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Joe Judge got fired and ridiculed after running two straight QB sneaks with Jake Fromm to create room to punt the ball in Week 18 of the 2021 NFL season.
And on Monday night, with America watching, Brian Daboll’s Giants offense did exactly the same thing.
On 3rd and 11 at the Giants’ 24-yard line, trailing 14-3 with 1:14 left in the first half, Daniel Jones handed the ball off to Matt Breida for a measly 4-yard gain to set up a punt.
On top of that, after the game Daboll claimed Jones ran the wrong play because he misheard the coaches’ play call.
The crowd booed. The fans couldn’t believe it.
Maybe that’s because they’ve seen it before.
Have they seen this kind of ineptitude before, though? This glaring lack of discipline? This level of underachieving from a team with legitimate talent that reared its head again in a pathetic 24-3 loss to the Seahawks on Monday Night Football at MetLife Stadium?
Judge was rebuilding a broken roster. Daboll is in Year 2 with a playoff team and that had some money to spend in the spring. His 2022 Coach of the Year Award, however, feels like a distant memory.
Jones was sacked 11 times on Monday. Eleven.
The Giants’ 18 sacks allowed in their first two home games of the season is a new NFL record, per ESPN Stats & Info.
Could Jones have played better? Sure. He said so himself.
“I didn’t play well enough,” Jones said. “It was unacceptable, and I let the team down.”
But the coach didn’t help his quarterback. Jones is looking over his shoulder for pressure at every turn. And most of the time, it’s coming.
“There’s some shock,” Jones said of the state of his team.
No one wants to hear about injuries to the offensive line, either.
Rookie center John Michael Schmitz (shoulder), guard Shane Lemieux (abductor) and tight end Daniel Bellinger (knee) all went down on Monday to go along with scratched running back Saquon Barkley (high right ankle sprain) and left tackle Andrew Thomas (hamstring).
But keeping players healthy is a part of the entire organization’s job. That includes the training staff and the GM, too. It’s been a problem here for a long time. And it keeps getting blamed on head coaches and field turf, but it’s a much bigger issue than that.
Still, the Seattle Seahawks had only one of their regular starting five O-linemen playing his normal position by the end of Monday’s first half. Everyone faces adversity.
Some coaches and teams just fight through it and figure it out.
The Giants’ defense was fighting on Monday, at least. Kayvon Thibodeaux had two sacks.
It wasn’t enough, though. This team is on the verge of coming apart at the seams. And if they do, they will simply be taking their cue from Daboll.
Their head coach threw his arms in the air as Thomas McGaughey’s special teams group committed a stunning six penalties. Then, in the third quarter, something happened between Daboll and Jones that may come to define this disaster season:
Jones threw a red zone interception that Seahawks rookie corner Devon Witherspoon returned 97 yards for a touchdown and a 21-3 Seattle lead with 1:03 remaining in the third quarter.
And when Jones walked to the sideline, and Daboll started pressing him on his mistake, Jones walked right by his coach.
Then Daboll approached Jones on the bench to review the interception on a tablet, took a look and then tossed the tablet down in disgust in the hands of QB coach Shea Tierney.
“I was trying to show him [or] kind of see what he thought and then tell him what I saw,” Daboll said. What did he want Jones to do on that play?
“Well, obviously not throw an interception,” Daboll deadpanned.
“Terrible decision and awful mistake,” Jones said, always taking the high road.
GM Joe Schoen’s offensive line depth proved atrocious against a Seahawks defense that was hemorrhaging yards in their first three games. Left tackle Josh Ezeudu, Schmitz, right guard Marcus McKethan and right tackle Evan Neal are all Schoen draft picks.
Schoen’s lack of a punt returner reared its head when rookie Eric Gray muffed a first quarter punt, which was an inevitability to anyone who watches the team practice.
Nick McCloud recovered that one, but then Daboll put corner Adoree Jackson of all people back to replace Gray for the rest of the game.
Jackson, the Giants’ top corner, got hurt returning a punt last year — a mistake Daboll still refuses to own to this day.
The facts are this, however:
The Giants are 1-3 with road games at the Miami Dolphins and Buffalo Bills on deck. Tyrod Taylor has played in three of the Giants’ four games because they were blowouts.
Daboll’s offense has scored a total of nine first-half points this season: zero against the Cowboys, zero against the Cardinals, six against the 49ers and three against the Seahawks. The Giants have led for 19 total seconds in their four games, at the end of their Week 2 comeback in Arizona.
Former Giant Geno Smith, the Seahawks’ QB, was absolutely livid at a sideline hit by Isaiah Simmons that injured Smith’s knee. So Monday’s game got chippy as Smith and Julian Love took it to their former franchise.
“Ugly situation, but I feel a lot better,” Smith said, who said he heard jawing from “the coaches [and] the fans. It is what it is. Anytime you’re on the road it’s gonna be like that. So we expected it.”
But no matter: by the late third quarter, Giants fans were streaming for the exits. By the early fourth quarter, they were gone.
By the middle of the fourth quarter, the boos from the disgusted Giants fans were replaced by cheers and chants of “Hawks!” from the visitors.
Even ESPN’s Joe Buck and Troy Aikman couldn’t wait until the broadcast was over.
Schoen’s and Daboll’s Giants are a laughingstock. And it’s hard to imagine they’ll be allowed to play in too many more prime time games.
Because no one wants to watch this.
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Pat Leonard
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