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This One Play Tells You Everything You Need to Know About the Giants’ Inept Offense

In Tuesday’s Hot Clicks: Jason Garrett is on the hot seat, a scary incident at a WWE show and more.

Dan Gartland

This One Play Tells You Everything You Need to Know About the Giants’ Inept Offense
This One Play Tells You Everything You Need to Know About the Giants’ Inept Offense /

Jason Garrett might be out of a job soon

The Buccaneers entered Monday night in need of a win. After two losses and a bye, it had been almost a month since their last victory (on Oct. 24 against the Bears). Good thing they were playing the Giants.

Tampa Bay won, 30–10, but frankly it’s a miracle that New York managed to score at all. Daniel Jones completed 23 of 38 passes for 167 yards with an interception and two touchdowns. The Giants converted just one out of nine third-down attempts. They had a pathetic 215 yards of total offense and had only three plays of more than 15 yards. Their lone touchdown was this (nearly busted) trick pass to offensive tackle Andrew Thomas that came after a lucky interception set the Giants up with a first-and-goal from the 5.

It was an embarrassing night for the offense top to bottom. Prized running back Saquon Barkley, finally healthy again after missing most of last season with a torn ACL and the past four games with an ankle injury, carried the ball only six times. New York’s biggest free-agent acquisition, Kenny Golladay, who signed a four-year, $72 million contract before this season, caught just one pass (on the Giants’ third play of the game) and was targeted only twice. The list goes on and on. Perhaps it’s best to just show what the Giants were doing.

What is that?! Have you ever seen three offensive players collide in the middle of the field during an NFL game before? That’s the kind of miscommunication you’re more likely to see in your family’s backyard game of two-hand touch on Thanksgiving.

A college basketball coach told me once, “Offense is about creating space, defense is about taking space away.” It’s clichéd, oversimplified and about a different sport, but it’s the first thing I thought of when I saw that play. Daniel Jones might be terrible, but even Tom Brady wouldn’t be able to make anything happen with three receivers playing lockdown coverage on one another.

As ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky points out in the tweet above, that play is the fault of the coaching staff. And it wasn’t the only blunder offensive coordinator and play-caller Jason Garrett made. There was the aforementioned inability to get the ball into the hands of the Giants’ biggest offensive weapons, as well as a fourth-and-1 play where New York lined up in a heavy formation with Collin Johnson as the only wide receiver and Jones unsuccessfully targeted him. (Johnson ranks ninth on the team in targets this year.)

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So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that head coach Joe Judge hinted in his postgame press conference that Garrett might be out of a job soon.

“We’ve got to do a better job of scoring points,” Judge said. “I know that sounds pretty obvious and to the point, but I’m just gonna keep it blunt right there: We’ve got to do a better job of putting our players in position to make plays. We have good players. We’ve got to put them in a better position to capitalize on it. That’s it. We’ve got to make sure we sit down tomorrow as a coaching staff to understand how we’ve got to play this game to give our players a chance to make plays.

“As a player, there’s some things I’d be frustrated with as well.”

Asked whether he still has faith in Garrett as his offensive coordinator, Judge gave a noncommittal response:

“I have faith in all the people on our team—players, coaches, everybody,” he said. “But look, we’ll assess everything as a team, make any move we need to make going forward.”

That last line is pretty telling about Judge’s feelings toward Garrett, as was what he said when a reporter tried to ask a follow-up question. Before the reporter could even finish their sentence Judge shot back, “I’m not gonna get into that right now.”

As a Giants fan who spent most of the second half getting a head start on his Christmas shopping—hey, if the Giants weren’t going to be productive, I might as well be—I can’t wait to see Garrett sent packing. 

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Dan Gartland
DAN GARTLAND

Dan Gartland is the writer and editor of Sports Illustrated’s flagship daily newsletter, SI:AM, covering everything an educated sports fan needs to know. He joined the SI staff in 2014, having previously been published on Deadspin and Slate. Gartland, a graduate of Fordham University, is a former Sports Jeopardy! champion (Season 1, Episode 5).

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