Let's review Saturday night's 27-26 victory by the New York Giants over the Indianapolis Colts in our traditional 'Kudos & Wet Willies' style.
Kudos
Ryan Nassib -- Perhaps being bumped to the third team last week after spending the entire spring and summer as the No. 2 quarterback was a wake-up call for the second-year quarterback. Nassib was brilliant after finally entering Saturday's game vs. the Indianapolis Colts with slightly more than eight minutes to play. He led scoring drives of 11 plays, 92 yards and nine plays, 86 yards. Nassib overcame a fourth-and-16 with a 28-yard strike Adrien Robinson, and hit Corey Washington for a game-winning 4-yard touchdown pass.
In all, he finished 11-for-15 for 158 yards. and a passer rating of 129.3. It was a performance, especially in light of Curtis Painter going only 6-for-15, that likely left little doubt who the Giants No. 2 quarterback is.
Corey Washington -- Washington has three touchdown catches, including two game-winners, in three preseason games. The 6-foot-4, 214-pound Washington has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that third- and fourth-string NFL cornerbacks can't handle him. Now, all that remains is for the Giants to get the undrafted free agent from Newberry College some first-half reps against better competition.
Marcus Harris -- Harris continued to impress with four catches for 41 yards. He now has eight catches in three games. While Washington is drawing all the headlines of late Harris is continuing a strong bid for a roster spot.
Damontre Moore -- Moore had four tackles, a sack and a pressure in 30 defensive snaps, continuing to look like a much-improved player from a season ago.
Devon Kennard -- The rookie fifth-round pick continued to show his potential. He blew up a running back on his way to a quarterback sack while blitzing Saturday night, had another pressure and finished with five tackles, one for loss, in 33 snaps.
Steve Weatherford -- I don't care what the numbers were. The guy had to punt nine times (NINE!!!) in a lousy preseason game. At one point it looked like Weatherford might finish the game with more punts than the Giants had completed passes.
Jacquian Williams -- Ball carrier, meet Mr. Williams. That's how things seemed to go Saturday night. Williams had nine (yes, nine) tackles in 30 snaps. That's an impressive number, to say the least.
Adrien Robinson -- This might be a historic occasion. It might be the first time in his three seasons with the Giants that Robinson has earned a 'Kudos.' Robinson made a huge play during the Giants game-winning drive, hauling in a 28-yard pass from Nassib on fourth-and-16 to keep the comeback alive. He followed that up with a 33-yard reception on the very next play, a ball he nearly took to the end zone. The two plays showed why the Giants have not given up on the frustratingly inconsistent third-year player.
Wet Willies
First-Team Offense -- Let's not even try to split hairs and go by name here. The entire offensive unit was, well, completely offensive. When Tom Coughlin says "There's no production. There's nothing to look at from a production standpoint" he isn't kidding.
The blocking wasn't good. When Indianapolis blitzed or stunted the line had difficulty picking it up. Each time that happened it looked like a jail break in the direction of Eli Manning. Places for Giants running backs, other than down to the ground in the arms of Colts defenders, were also non-existent.
Victor Cruz finally got his hands on a pass, catching a 51-yarder. He then fumbled it away. Officially, though, the play never happened because of an Indianapolis penalty.
Manning wasn't good at all. He was under duress, true, but there were way too many reminders of the way he played in 2013. There were some back-foot throws, times, where he seemed to be bailing away from oncoming rushers, a couple of passes that could have been completions that instead sailed high and out of the reach of receivers and an awful decision to force a pass toward a covered Cruz. That resulted in an interception which, thankfully, was wiped off the books by a Colts penalty.
Kelcy Quarles -- Give the undrafted free agent defensive tackle credit for one thing -- he played with energy. Too much energy. Quarles committed three penalties, including two 15-yarders. He was penalized for a horse-collar tackle and for piling on after a Moore sack. If he wants to stick around he needs to play with better discipline than that.
Jason Pierre-Paul -- I keep waiting for something, anything that provides a real glimpse of the player that Pierre-Paul used to be -- and claims he still is. Pierre-Paul played 23 snaps on Saturday night and did not even make the stat sheet. No tackles. No pressures. No assists. No passes batted down. Nothing. An elite player has to do better than that, even in a preseason game. Doesn't he?
Those Stupid Rules -- There were 26 accepted penalties and a handful of other declined or off-setting penalties. The result was a brutal game to watch that took nearly four hours to complete. The NFL can't be serious about turning its regular-season game into four-hour versions of patty-cake. Can they?