The New York Giants fell in a nailbiter on Sunday Night Football to the Buffalo Bills.
The Giants came one yard short of pulling off a comeback that would have defied all odds. Unfortunately, New York’s efforts on the night fell short and their 14-9 loss brings them to 1-5 on the season.
Here’s a quick breakdown of what we saw during the game and how we graded the Giants in this loss.
Offense: D
Three straight games without an offensive touchdown is completely unacceptable.
The Giants were definitely shorthanded as they were missing Daniel Jones and several offensive linemen including Andrew Thomas. Despite this, at the least one can expect a touchdown from the offense.
However, the offense looked a lot more inspired in Week 6 with several plays over 20 yards. The offensive line was far from great but they did only allow three sacks and five quarterback hits on the night which was a drastic improvement from the previous few weeks.
Tyrod Taylor also looked solid making his first start in a few years. He completed two-thirds of his passes for 200 yards with an 80.8 passer rating. He also got a lot of help from Saquon Barkley, who had a decent showing in his first game back from the ankle injury. Barkley rushed for 93 yards (only averaging 3.9 yards per carry) and popped off a couple of big runs — one of 34 yards — on the Giants’ final scoring drive.
The main problem for the unit as a whole was that they could not convert in the red zone. They made five trips to the red zone but scored a touchdown on zero of them. One touchdown would have completely changed the game and not being able to make plays when it matters the most is a quality of a bad offense.
Defense: A-
The defense played their hearts out on Sunday.
The unit went on the road and held one of the best offenses in football to zero first-half points. The defense also forced two turnovers on the night, one of them leading to a Giants field goal. The team also held Josh Allen to one of his worst outings of the season as he had his third-lowest passer rating of the year (86.7).
One of the main problems with the defense on the night was that they were unable to get home on Allen. They got pressure often but did not convert any of it into a sack. The other big issue was the run defense as the Bills rushed for 128 yards on 4.4 yards per carry.
Special Teams: B
The special teams unit did its job on Sunday.
Graham Gano made all three of his field goal attempts while Jamie Gillan did a great job flipping the field, averaging 50.5 yards per punt and getting two inside the 22-yard line.
The only knock on this group is the penalty on a Parris Campbell return that resulted in the Giants starting the ball from the 10.
Coaching: C+
Brian Daboll & Co. put together a much better performance than expected. It was unfortunate that they could not get the win but there were some positive takeaways.
Daboll had his troops fired up and ready to go in the first half coming away with a 6-0 lead. However, the clock management in the game was poor and resulted in the Giants not scoring points at the end of the first half despite having the ball on the one-yard line. Not scoring at the one again to win the game hurts and knocks some points off of Daboll’s performance.
Mike Kafka had a very polarizing game. He called some great trap runs that allowed Barkley to look unstoppable. However, his playcalling in the red zone was abysmal, and converting zero times in five tries is not acceptable.
Wink Martindale carried this coaching core as he drew up some elaborate schemes to cause some problems for Allen. It would have been great if the coordinator could have kept up his first-half shutout but that was obviously too much to ask for going against an MVP candidate.
