EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — To win a decent number of football games this season, the New York Giants are going to have to be better — much better — than they were Sunday against the Tennessee Titans.
They survived the Titans — a bad 0-3 football team — on Sunday, thanks to a brilliant game-saving interception in the end zone by the suddenly ball-hawking Jevon Holland.
Until the Holland play, the second half had all the earmarks of the kind of fourth-quarter collapse the Giants suffered five times last
season en route to a miserable 4-13 record. The kind of fourth-quarter collapse the Giants hope will become a rarity rather than a rule with the highly-successful John Harbaugh now installed as head coach.
A win is a win is a win. The Giants are 2-1, and no one is going to apologize for how they got there.
“That’s just how it is. I told them that’s really how it works most of the time.,” Harbaugh said after the game. ‘I mean, there’s very few wins where you walk in and you’re really happy with everything. Where you feel like you played this great, amazing game. And even when you did, even the few times you have those games, you go back, you look at tape and you’re disappointed by a bunch of stuff.
“Football is really – it’s crazy. It’s crazy out there. So, that’s what it’s all about. It’s finding a way to win a rough game. It’s just – they’re never pretty. They’re never perfect. But they need to be us doing what we need to do to win games. Find a way to win games in those kinds of moments.”
Thanks to Holland, the Giants did that. They can also thank rookie placekicker Dominic Zvada for going 4 of 4 on field goals, punter Jordan Stout for constantly backing the Titans up, a running game that did just enough, and quarterback Jameis Winston for avoiding a fatal mistake that would have doomed the Giants to a loss they couldn’t have afforded.
“There’s plenty of times we could have put this game away. We should have put this game away. We’re going to look at our red zone offense and be really, really unhappy about the penalties. I mean, you get the ball down there inside the 5, inside the 10, and we penalize ourselves out of scoring position. That’s going to be, obviously, a major point of emphasis. So, to your point – but then our kicker – our kicker comes in there, our rookie kicker, in these kind of conditions, and kicks all those field goals. I’m really proud of him for that.”
The Giants won the game. That’s important.
Winning is the bottom line. How doesn’t really matter. Well, in this case, maybe it does. This is a game the Giants almost certainly would have lost a year ago, when they blew five fourth-quarter leads.
It is a game they looked like they would lose until Holland read Ward’s intent to throw rather than run, sat in the end zone, and made a play when Ward threw the ball low enough that he could get his hands on it.
Veteran tight end Chris Manhertz lived through all of those losses last season. He admitted thinking about them from the sideline as he watched Tennessee’s final drive, helped by an Elijah Campbell kick catch interference penalty and a fourth-and-1 encroachment penalty on Tremaine Edmunds, unfold.
“It definitely did,” Manhertz said. “I do question last year if we would have been able to pull that one out. I think it’s a testament to the players we hsve, the leaders we have, and just having a mentality of finding a way to win.
“It’s not going to be pretty, but players make plays. Jevon made a helluva play, and we go home in peace tonight.”
Andrew Thomas, who has lived through a lot of difficult losses in six-plus seasons with the Giants, said he was focusing on “the task at hand” rather than the past.
“It’s the National Football League, so whenever you get a win, it takes great players to make great plays and we have the safety that made a play a game to win it,” Thomas said. “To win in this league, it’s not an easy thing to do. So for us to do it, I’m proud of the guys. Obviously, there’s things that we can clean up, even going back to the Dallas game.
“When you play well and you win a game and you feel like you play well, there’s things to clean up. So that’s the approach you have regardless. But like I said, we’re happy to have the win.”
The Giants have a lot to clean up
Let’s be honest. The Giants were fortunate on Sunday to be playing the Titans. As I said above, a win is a win. There are not, though, a lot of teams the Giants would have beaten on Sunday.
- They were fortunate that Holland made a phenomenal play to prevent a devastating loss.
- They were fortunate that Ward somehow sailed a pass over the head of a wide open Carnell Tate on third-and-5 from the Giants 7-yard line, leading to a turnover on downs.
- The Giants committed 10 penalties for 88 yards. Some of those limited the number of points the Giants had the opportunity to score. Two of them helped Tennessee on its final drive.
- The Giants passed for only 118 yards. To be fair, the conditions were miserable and the Giants’ biggest ask of Jameis Winston on Sunday was to not screw the game up.
- The pass rush was, again, non-existent. Improving that is not going to be easy now that it appearsBrian Burns is lost for the seasonwith a torn ACL.
Keeping Kayvon proves prescient
Remember all that chatter about trading Kayvon Thibodeaux? Well, the Giants certainly have to be happy that they didn’t do what it seemed everyone tried to get them to do and move on from him.
Thibodeaux will now return to being a full-time starter, and a massively important player for the remainder of the season. If he plays well, Thibodeaux can help the Giants immensely the rest of the season, and set himself up for a massive payday in the offseason.
The biggest decision comes at quarterback
The Giants will add at least one quarterback to their roster, perhaps as early as Monday morning. Winston, though, is going to be the quarterback this Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals. No matter who the Giants sign or trade for, it is going to take that quarterback time to learn the system.
Winston is going to be the quarterback, at least for a while. For better or worse.
Winston said his job Sunday was to “do what’s required” to win.
“Focus on protecting football, being efficient on first and second down. And eliminating negative plays,” he said. “Every quarterback is really judged off if they won or lost the game. So, I’m grateful that I get to be judged off of [a win], not a loss. And I’ve had games where I’ve thrown for 500 yards, right, and the game didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to be. And anytime, any day, I would rather win.”
The Giants, without Jaxson Dart and now Burns for the season, are clearly not tossing in the towel on a season that has 14 games remaining.
They will eventually find themselves needing to decide whether or not Winston is the quarterback who gives them the best chance to win games. Facing that decision so soon after giving Winston a two-year, $13 million contract extension makes it fair to wonder what the Giants were thinking when they gave Winston that deal.
For now, though, the Giants are 2-1. That is a lot better place than they could have been this morning. As Manhertz said, they are “at peace.”
They need to get better. Much better. Still, it is better to know that and be 2-1 than 1-2 or 0-3.
