Daniel Jones looked as frustrated after Sunday night’s loss as he has seemed in a while.
The Giants’ quarterback didn’t snap at the podium or anything. He just came across like what he was in that moment: an impatient competitor who had taken a physical beating and fallen painfully short again.
A lightning-rod player under the microscope who recognized that this seven-point dud represented regression from the previous week’s progress in Seattle.
Jones’ postgame press conference had a bit of a Groundhog Day, here-we-go-again feel, actually. What went unsaid — but seemed understood — was that the Giants (2-4) can’t keep putting games like this on tape if they don’t want to invite major change.
The frustration from Jones, Brian Daboll and the Giants’ players after this 17-7 defeat to Cincinnati wasn’t new, though. That existed last season, too, when they averaged 15.6 points per game playing three different quarterbacks, similar to how they’re averaging 16.0 points per game with Jones now.
The difference Sunday night was that the Giants seemed to be out of answers. They didn’t know why they weren’t able to repeat their Week 5 success against the Seahawks, and they didn’t appear to know where to turn next.
“When you score pretty much seven points in an NFL game, you’re not gonna do anything all season like that,” left guard Jon Runyan Jr. said.
Runyan’s perspective hit on the most glaring problem here: The Giants stood out Sunday even among all of the NFL’s other losers in their offensive futility.
The New England Patriots scored 21 points in rookie Drake Maye’s first start. The New Orleans Saints had 27 as a team in rookie Spencer Rattler’s first start. Will Levis and the Tennessee Titans stink, and they put up 17. Rookie Bo Nix and the Broncos trailed 23-0 after three quarters and managed 16 points in the fourth.
The only other team that scored in single digits on Sunday was the fraudulent Cowboys, a division rival that beat the Giants, 20-15, in a painful Thursday night game two weeks ago. And Dallas laid that 47-9 egg against the Super Bowl contending Detroit Lions.
The Giants scored seven points against a Bengals team that was 1-4 while allowing 29 points per game to opponents coming in.
A major reason was that Bengals defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo out-schemed Daboll early. Daboll did not design runs for Jones early, as he had in Seattle. Cincinnati scored quickly. New York stalled. And the Giants’ head coach and play-caller was never in control of the game.
“I think in the first half when you don’t score any points, it makes it tough,” wide receiver Darius Slayton said. “We didn’t run it as well as we wanted to in the first half, and we didn’t connect on enough passes to overcome that. When you have those two things going on, it’s hard to score points. And when you don’t score points in the first half, it’s hard to win the game.”
Contrasted with last week’s impressive game plan in Seattle, Daboll lacked creativity as the offensive play caller in this prime time bummer.
Then when he did dial something up, he called a throwback play intended for rookie tight end Theo Johnson in the end zone that led to a killer Jones first-quarter interception in the red zone.
Both Jones and Daboll said the quarterback was trying to get the ball out of the back of the end zone. But the coach also said something interesting about the risk he took:
“I’m sure he’d like to have that back,” Daboll said of Jones’ throw. “I’d like to have certainly the play call back when you get a result like that.”
There is nowhere for Daboll to turn on play calling now because he already took it over himself this past offseason.
“Obviously, we don’t want to turn the ball over in that situation. You can put that on me,” he said.
Last year, Daboll yo-yo’d play calling back and forth from offensive coordinator Mike Kafka and even gave it to quarterback coach Shea Tierney one week while searching for answers. Now it’s all on him.
Interestingly enough, the game that Daboll gave play-calling to Tierney at halftime actually was the last time the Giants were shut out for an entire first half: in Week 10 at Dallas last November.
His primary adjustment in Sunday’s second half, instead, was to turn up the aggressiveness on fourth down.
Daboll claimed that had been the Giants’ plan all week, but in reality it was a marked departure from Daboll’s first half strategy, which saw the Giants punt on 4th and 4 from their own 47 and on 4th and 5 from their own 45.
In the second half, Daboll’s desperation motivated a 4th and 2 try from the Giants’ 38 to start the third quarter, which resulted in a turnover on downs. Fortunately for Daboll, the defense bailed him out by forcing a Cincinnati fumble.
Then he converted a 4th and 2 at the Giants’ 40 and a 4th and 1 at the Bengals’ 35 on the home team’s lone touchdown drive in the third quarter. And he followed it up with a 4th and 1 conversion at Cincinnati’s 46 that set up Greg Joseph’s first missed field goal of the fourth.
Daboll’s decision to turn down a game-tying 54-yard field goal try on 4th and 2 at the Bengals’ 36-yard line proved costly, however. And the failed conversion was on the coach, quarterback and offensive line.
Two of the routes on the play for Jalin Hyatt and Theo Johnson were too far down the field. Rookie back Tyrone Tracy Jr. flared out way behind the line of scrimmage.
Wan’Dale Robinson was about to come open over the middle behind Slayton if Jones had waited a half-second longer to throw, but Bengals defensive lineman B.J. Hill beat center John Michael Schmitz inside for a pressure. So Jones chose his first read and the receiver with whom he has the most chemistry, Slayton. Bengals corner D.J. Turner II was there stride for stride to break it up.
The details almost aren’t important anymore, though. The overriding problem is that everything for the Giants on offense is so difficult, so hard.
They need explosive plays, easy yards, better starts and touchdowns — not field goals.
That may be even more difficult to do depending on the results of left tackle Andrew Thomas’ MRI on his foot. With him or without him, Daboll needs to get the running game going like he did in Seattle. The Bengals’ defense made it tougher again Sunday at home.
“They did a good job of moving up front,” Thomas said. “They brought some different pressures. They saw on film that we run the ball pretty well when they’re stacking it, so they had a lot of different looks. Sometimes they were playing base personnel to our sub runs and blitzing. They did a good job up front.”
There is undoubtedly a silver lining in Tracy’s emergence as a quality running back after Joe Schoen selected him in the fifth round out of Purdue.
Think about it: six days from now, if Malik Nabers returns from his two-game concussion absence, the Giants will have two bona fide rookie skill position weapons to deploy against a shaky Philadelphia Eagles defense. It could be the first game Nabers and Tracy start together.
Not just for Sunday’s game against Philly but for the future, that’s a duo the Giants believe will have this offense’s arrow pointing up.
The defense also played pretty well against the Bengals, too. Tracy said it himself:
“If we execute better offensively,” the rookie back said, “we win the game.”
That’s a big ‘if’ for Daboll, Jones and the Giants, though. Because right now, they don’t have answers. They don’t know the ‘how.’
