It is not working, and everyone is sick and tired of hearing why.
It’s the quarterback or the performance and lack of health of the offensive line or the absence of a breakout wide receiver or Saquon Barkley’s high ankle sprain or the play-calling or Brian Daboll being too hard or too soft on Daniel Jones.
It is not working; play the blame game all you want. It is all so much blather because all of it matters and none of it does. Everyone who has an emotional stake in this can recognize how and why the Giants are wading perilously close into the waters of irrelevance, a stunning comedown for a team that was supposed to be swimming at least in the vicinity of the top NFL contenders.
It is all about touchdowns. The lack of touchdowns. The Giants can clean up anything and everything all at once, but until they stop treating the end zone like the Forbidden Zone in those original “Planet of the Apes” classics, the losing will continue and the reminders of the bad-old days (circa 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021) will run rampant in the hearts and minds of those who still care enough about this lame product.
“We’re fighting and we came up short,’’ wide receiver Darius Slayton said somberly in the locker room at Highmark Stadium, not long after the Giants once again failed to hit pay dirt in a 14-9 loss to the Bills. “At some point, something’s got to give and as long as you keep fighting it will.’’
At some point cannot come soon enough for the Giants, a team that needs to turn on every navigation device in existence in order to find that best route to crossing over the goal line. The sight of this outfit coming up with no points from the 1-yard line at the end of the first half and empty again at the end of the game in Orchard Park were explain-to-me-how-that-happened scenarios that the Giants have specialized in this season.
This is the first time since 1976 that the Giants have gone three consecutive games without an offensive touchdown. They are the first team since the 2009 Raiders to have only two passing touchdowns through the first six games of a season.
The Giants have a total of five offensive touchdowns in six games. Their 71 points are the fewest in the NFL and only the similarly challenged Patriots (72 points) are close. Jones has two touchdown passes in five games and when he sat out with a neck injury against the Bills, backup Tyrod Taylor did a few nice things and followed Jones’ lead, guiding the Giants to the doorstep without crossing the threshold.
“I think Tyrod did a good job,’’ Daboll said Monday. “Obviously, the team thing of 0-for-5 in the red zone, that’s a team thing, so something we’ve go to work on.’’
Oh yeah, the team thing.
A lack of crispness and attention to detail is infiltrating what the Giants are trying to get accomplished. The fiasco at the end of the first half — Taylor changed a pass play into a run, Barkley got stuffed and the clock expired with the Giants on the 1-yard line — is a bad look for all concerned.
Would Jones have realized that there was not enough time to run the ball and stuck with the play that was called in? Perhaps. But perhaps not. After all, it was not long ago that Jones did not correctly hear or process what was getting signaled in from offensive coordinator Mike Kafka, with the Giants trailing 14-3 to the Seahawks late in the third quarter. On third-and-11, Jones handed the ball off to Matt Breida in what the MetLife Stadium crowd viewed as a give-up play, booing lustily. As it turned out, the play sent into Jones was for a pass but he misheard it and went with the wrong play.
What are we doing here?
It is up to Daboll to clean up the offensive operation and make sure Kafka and the quarterbacks are in sync. The workload for rookie Jalin Hyatt (56 snaps) and second-year Wan’Dale Robinson (46 snaps) against the Bills were season highs and Daboll promised that more is coming.
“They’re young, so you’ve got to play them to develop them,’’ Daboll said.
This means veteran Sterling Shepard (one snap vs. the Bills) and to a lesser degree Isaiah Hodgins are trending in the wrong direction.
Whatever needs to happen has to happen. Jones will return at some point, Barkley is back, Justin Pugh will be a starter at left tackle (Andrew Thomas is not ready to return) or left guard and the touchdown-free weekends must cease and desist. Up next, no one thinks Sam Howell is lighting it up and yet he comes in with nine touchdown passes for the Commanders. At their current pace, the Giants will not reach nine touchdowns on offense until Week 11.
The season is already hemorrhaging. A touchdown tourniquet must be applied to stop the Giants from bleeding out.
