, that comes back down to the things that I talked about, just playing winning football and doing the things that we know we’re very capable of doing.”
The Giants are a flawed team that needs to win games around the margins, with special teams often providing — or not providing — those margins. Getting the special teams back to the way it was performing over the season’s first four weeks would be a massive boost as the Giants try to get back in the win column this week.
