What the heck?!

The play calling was a little better. The running game was OK. The passing game was better than it's been in
weeks (as far as taking what they gave us). The defense played better, in my opinion, than in recent games.
So what happened?

I think this week's breakdown was a result of a weaker-than-recognized offense. Here's why:

You can't give me any reasonable excuse, try as you might, that we should kick a field goal when we start
out with a 1st-and-10 inside the 5 yard line. There's just no excuse, no excuse. The defense, which has been
made fun, has been critiqued, and has been re-critiqued, stepped up and secured an important turnover. The
opportunity for the offense to capitalize was there like a Christmas gift just waiting to be opened. I'll be
damned if we just took the gift and put it back under the tree. Who in the hell does that? We do, apparently.

People might blame this loss on the defense, and many will focus on the defense because the press has done so
recently. The game ended with a defensive breakdown, so that's the impression that stays in peoples' minds.
Some of the aforementioned criticisms are deserved, but there was one point in the game where the announcers
were discussing that the Giants' possession time was twice that of the Chargers', and we had nothing to show
for it. Why? It's because we POSSESS the ball while scoring NOTHING or scoring VERY LITTLE. Mere possessions
are good sometimes, but not if they happen drive after drive after drive.

The offense can move the ball, they just can't move it once they get inside the 15 - at least on a consistent
level. You say "But the Giants scored two touchdowns!" True. So what? I've noted on several occasions that
we just don't sustain scoring drives regularly enough. And I still maintain that position. Bad play from the
defense has masked the offensive problems that we've had for weeks.

We have so little confidence in our offense that we can't get a TD with a 1st-and-10 inside the 5. To me,
that is just not acceptable. "Well, we had penalties" you say. Yes, we did. It doesn't make it any more
acceptable, does it?

To me, that field goal was more demoralizing than having the TD scored on us at the end. It was a POSSESSION
that meant nothing for us. Scoring a TD would have put it out of reach for the Chargers.

I'm not saying that the defense played with "Steel Curtain"-esque play . In fact, they couldn't be further from that. What I am saying is this: We have to take advantage of the opportunities that our defense DOES give us. People have knocked the defense for weeks, myself included, but they produced turnovers for us today and our offense
didn't get it done. When in the position to be "hero" today, we asked the offense to step up, and they didn't.

We kicked a freakin' field goal. This one took some wind out of the sails for sure. This game will be marked as a "defensive letdown" but the offense sucked when we needed them to step up.