Through thirteen weeks, what has defined the York Giants’ pitiful 2021 season can be summed up by three recurring themes: an incredibly woeful and inefficient offense, relentless injury blows to all three dimensions of their roster, and some of the most incomprehensible losses the organization has seen in over a decade since their last display of championship-caliber football.
While the team continues to find new and increasingly painful ways to torture its fan base every game with an anemic offense that stalls at the first sight of the opponent’s 20-yard line, it appears that phase of the ball hits its worst this season when the Giants are in the state of Florida.
Two weeks after an abysmal performance in Tampa Bay against the Buccaneers on national primetime television that saw the Giants offense rack up their season-worst 215 yards of total offensive production and have to rely on a left tackle to punch in a redzone score, Big Blue completely one-upped themselves Sunday for an even more embarrassing road loss to the Miami Dolphins.
Miami quarterback Tua Tagavailoa completed 30 passes on 41 attempts (73.2%, his third best completion rate this season) for 244 yards and two touchdowns, dinking and dunking short routes on the Giants weary defense all afternoon to hand them a 20-9 loss and their first ever defeat in the city of Miami.
The victory propelled the Dolphins (6-7) to their fourth straight, giving them a stronger case for being a late-season AFC playoff contender. The Giants, on the other hand, fell to 4-8 and their slim playoff hopes are beyond a fever dream at this point.
The Giants offense—headed by quarterback Mike Glennon who was starting his first game for New York with Daniel Jones missing Sunday due to a neck strain—was an absolute disaster that could not facilitate a solid redzone drive throughout the entire contest.
After going 1-3 in the redzone for 13 points in the win over the Philadelphia Eagles last week, the Giants offense went 0-1 inside Miami’s 20-yard line and truthfully never threatened the Dolphins defense with the possibility of a touchdown. The closest they came to the endzone was the Miami 16-yard line in the third quarter, where they were stopped on 3rd-and-9 after Glennon overthrew a wide open Darius Slayton and forced to kick one of three field goals with Graham Gano.
In all, the Giants rallied a total of 250 yards on offense and scored just nine points from the reliable leg of Gano to produce one of their worst outings under the Joe Judge era. Glennon was responsible for 187 of those yards, reaching that number on 23 completions. He also threw an interception on the Giants second drive of the game when he tried to fit a deep ball into the hands of Slayton between two Dolphins corners and was picked off by Xavien Howard down inside the Miami 5-yard line.
Whereas the Giants couldn’t sniff out a trace of the endzone, the Dolphins’ dynamic offense–featuring Tagovailoa with wide receiver Jaylen Waddle, and athletic tight end Mike Gesicki–took over the game with two scores of their own, each coming on both sides of the halftime break.
With just over four minutes to go in the opening half, Tagovailoa perfectly executed a 14 play, 89-yard drive down to the Giants’ 5-yard line to milk the remainder of the clock and put his team in position to take the lead right before the break with their second half kickoff return impending. On 2nd-and-goal with 26 seconds left, Tagovailoa connected with Mack Hollins in the corner of the endzone as Hollins secured the bobbled catch for a touchdown and a 10-3 Dolphins lead.
Then in the fourth quarter with the score 10-6 Dolphins, Tagovailoa capped off a 7 play, 61-yard drive by finding Isaiah Ford on a blown coverage by the Giants secondary for a second touchdown to extend the Miami lead to 17-6, their largest advantage of the game.
Tageovailoa had his second game in the last four with at least two passing touchdowns, the previous one coming two weeks prior against the New York Jets at MetLife Stadium. It was also his third in the last five without an interception, as the former Alabama star made his payday running the run-pass-option scheme with ease and dissecting the Giants stout defense with short passes to his targets on slants and quick out-routes to the flat.
Miami added two field goals by Jason Sanders in the first and fourth quarters as well to help put their 20 points on the board and the Giants never came close to reaching them with their ineffective offense struggling.
The Giants defense came into the game reeling eight straight with at least one interception, the league’s longest-active streak, and having six in the last three games. Their dominance at forcing turnovers was a critical factor in the Giants’ recent wins over Las Vegas and Philadelphia, whom they limited to a combined 20 points offensively.
While the defense didn’t have an awful performance in Miami, their turnover streak did come to an end and their incredible efforts got no support once again from the offense.
Patrick Graham’s unit gave up a total of 297 yards to former coaching partner in New England, Brian Flores’s, Dolphins offense, but their impact came with holding the Dolphins to 68 rushing yards, the second-lowest total allowed to an opponent this season. The Dolphins ran just 25 rushing plays, averaged 2.7 yards per carry, and only converted one first down from the ground out of their 19 total. Instead they let the Dolphins get their production in the air where they gave up 229 yards, 5.3 yards per catch, and allowed a 5-14 third down conversion rate.
Still, the Giants defense came out of halftime with a hunger to put their offense in better positions to hit their stride and make plays in the second half to score more points. In the Dolphins first four possessions of the third quarter, the defense held Tagovailoa and company to three straight three-and-out drives and a fourth that went just 19 yards and allowed no points. Miami never crossed midfield on any of those drives, and their ensuing punts gave the Giants offense respectable field position to start two of their own initial possessions.
The favor went totally unreturned by Glennon and the Giants offense, who punted back to the Dolphins on three drives and only put up their second Gano field goal on the fourth to cut the lead to 10-6 Miami. The Giants, who own the worst red-zone scoring percentage in the NFL of 43.3%, traveled 80 yards in the four drives and failed to accumulate more than 10 yards on three of them.
Giants runningback Saquon Barkley spoke about the offense’s awareness of what the defense has been doing to help set them up for success in recent games, and said he understands if the other side is “annoyed” at their lack of production.
“Even though we’re tired, I know the defense is annoyed too because the defense is playing lights out,” Barkley said. We’ve got to do a better job of playing all three phases and we’re not doing it on our side.”
Through their last three games, including Sunday’s loss, the Giants offense has scored only two offensive touchdowns total, one of which was helped by an interception from Tom Brady in the Week 11 game that put the Giants offense at the Bucs 5-yard line. That same touchdown was scored by linemen Andrew Thomas for his first career score and second overall reception.
The Giants have not had a single touchdown scored by a runningback or wide receiver in their last five games.
“9 points is not acceptable,” Barkley added in the postgame. We’ve got to be better. We’ve got to capitalize on opportunities. We’ve got to be better as a whole, starting with myself.”
Barkley is correct. Since returning in Week 11 from his ankle injury sustained in Week 5, the fourth year back has been unable to revive his 2018 self that tallied over 1,000 in his rookie campaign. In three games dating back to Nov. 22nd, Barkley has a combined 30 carries for 110 yards and no touchdowns, 11 carries and 55 yards of which he scratched together Sunday for his best statline in that span. He also caught six passes for 19 yards with a long of 11 yards to add to his unimpressive numbers.
In the receiving front, the Giants were led by tight end Evan Engram who caught four receptions for 61 yards, three of those completions on contested catches for big conversions downfield. Wide receiver Kenny Golladay was mediocre again in another week where he had no touchdown, making three catches for 37 yards with a long of 18 yards.
Part of the reason the Giants couldn’t find their receiving playmakers has stemmed back to their miserable offense line that seems to have a new combination every week. The front five were tormented most of the second half by heavy blitzes and stunt packages from Miami’s defense, leading to blown up protections and Glennon having to get rid of the ball off his back foot due to his lack of mobility outside of the pocket.
Adding up all the lowly contributions to the total offense, the Giants have now had less than 300 total yards in four straight games and less than 302 (their highest dating back to October) in seven straight games.
If there was one player who could say he had a fair outing, it was Gano. The veteran kicker made all the Giants points on three kicks from 39, 34, and 51 yards, respectively, with the last helping him set a new record.
With his 51 yarder in the fourth quarter, Gano set a new single-season Giants record for most field goals made from a distance of 50 or more yards with six. The previous record was also held him in 2020 when Gano made five from that range in what was another fantastic season for the ever-reliable kicker.
Gano also holds the Giants career-record for 11 made field goals from 50+ yards over his two seasons in blue, and is the team’s leading scorer with 80 points this season.
There is a lot of doom and gloom, and reasonably so, floating over the heads of the Giants organization as their record continues to tailspin closer to another season of double digit losses. The offense continues to get banged up with injuries and they can’t get over their red-zone inefficiency. The defense is doing their best to keep the team competitive against top-rated opponents every Sunday, but their turnovers triumphs alone can’t translate to wins.
Five games remain on their schedule, and it will be important for the Giants to use these games to evaluate what parts of the roster they want to keep and rewire as heavy change is inevitable once the offseason begins. Many questions linger over decisions regarding the contracts of players like Daniel Jones and Saquon Barkley, both of which are in their third and fourth seasons and eligible for either an opt-in by the Giants or an extension.
Concerns about offering such extensions remain about the durability of Jones and Barkley, the former possibly missing extended time with a neck strain and the latter having numerous injuries since 2018 that have impacted his offensive dominance and kept him off the field.
Nevertheless, head coach Joe Judge went right back to his usual playbook in his postgame media conference after the loss, earning heavy criticism afterward for commenting about his encouragement towards the team’s performance despite the final result.
“I saw a lot of players make a lot of big plays,” Judge said. “That’s what we’ve got to do, we’ve got to get the ball into our players’ hands, let them make plays, let them extend plays and be explosive players.”
He doubled down on his comments by saying he was “pleased with how the team competed”, despite them trailing most of the game and never regaining the lead after their 3-0 advantage in the second quarter.
“We were able to make some stops in critical moments. We were able to make some good decisions, and a lot of guys stepped up in different situations. Ultimately, we’ve got to make more plays, take advantage of the opportunities in front of us.”
The Giants have been making critical stops with their defense all season long to compensate for their low-scoring offense and playmaking ability, but at some point “defense wins championships” can’t consistently sustain them in the modern NFL where scoring totals have soared higher than ever before and talent at the skilled positions has become the most diverse it’s ever been.
Judge and the Giants can hang their hats on the defense for their four victories so far this year, but they’ve been shown twice now in back-to-back weeks that relying on their defense to hold opponents scoreless for sixty minutes is a bold strategy that eventually will collapse if they don’t partner stops with points.
Philadelphia saw them escape by the skin of their teeth with a 13-7 win because of turnover woes by Jalen Hurts, but in Miami the Dolphins and Tua Tagovailoa were clean in the pocket and eventually found their groove to pick apart the Giants defense for two scores and the win with the offense watching.
The Giants were not so lucky this Sunday, and heading into Week 14 against the prolific-scoring Los Angeles Chargers, things will get scarier, regardless of the quarterback behind the center, if the Giants don’t figure out how to move the ball and get it into the endzone paint.
For more NFL coverage, click here.
