I should know better than to predict the New York Giants to win any game. Occasionally, like last week, I get burned for picking their opponent to win. Most of the time, though, you can’t go wrong picking against
them. That’s one general thing I learned from the Giants’ awful 26-14 loss to the New Orleans Saints. Let’s look at a few specific things that we learned, though.
How is this team scoring the rest of the season?
In my lukewarm prediction that the Giants would win today, one of my reservations was:
My big question is, how are the Giants going to score points, in this game and beyond, with Malik Nabers out?
At first, it seemed that my worries were misplaced. The Giants not only scored, they scored touchdowns (for future reference, since you may not see many, those are plays in which a member of the offense possesses the ball in the opponent’s end zone). In fact, they scored touchdowns on their first two drives, while limiting the Saints to a field goal. Miss Malik Nabers? No problem. Run a two-tight end offense with Theo Johnson and Daniel Bellinger, and sometimes even a three-tight end offense. Jaxson Dart was connecting with both of them, Cam Skattebo was shedding tacklers, the Saints were blitzing (five times in the first quarter) with no discernable effect on Dart, and the vision was starting to enter my brain: Get the Saints to respect the tight ends and the running game, and then Dart could start to pick his spots with the Nabers-less wide receiver group to hit some big plays and deliver the knockout punch. With a 14-3 lead it was all coming together.
Then it stopped. The Saints responded to what the Giants were doing and forced Dart to pass to someone other than the tight ends, and that was the end of that. After the 12:54 mark of the second quarter, the Giants did not score another point. Dart blew his chance for a big gain, probably a TD, by being too late and too short on a flea flicker to Darius Slayton, allowing defensive back Terrell Burgess to knock the ball away. Slayton later fumbled on a hit by Saints’ linebacker Demario Davis, and eventually left the game with an injury. Wan’Dale Robinson had five catches but for only 30 yards, Jalin Hyatt showed once again that he cannot get open vs. NFL defensive backs and can’t win contested catches, and Beaux Collins did have one catch but in general found out that catching preseason moon balls against Jets’ defensive backs is not the same as making catches against first-teamers when the games count. It wasn’t quite as bad as the 2023 Giants-Jets game when Brian Daboll wouldn’t even let Tommy DeVito throw a pass, but it wasn’t a whole lot better.
I’ve been against the idea of bringing back 32-year-old Odell Beckham Jr., who is nowhere near the receiver he was when the Giants traded him in 2019. Maybe it’s time to ask: Is there a better option out there right now? And if they don’t, who is scoring points on this team once defenses adapt to the two- or three-tight end personnel groupings?
It’s not easy to win with turnovers on five consecutive drives
Dart threw the first two interceptions of his NFL career Sunday. I’m not going to fret too much over that – it happens when you get behind, the things you were doing early in the game are no longer working, and you don’t have any elite offensive players to throw to.
The fumbles are another thing, though. Actually, three other things. The unforced drop by Dart on the scramble was the most embarrassing, but the fumbles by Darius Slayton, and especially Cam Skattebo, hurt just as much. Skattebo’s was returned for the the TD that iced the game for the Saints. In all, the Giants turned the ball over on five drives in a row when the game hung in the balance and the Saints turned a 3-14 deficit into a 26-14 lead. There is just no excuse for that. The Saints had zero turnovers on the day, by comparison. That is really the reason they won the game, as you can see:
The secondary has become a real problem
Tyler Nubin makes bad play after bad play. Today it was in the second quarter, when he was beaten badly by Rashid Shaheed for an 87-yard TD after the Giants had punted from midfield. It was arguably the turning point of the game. The Giants were mostly dominating the game up to that point. With that TD, the Saints were still down, but only 14-13. You could almost see the momentum shift.
After that play came the botched Dart-to-Slayton flea flicker, which led to another punt. Two consecutive defensive pass interferences, one by Dru Phillips and the second by Paulson Adebo, had no immediate effect, as the Saints missed a 52-yard field goal attempt that would have given them the lead. On the Giants’ next drive, though, Demario Davis caused Slayton’s fumble. Quarterback Spencer Rattler then started finding his other wide receivers, Chris Olave and Brandin Cooks, and although they only managed a field goal for their first lead of the game, 16-14, the tide had obviously turned.
By game’s end, Shaheed had four receptions in five targets for 114 yards and Olave had seven catches in 11 targets for 59 yards. Jevon Holland and Cor’Dale Flott each had one pass breakup, but this secondary, like so many others on recent Giants teams, does not force turnovers. I don’t think Spencer Rattler is a bad quarterback, but he’s not a Pro Bowler either. Yet he mostly seemed unfazed by the Giants’ defense once the game reached the second quarter.
The pass rush was good…but didn’t get home
The Saints have good tackles, but their guards are suspect, and today one of them was a backup with the injury to Cesar Ruiz. It showed early in the game, as the Giants’ defensive line got good pressure on Rattler up the middle and forced him to make many rushed throws. That pressure was not from Dexter Lawrence…but Roy Robertson-Harris, Rakeem Nunez-Roches, J.D. Davidson, and Darius Alexander all had multiple pressures. The edge defenders contributed too, with Abdul Carter pressuring Rattler four times, Kayvon Thibodeaux twice, and Brian Burns once.
Just one problem – pressures were all they got. The Giants had ZERO sacks and ZERO quarterback hits. Rattler gets some credit for that – he’s a mobile QB who got out of the pocket to buy himself time before getting his passes off. There may-y-y also be some valid complaints about holds that weren’t flagged by the officials. Still, with a QB who can move (Jalen Hurts, next week’s foe, for example) you really need to have multiple defensive linemen getting pressure so that one of them can get home, and the Giants just didn’t have that today. And when they don’t don’t have that, the secondary will be exposed.
In fairness, the Saints’ defensive line didn’t register any sacks or hits on Dart either…but unlike Rattler, Dart doesn’t have many options to throw to now once the tight ends are covered. On Thursday, it will be A.J. Brown and Devonta Smith. The Giants better figure out how to get their pass rush home.
