Upon further review: More thoughts after a second look at Giants vs. Cardinals

This isn’t really a film review. I don’t really do those. It’s more of a brain dump, a “things I think” as I re-watch Sunday’s awful loss by the New York Giants to the Arizona Cardinals.

This is done without the All-22. It’s really just thoughts and observations as I look at the game again.

Sometimes I hate to be right

This is what I tweeted Sunday when Pat Shurmur, as he usually does, deferred after winning the opening coin toss. And, yes, I know there is a typo in the tweet. Whatever.

The Cardinals went 75 yards in 13 plays for a game-opening touchdown. The Giants establish right away that they would a) play with an extra defensive back and one fewer defensive lineman and b) be completely unable to stop the Arizona running game all afternoon.

Daniel Jones’ interception was worse than I thought

He had a clean enough pocket on third-and-13 the first time the Giants had the ball. He threw to Golden Tate who was not only double-covered, but had both Arizona defenders standing between himself and Jones. No way that ball gets to Tate unless he morphs into Spider-Man and reaches over both defenders.

Oh, Antoine

On Chase Edmonds second touchdown run Antoine Bethea should have been able to bring him down at around the 12-yard line, but Edmonds ran right through him.

When the Giants really lost the game

We have been over and over the final 4:29, and it was a bad, inexplicable sequence of decisions for Pat Shurmur. Still, you can easily argue that the Giants lost the game in their final possession of the second quarter and first possession of the third quarter.

As always, Shurmur deferred. Trailing 17-14, the Giants ended up with the ball late in the first half. They reached the Arizona 49 when, with 3:27 left, an open Evan Engram dropped a deep ball from Jones that would have put the Giants in the red zone. A 32-yard Saquon Barkley run that, again, would have put the Giants in the red zone was negated by a Will Hernandez holding call.

The Giants reached Arizona’s 37-yard line, but another hold, this one on Mike Remmers, pushed them out of field goal range.

Add that missed opportunity to going three and out with the opening possession of the second half and that’s a huge wasted stretch of the game by the Giants.

The Rhett Ellison touchdown

I really thought Daniel Jones had thrown an awful ball, and was going to get Rhett Ellison killed, on the 28-yard touchdown pass. I still can’t figure out why the Arizona defensive back at the goal line, who I believe was Budda Baker, froze and watched Ellison catch the ball rather than try to make a play and separate him from the ball.

About those eight sacks

So, whose fault were they, anyway? To be honest, I’m going to let Mark Schofield be judge, jury and executioner on this one once we get access to the All-22. Still, at a quick glance the offensive line didn’t play as badly as the numbers would indicate.

First, two of those sacks came at the end of the game with the Giants in desperation mode. My guess, at a glance, is there are at least three sacks where you can blame Jones for holding the ball too long and two where you can ding Saquon Barkley for misses in blitz pickup.

We’ll see what Mark says.