Mistakes cost the New York Giants throughout Thursday’s loss to the Washington Football Team, many of which are easy to point the finger on what ultimately led to the defeat. The Giants had their opportunity to seal the victory midway through the fourth quarter, a play that should have defined Daniel Jones and how he saved the Giants season.
Instead, Jones and the Giants are left to wonder on the missed opportunity in the 30-29 loss. With New York up 23-20 and driving in Washington territory, Darius Slayton forced a busted coverage and got wide open down the field. Jones threw a deep ball to the wide open Slayton in the end zone, but the Giants receiver dropped the pass for the easy touchdown that would have given New York a two-score lead with 6:25 to play.
The drop stalled the potential touchdown drive. Two plays later, the Giants had back-to-back false-start penalties on Nate Solder and Andrew Thomas that took them out of field goal range. Jones ran for 11 yards to set up a Graham Gano 55-yard field goal to put the Giants up 26-20 with 4:35 to play — but the damage had been done.
Slayton’s drop cost the Giants, even if it wasn’t the biggest mistake Joe Judge’s team made in the fourth quarter.
“We’re not going to turn around and put this game on one player, one play,” Judge said. “There’s enough things we can clean up as a team, so we’re not going to go ahead and isolate on incident and say that’s the difference in the game right there. We got to do a lot of things better for 60 minutes.”
The Giants are 0-2 from all the errors they made, not just from one play. Judge is correct in that aspect.
“This is New York. The reality is, this is supposed to be a tough place to play and coach,” Judge said. “That’s the nature of what it is. If you want to play somewhere easy, I’m sure there’s plenty of other cities where they don’t really care that much about football and their sports teams — where by Tuesday they forget you even had a game.
“The great thing about playing in our city, is that they ride high and low in every week with you.”
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