McKinney House Calls Carr, Giants Stun Las Vegas Raiders Before the Bye

On Tuesday morning following their crushing loss to the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium on Monday Night Football, the Giants had hoped to evaluate what went wrong in their 20-17 defeat and get ready to prepare for the Las Vegas Raiders in Week 9. 

They had less than 12 hours back home at East Rutherford, and the latest obstacle to befall them this season had arrived. 

No, it wasn’t more injuries to wide receivers nor captain players for the rest of the season. It was a spell of COVID-19 within the organization. 

The Giants announced Tuesday morning that 13 members of the team tested positive for COVID-19, including running backs coach Burton Burns. This was followed by three more players–Saquon Barkley, Matt Skura, and Xavier McKinney–tested positive for the virus on Wednesday, sending all three to the reserve COVID-19 list. 

While the designation didn’t have as much effect on Barkley–the running back expected to and did miss his fourth game recovering from an ankle injury suffered in Week 5–the Giants spent the majority of the week wondering if they would be down more starters in Skura and McKinney. The team already had very weak depth at the wide receiver position due to endless injury woes, they really couldn’t afford to have more players drop like flies.

McKinney, uncertain about his status for Sunday’s game, still didn’t rest on his laurels. The second-year safety out of Alabama took his time away from the team to focus his attention on and prepare for the Raiders even harder, despite the challenges of virtual participation. 

“I just tried to stay locked-in,” said McKinney. “Earlier in the week I didn’t know if I was going to play so I just stayed locked in and focused.”

In a week that was wholly unconventional for the player and organization, the adjustments and diligent preparation sure paid off. 

Per NFL rules, a duo of negative tests Friday triggered false positive results for most of the impacted Giants’ personnel, allowing them to return to full participation in team buildings. For McKinney, the response was an emphatic, “Defensive Player of the Week” worthy performance in a huge victory led by huge plays from the defensive side. 

Behind two textbook interceptions, one a house call, by Xavier McKinney, the New York Giants flashed their hidden talent for two touchdowns and a 23-16 win over the Las Vegas Raiders at MetLife Stadium Sunday. 

The game came on the heels of a difficult week for the AFC West-leading Raiders, who were dealing with numerous off the field issues in the wake of a deadly car crash by receiver Henry Ruggs III and a disturbing online video featuring cornerback Damon Arnette wielding a weapon. Both instances—seeing the release of the players involved—followed the recent resignation of head coach Jon Gruden after his racist email scandal that stemmed back to 2011 as an NFL analyst for ESPN.

Thus, Las Vegas had a lot on their minds to process, and it was clear the impact carried over to their performance on the field. 

The Raiders, led by quarterback Derek Carr, went 1-of-6 in the red zone, scoring their lone touchdown of the game on their first offensive possession when Carr found Hunter Renfrow on a 2-yard pass to tie the game at 7-7. Las Vegas entered Week 9 averaging 25.7 points per game and 393.3 yards of total offense per game, yet after Refrow’s score, while they surpassed the total yard average with 403, the only points they could find were those nine from the leg of kicker Daniel Carlson. 

The Raiders did sniff the endzone a few times in the second half, including their final possession of the game, and got as close as the Giants’ 7-yard line. However, with each knocking of the door, along came untimely penalties and dropped passes by Raiders’ receivers on manageable throws by Carr, stalling those drives and maintaining the Giants’ grasp of the lead. 

The dropped passes, particularly on third downs, haunted the Raiders all afternoon, as they dropped a total of 16 out of 46 passes by Carr and went 4-12 on third down conversion attempts. The Giants meanwhile, went 6-12 on third down conversions with only 96 total passing yards, their lowest passing yardage total since Dec. 2020 (81) and lowest in a victory since Dec. 2013 (94). 

Three of the Raiders’ six appearances in the red zone resulted in field goals by Carlson, who accounted for the rest of Las Vegas’s points. Yet, even Carlson wasn’t perfect, missing a kick from 25-yards away in the fourth quarter and an opportunity to cut the Giants’ lead to one. 

On the Raiders last attempt to extend the game into OT or win it with a touchdown and 2-point conversion, Carr drove his team down to the Giants’ 13-yard line, but on 2nd and 10 he was stripped of the ball by Giants rookie linebacker Quincy Roche on a sack. Defensive end Leonard Williams recovered the loose ball and secured the Giants’ third victory of the season before their Week 10 bye. 

“We moved the heck out of the ball,” said Carr, who was 30 of 46 for 296 yards. “We had things that we wanted. We can’t turn the ball over. I can’t throw interceptions. The strip at the end, I didn’t see the guy. I was throwing the ball to the end zone. We can’t turn the ball over.”

The aforementioned interceptions by Carr, both coming in the second half, were another blemish of his poor performance that he wishes he could have back, particularly the first that gave points to the Giants and put Xavier McKinney in the spotlight. 

Before being cleared from the COVID-19 protocols Friday to play in Sunday’s game, McKinney put emphasis on studying the film for the relationship between Carr and Renfrow, the former’s trusty receiver on third downs. On 3rd and 7 from the Raiders’ 35-yard line in the third quarter, McKinney had the perfect opportunity to display what he learned and make a game-altering play on the quarterback’s reliance on Renfrow in the big spot. 

Reading Carr’s eyes like an open book, McKinney cut off a pass intended for Renfrow on a short out route, intercepting the ball and running it back 41-yards for his first pick six of his career. The defensive touchdown gave the Giants their second-largest lead of the game, and a 17-13 advantage that they never lost the rest of the way. 

“I felt Renfrow go out and I was just all eyes on the quarterback all the time,” McKinney said. “I just trusted my instincts.”

The play even received praise from quarterback Daniel Jones after the game. 

“I think he’s a smart player,” said Jones. “I think he understands what quarterbacks are doing and it was a good read in the eyes and a good read in his coverage. He makes a lot of plays back there, has tremendous physical skills, and he played big time today for sure.”

Later, in the fourth quarter, McKinney made another incredible read off Carr’s pass to receiver Zay Jones, intercepting his deep ball at midfield and setting up a brief six play, 30-yard drive for the Giants that resulted in a Graham Gano 38-yard field goal to increase their lead to 23-16, the final score. 

“He pulled his best Ferris Bueler this week, not having to show up for work this week and then going out and having a career-type game,” said head coach Joe Judge on McKinney’s outing despite preparing virtually most of the week. “He did a good job staying prepared.”

“When he got cleared, that was big for us as a team. This guy went out there, had a good day preparing on Friday, and there were a lot of things he had to get in…he did a very good job of staying prepared and staying engaged.”

Daniel Jones’s offensive performance Sunday featured 15 completions for 110 yards and one passing touchdown, a 30-yard deep ball to tight end Evan Engram on the opening drive to give the Giants an early 7-0 lead. The passing yard total wasn’t pretty, but Jones also made up for that by adding in 17 rushing yards on four carries. 

Engram led all Giants receivers with three receptions and 38 yards, and his touchdown scored on a contested seam pass became the second contested pass won in the last two games. Engram is five of six for contested passes this season. 

Running back Devontae Booker has steadily increased his impact on the Giants’ offense since taking over the starting job in relief of Saquon Barkley in Week 6. That continued Sunday, as the former Raider rushed 21 times for 99 yards (102 before a three-yard loss) while averaging 4.7 yards per carry. The 99 yards marks Booker’s new career record for rushing yards in a single game, topping the 83 he set as a Denver Bronco in 2016.

Booker’s longest rush went for twenty yards to the Las Vegas 31-yard line in the second quarter, where a few plays later the Giants capitalized on one of Gano’s three field goals from 35 yards out. Booker also surpassed 100 yards of offense for the second straight week, following his 60 yards rushing and 65 yards receiving in Monday’s loss to the Chiefs. 

“It was just going out there and having fun with these guys,” Booker said about playing against his former teammates. “Really just like backyard football, talking smack to them and just running up and down the field. It was great.”

Kenny Golladay made his return to the active roster after four weeks on the injury chart, but was not much of a factor outside of two catches, including one for 14 yards to extend a Giants drive in the second half. 

The Giants entered the week with a lot of uncertainty, a brief flashback of life in the National Football League in 2020, and immense pressure to respond with a solid performance against a mentally weakened Raiders team that now holds a record of 3-16 coming out of the bye week in the past 19 seasons. 

Week 8’s loss to Kansas City was presumably the third loss of the season where the Giants had a chance to win and lost it on a costly penalty, this time amid a huge interception, in the final few minutes leading to an opponent game-winning drive and score. A 2-6 football team separated from, at best, 5-3 by a matter of discipline on the football field has been their ultimate storyline. 

Coming out the other side, they’re now a 3-6 football team with momentum riding into their Week 10 bye week before returning November 22nd for another primetime Monday game with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Discipline was never an issue, as the Giants only succumbed to one fumble by Jones and kept the Raiders out of the endzone and limited to three points in the final two minutes of both halves. 

They’re also winners of two of their last three games, and now situated just one game back of the last NFC Wild Card spot held by the Atlanta Falcons (4-4), the winner of their head to head matchup in Week 3. A season that two weeks ago was widely considered to be heading in the direction of failure and widespread organizational rewiring, is now one with a sprinkle of “what if” with the bottom rung of the NFC standings tightly contested and the opportunity for the Giants to regain some of their health over the next two weeks. 

Many are already predicting a similar situation as last season where the Giants string together some wins in the second half based upon their remaining schedule. On the other hand, the argument is also there of whether the organization should pursue their chances of a playoff appearance or hang it up and worry about the possibility of a franchise rebuild. 

For the Giants however, Joe Judge says their focus will be on “self-scouting” to make the correct adjustments for the second half,  getting the personnel healthy, and then worrying about the schemes and game plans for Tampa Bay and beyond. 

“I think self-scout is a critical part of the bye week, looking at what you’re doing well and what you’ve got to keep doing going forward. Then also looking at, alright, let’s go through the games that we played. What are some things that we’ve got to make sure that we get right or don’t repeat?”

“You want to get ahead a little bit on the opponents, so there’s an element of the guys we have coming up – Tampa and Philly and those teams – of getting a jump start on from a breakdown standpoint, get your cut-ups ready. But in terms of talking with the team, there’s the combination of you can show them a couple of schemes of things they’re going to see, but then there’s also that element of internal self-scout that we really want to make sure we get corrected.”

Outside of that, Judge and the Giants should take the week to be proud of a commanding win and embrace the possibility of relevance in the NFC when they return to action in fifteen days. 

Because in a market where the fans cling onto any ration of hope and success for their team, all they might hear is the imaginative glimmer in the voices of the Giants faithful talking into those faulty headsets.

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