Giants-Seahawks ‘things I think’: Giants’ season on the brink of disaster

I think that right now the New York Giants are a very bad, awful, embarrassingly inept football team. And, honestly, I might be being kind.

I think I’m not even sure I can summarize all the ways in which the Giants embarrassed themselves on Monday night — and so far during a season in which they not been competitive in front of a national TV audience three times in four weeks. I will, though, try.

• Daniel Jones was sacked 10 times and harassed on almost every drop back. Parris Campbell was also sacked once.
• When he was upright, Jones wasn’t good. He threw two interceptions, including a 97-yard pick-six. He fumbled twice, losing one (a strip sack that gave Seattle the ball inside the Giants’ 10-yard line).
• Jones has now thrown six interceptions, tied with Jimmy Garappolo of the Las Vegas Raiders for most in the league.
• The special teams were pitiful. The Giants committed six accepted special teams penalties, Eric Gray muffed a punt, and the Giants gave up a 23-yard punt return.
• The Giants trailed at the half, 14-3. They have now been outscored in the first half of game by a 77-9 score.
• The tackling was better than in Week 3 vs. San Francisco, except on a 51-yard catch-and run by Noah Fant. Fant tiptoed down the sideline past multiple feeble tackle attempts before being stopped at the 1-yard line.
• In three nationally televised games (vs. the Dallas Cowboys, San Francisco 49ers and the Seahawks) the Giants have been outscored 94-15.
• In two games at home, the Giants have been outscored 64-3.
• There are two teams in the NFL, the Giants and New York Jets, who have not run an offensive play this season while leading in a game.

There was nothing good about Monday night. The most distressing thing about Monday’s blowout loss? The Seahawks weren’t even good. While sitting in the press box I mentioned several times to colleagues that it seemed like Seattle was trying to invite the Giants to stay in the game. Eventually, I sent out these tweets:

Our Tony Del Genio wrote this:

The most amazing thing about it was that the Seahawks played poorly themselves. They were begging to be beaten for most of the first half, but compared to the Giants they looked like worldbeaters.

I think it is is flabbergasting how bad this Giants team looks. This is a team that won a playoff game a season ago and — on paper — fields a superior roster. It is a team whose head coach won Coach of the Year honors a year ago and whose overall coaching staff was lauded as being outstanding. It is a team that had resilience as a hallmark of its surprisingly successful season.

Yet, this team is playing like the 2017 Ben McAdoo or 2021 Joe Judge Giants. It is a coaching staff that has made a number of questionable decisions, both involving personnel and in-game. Being outscored 77-9 over the first halves of four games, and the atrocious, undisciplined why in which the Giants played with 11 days to prepare for Monday is something the coaching staff needs to answer for. The resilience of the 2022 team has, to this point, been nowhere to be found.

Back in March, Giants co-owner John Mara kidded his coach, who seemed like a cigar-smoking hero to Giants fans after the organization’s three previous coaches proved to be monumental failures.

“We kid him, I mean, right now, he’s Bono walking around New York City,” Mara said. “But I’ve told him, I’ve said, ‘In this business, it doesn’t take long to go from Bono to Bozo.”

Daboll had no answers for the way the Giants have played.

“Every year is different,” a somber Daboll said Monday night. “We’re not playing well right now, not coaching well right now. So, got to do a lot better.

“We haven’t played well. We’ve got a lot of work to do and that’s what we’ll do.”

Daboll cut off a questioner asking about the lopsided nature of the Giants’ three losses.

“I know the scores,” he said. “Not good, a lot of work that needs to be done.”

Daboll tried the ‘it’s early in the season’ routine.

“It’s the first quarter of the season, there is a long way to go, but certainly a lot of things we’ve got to do better,” he said. “I have a lot of confidence in the guys in the room. I know the results haven’t shown up. We took some pretty bad beatings, but you own it, you move on and I’ve got a lot of confidence in the players and the coaches and we’ve got to do a better job.”

Still, the Giants have road games coming up the next two weeks against the powerhouse Miami Dolphins and Buffalo Bills.

This Giants’ season is stunningly on the verge of being over before even half the games are played.

Players are also frustrated.

“I think we’re all frustrated, so I know I’ve got to play better and I’m going to work as hard as I possibly can to do that,” Jones said. “I mean obviously I didn’t play well enough. It was unacceptable and I let the team down, so I’ve got to fix it. I’ve got to work hard to get it right and I’m going to do that.”

The team’s 1-3 record, and the shock of how lopsided the scores have been in the losses, has players searching for explanations.

“No expected this to be where we were, where we are, so yeah, there’s some shock but at the end of the day it’s about what we do from here and getting things corrected and playing better football,” Jones said. “I think we all need to play better together, for sure, so that’s what we’re focused on as a group and I’m a big part of that so I’m going to make sure I do that.”

Xavier McKinney knows that the season “could definitely go sideways” at this point.

“I’ve been a part of a team where it has gone sideways. I do understand this league, it’s tough and you’ve got to be able to respond quickly or it could go south, but like I’ve said from the beginning, I believe in the guys that we’ve got in this locker room, I believe in the coaches that we have and at the end of the day, we’ve just got to play better, we’ve got to play more complementary football and that’s what it is,” he said.

“I understand the work that we’ve put in. I understand how we prepare and, ultimately, I understand the talent that we have. We’ve just got to find a way to put it together and right now we are not doing that. So, we’ve just got to find a way, we’ve got to find a way.”

Dexter Lawrence said he is “very shocked” by the way the team has started and said that if it takes him or other leaders “hurtin’ some feelings” to get things turned around then he is willing to do that.

“I’m not afraid to hurt somebody’s feelings,” he said. “ I want to win. Whatever it takes that’s what I’m going to do.”

Something has to happen. I am not sure what that is, but I think it is apparent that this Giants’ season is stunningly on the verge of falling completely apart. If it hasn’t done that already.