Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse for the Giants, it has.
At the end of the first quarter, the Giants were moving the ball on offense – mostly on the ground – and had a respectable showing on defense. The game as tied at seven, and it looked like it could be the Giants’ day.
However, that was the end of it.
The next two quarters were a lack of execution, effort, and concentration that resulted in the Rams outscoring the Giants, 41-3. It was a perfectly written script of a comedy of errors in a 51-17 debacle.
Poor tackling, fumbles a blocked punt, bad line play on both sides, and three overall turnovers created the agenda. The Rams left with a rising 6-2 mark, while the Giants sunk deeper with a 1-7 slate.
New York has yet to win a game (0-4) a home this season.
“When you play a talented football team and we tackle the way we tackled, handled the ball the way we did, had a punt blocked and didn’t handle a punt, that’s what the score board is going to look like,” offered head coach Ben McAdoo.
“We had effort out there, and we didn’t quit.”
A gray, rainy afternoon provided the perfect backdrop for this horror show. Fans began a mass exodus with three minutes left in the third quarter. With nine minutes left in the game, Met Life looked like the start of a fourth preseason game.
Ironically, Sean McVay was on the Rams’ sidelines, as this game resembled some of the Giants’ efforts in the late 70s when his grandfather, John McVay, ran the team.
Jared Goff reminded fans of Bob Waterfield, Norm Van Brocklin or Kurt Warner in this primes as he found receivers wide open and behind the Giants’ secondary most of the afternoon, tossing for 311 yards and four touchdowns before he left with nine minutes left. In 1966, Roman Gabriel lead the rams to a 55-14 win over the Giants. The recent version of the Rams gained their first win over the G-Men since 2001.
The Rams’ Robert Woods outraced the entire Giants’ linebackers and defensive backs on a 52- yard touchdown, and Sammy Watkins was at least 10 yards ahead of Landon Collins and Eli Apple on a 67-yard connection, both in the opening half.
“We didn’t use our eyes in coverage,” said Collins. “This hurts. We overplayed too many times and they made big plays on us.”
Goff hit two wide-open receivers on consecutive passes that combined for 54 yards to start the third quarter to set up Todd Hurley’s first of two rushing touchdowns in the quarter.
But that wasn’t all. Brad Wing had a punt blocked deep in his own zone in the third quarter that resulted in the second Gurley score.
Still, it wasn’t a totally lost afternoon as Manning became the seventh quarterback to throw for more than 50,000 yards in his career when he hit Sterling Shepard on a crisp 37-yarder down the sidelines. He followed that with a 10-yard flip to Evan Engram, who also was one of the few highlights with his four catches for 70 yards.
Even though he achieved the mark, Manning didn’t have one of his better efforts. He threw an interception into coverage and completed 20 of 36 passes for 220 yards, having many of the missed pass off the mark.
“It wasn’t good enough,” stated Manning. “We had to take better care of the football and you can’t give a team like that good field position.
“We have to keep grinding and fighting. It can only go up.”
Hopefully, it can. The Giants will travel to winless San Francisco next Sunday to once again find a jumpstart to a weak season, once thriving with high expectations.