2011-2012 Giants Season In Review, Week 12: Saints 49, Giants 24

The New York Giants Week 12 encounter with the New Orleans Saints, a Monday Night Football encounter that was never competitive as the Saints mauled the defenseless Giants, 49-24.

The Giants were actually in this game with 9:30 left in the second quarter, after Lawrence Tynes made a 42-yard field goal to make the score Saints 7, Giants 3. After that, however, this turned into a debacle for the Giants.

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The Giants offense tried to keep up with the high-flying Saints. Eli Manning passed for 406 yards, Victor Cruz had nine catches for 157 yards and two touchdowns, Danny Ware caught eight passes and Hakeem Nicks hauled in seven. The Giants gained 465 yards in total offense.

There was simply no way to keep up with New Orleans. From the time the game was 7-3 the Saints scored on four straight possessions, and put up points six of the final eight times they had the ball. New Orleans totaled a ridiculous 577 yards total offense in a game that was an embarrassment in front of a national TV audience for the Giants and defensive coordinator Perry Fewell. The Saints scored so quickly and easily that the Giants actually had the ball longer than New Orleans, 31:28-28:32.

The loss was New York's third straight and dropped the Giants to 6-5, one game behind the Dallas Cowboys in the NFC East. It led me to write this, for which I end up looking dumb.

Here is part of what coach Tom Coughlin said in his press conference the day after the loss:

"You're not going to win the game, you're not going to pull off what you go in there for without stopping them. Quite frankly, we didn't do that. ... We didn't cover very well, which I mentioned last night. I thought we prepared well, but we didn't execute. If you don't execute, the best laid plans are not going to be there to be accomplished."

The Giants lost Osi Umenyiora and Mark Herzlich to ankle injuries in this game. The Herzlich injury, of course, led the Giants to the very fortuitous decision to bring back Chase Blackburn, whose presence ended up stabilizing the porous defense.

(E-mail Ed at bigblueview@gmail.com | Follow Big Blue View on Twitter | 'Like' Big Blue View on Facebook.)