The New York Giants suffered a devastating defeat, 24-6, to the New Orleans Saints.
After a strong opening drive that resulted in a field goal, the Giants would slowly let things unravel until the game got out of hand. With this loss, Big Blue falls to 5-9 and is far behind in the race for the last Wild Card spot.
Here’s a quick breakdown of what we saw during the game and how we graded the Giants in this loss.
Offense: D-
Outside of the opening drive, the Giants offense looked abysmal on Sunday.
After a couple of games of solid offensive play, the Giants came back down to earth and had their fifth game of the season without an offensive touchdown. The same issues that have plagued the team all season reared its ugly head again.
It all starts with the offensive, line which allowed seven sacks, and Saquon Barkley to average only 1.4 yards per carry. This has been a problem all season and the Giants were able to temporarily plug the hole last week (zero sacks) but the water broke loose yet again in Week 15.
The rest of the team did not play well as Tommy DeVito was the leading rusher with only 36 yards. Removing the rushing game from the offense left DeVito to have to sling the ball, and the combination of poor offensive line play, lack of receiver separation, and a string of drops did him in.
It’s clear the last few weeks were a fluke and this offense does not have what it takes. The only positive was that the offense did not turn over the ball.
Defense: D
On the flip side, the defense failed to create any turnovers.
The Giants’ defense looked flat on Sunday as they let Derek Carr have easily his best game of the season with three touchdowns and a 134.8 passer rating. The secondary did a poor job in coverage as they let a Saints team without their top two receivers beat them consistently on the outside and over the middle. However, they did not get much help defensive line, who registered just two quarterback hits and one sack.
The biggest problem for this defense was its inability to get off the field as they allowed the Saints to convert on 50 percent of their third down attempts. New Orleans’ ability to extend drives tired out this Giants’ defense and slowly made them crumble until they gave out midway through the third quarter.
Special Teams: B
The special teams unit did its job on Sunday.
Randy Bullock made his only field goal attempt from 56 yards out (the second-longest of his career). He, unfortunately, suffered a leg injury in the first half causing Jamie Gillan to fill in for him.
Gillan was great all around, especially for a backup kicker as he nailed his lone attempt from 40 yards out. He also did a great job punting, averaging 47.6 yards per attempt and nailed one inside of the 20.
Coaching: D-
Brian Daboll had a terrible performance in one of the most important games of the season for his team. The Giants clearly were not ready to play and did not look prepared on Sunday. There were no second-half adjustments and the Giants even failed to score a point.
Daboll could, potentially, be fighting for his job at the tail end of this season and he will need better performances than this one to stay off the hot seat.
Mike Kafka did not have a game script for success. The playcalling was incredibly vanilla and he did not try to get the ball to any of his playmakers in space. This was a huge regression from the playcalling last week and the Giants will hope that Kafka will start to become more aggressive with nothing to lose going forward.
Wink Martindale’s defense in New York has looked nothing like his Baltimore Ravens days. The defense generates no pressure or turnovers leaving the offense to have all the time in the world to execute its gameplan.
