Stats That Mattered in Giants 27-22 Loss to Commanders

The Giants had another game with the Washington Commanders that was up for grabs but slipped away due to these consequential numbers.

Nov 3, 2024; East Rutherford, New Jersey, USA; Washington Commanders wide receiver Terry McLaurin (17) catches a touchdown pass as New York Giants cornerback Deonte Banks (3) defends during the first half at MetLife Stadium. / Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images

With a first-half passing debacle followed by an offensive resurgence in the second half, the New York Giants finally gave their home fans something to cheer about at MetLife Stadium. Still, it wouldn’t be enough as they fell to the Washington Commanders 27-22 to suffer a sweep in the season series. 

The Giants came into the rematch, whose prelude went 21-18 in favor of the Commanders in Week 2, seeking to rebound from four home affairs featuring disastrous offensive production with little evidence of scoring. 

They would accomplish that against their divisional foes, but not without a massive roadblock in the passing game that made their unit one-dimensional until midway through the fourth straight defeat. 

Daniel Jones and the offense found their groove in the third quarter to create their eighth game with at least 300 total yards this year and tally three touchdowns, two of which helped the gunslinger earn his first passing scores at home in over 670 days. 

On the other side, they let the Commanders pull away from the contest with three of their own, and back were the difficult woes of trying to win a football game from behind multiple scores. 

The defense couldn't put a finger on the Washington backfield for the entirety of the ballgame and it was smooth sailing for a franchise running away with the NFC East and seeking their first division crown since the 2021 campaign. 

Along with being swept, Washington sent the Giants down to 0-5 at home and 0-4 against their divisional opponents, a record that extends a 4-12-1 resume against those same teams in the Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll era. 

Standing at 2-7, the Giants are still left searching for answers to help them win football games while their season has now presumably ended well before the Thanksgiving marker. 

Their next game features a date with the Carolina Panthers, a fellow 2-7 squad that is struggling to compete weekly, who will also be in contention for the No. 1 pick in next April’s draft. 

The Giants might not be thinking about that reality as they leave with their fourth straight defeat, but it’s one that was made louder by the latest loss to Washington and these numbers, which made it as frustrating for the team and the fanbase as many of their defeats in 2024.

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New York Giants quarterback Daniel Jones (8) attempts to score on a 2-point conversion before being tackled by Washington Commanders linebacker Frankie Luvu (4) during a game between the New York Giants and the Washington Commanders at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford on Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. / Julian Leshay Guadalupe/NorthJersey.com / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Given how poor both sides’ defenses have been against the run, it was no surprise that the Giants elected to attack the Washington Commanders on the ground out of the gate. Still, it was hard to expect them to be completely unable to move the football through the air. 

In the first half of Sunday’s game, the Giants and Commanders traded blows with their running backs on their first pair of possessions. They combined for 210 rushing yards in the first 30 minutes, with a massive 142 yards going in favor of New York behind the 100-yard tandem of Daniel Jones and Tyrone Tracy Jr. 

However, in the few plays in which they found themselves in passing situations, the Giants were completely inept in moving the football. They finished the half with zero yards of aerial offense. Jones’s stat line read 4 of 6 for 0 yards, one touchdown, and one sack for a loss of eight yards, and the Giants left for the locker room with their worst first half of passing production this season. 

On their second possession of the first quarter, the Giants got their rushing groove going on the Commanders’ porous interior by carrying it five straight times with their duo of Jones and Tracy. They moved the ball 73 yards from their own 8-yard line to the Washington 29 with four double-digit carries that amassed as much as 24 yards to approach the red zone for the first time. 

Yet on the following first down, Jones dropped back for his first passing attempt of the afternoon, and it was forced out of his grasp by Dante Fowler and recovered by inside linebacker Bobby Wagner all the way down at the Giants’ 31-yard line after a scramble. Washington took the fumble and cashed it in three plays for a touchdown by wide receiver Terry McLaurin for a 7-0 lead. 

The next drive saw the Giants advance it 73 yards in 16 plays but with only a slightly better result for the team. Jones and company ran it nine consecutive plays to the Commanders’ 39-yard line before attempting a screen pass to Wan’Dale Robinson that went backward for six yards and pushed back the progress. 

That put Jones into the negative until he reached even with a 2-yard toss to tight end Chris Manhertz, who had a touchdown reversed last Monday for a penalty, for his first touchdown of the season to cap the team’s longest drive and make the game a 7-7 draw. 

The rest of the half saw Jones go incomplete twice, and he finished as the first player since the 2000 season to have a passing touchdown and zero passing yards in a half, per ESPN Stats and Info. The Giants had no receiver hold over five yards receiving, while Washington had 113 yards and two more touchdowns collected in the same span to take a 21-7 advantage into the break. 

It was an embarrassing display for the Giants offense that did improve for 326 total yards as the game went on. Still, it wasn’t enough as Washington continued to move the pigskin easily in both phases of their operation and sneak away with 358 total yards and a five-point victory for the season sweep.

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Nov 3, 2024; East Rutherford, New Jersey, USA; Washington Commanders running back Austin Ekeler (30) scores a 1st half touchdown against the New York Giants at MetLife Stadium. / Robert Deutsch-Imagn Images

In the first game of the season with Washington, the Giants defense had at least one thing to hang their hats on, shutting down the Commanders offense inside the red zone. They did it six times in Week 2 in a 21-18 loss but didn’t have the same exact luck on Sunday. 

Despite the Commanders being a team that struggled a little inside the 20-yard line this season and was ranked 24th in red zone scoring percentage, they managed to punch it in three times on a Giants unit that just didn’t show up with the same aggressiveness when it mattered most. 

As mentioned, the first score for the visitors came off the heels of Daniel Jones's fumble that rolled back 40 yards into Giants territory. Quarterback Jayden Daniels, the easy top Offensive Rookie of the Year candidate who finished the contest with 15 completions for 209 yards, got the party started on a three-play drive that took just 1:11 off the clock, connecting with his No. 1 target Terry McLaurin for a one-yard score and the first with Deonte Banks in coverage. 

Daniels doubled down on New York on the next drive, carrying the Commanders 11 plays and 70 yards downfield with the help of his legs and some quality rushing by Austin Ekeler, who was starting in the absence of Brian Robinson Jr. The two combined for 49 yards on the ground to take the Commanders to the brink of the goalline before Ekeler took it into the endzone for a second touchdown and the 14-7 advantage. 

Still, Washington wasn’t done pounding it down the throats of the Giants' defense before the first half ended. It would take one more 12-play, 57-yard possession, their longest of the game, to earn some extra points heading into the break, and that was powered by more gashes in the trenches and a second McLaurin touchdown of 18 yards to give the Commanders a 21-7 lead at the midway point. 

Things tightened up in the next two frames as the Giants defense held Washington to two field goals while they fought to scratch and claw their way back into the football game. The Commanders never really had to worry, as the Giants’ run on timely mistakes continued, helping them advance their other drives long enough to drain the clock and hold onto their seventh win of the season. 

It was a rare sight to see Shane Bowen’s group get pushed back as much as they did, especially down at the goalline that was more of their staple within his system brought over from Tennessee. It came off the heels of holding the Steelers to a 0-for-4 night last weekend, but was the second time in three games that an opponent scored more than three points on New York three times inside the red zone. 

“We've got to be better at situational, knowing what's going on during the game and how we've got to perform during that time,” defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence said after the game about his unit’s performance. 

“They gave us a chance to win, but we didn't take advantage of it. I think the offense played well enough for us to win, but the defense just got beat up today."

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New York Giants wide receiver Wan'Dale Robinson (17) catches a pass in the fourth quarter during a game between the New York Giants and the Washington Commanders at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford on Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. / Julian Leshay Guadalupe/NorthJersey.com / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Another confusing part of the Giants’ loss to the Commanders was how they operated in situations after they had scored points on the scoreboard. 

After falling behind 21-7 at the half, the Giants came back out swinging and gave the Commanders a fight on the offensive end of the field. They posted three consecutive scoring drives, two of which resulted in rare home touchdowns, to bring the game within a one-score affair each time. 

However, on both point-after attempts, head coach Brian Daboll decided to play what he referenced as the game of “analytics” and leave the offense out on the field for two-point conversions, which would be a decision that blew up in the Giants face and momentarily had a real impact on the outcome of the contest. 

On their second possession of the second half, the Giants went 13 plays and 80 yards downfield in a 6:08 chunk of game time and finally made some serious progress within the realm of the passing attack. Daniel Jones connected with three different receivers, including three plays of double-digit yardage, and led the team down to the Washington 2-yard line, where he bulldozed his way through two defenders to punch in a rushing touchdown to cut the deficit to 24-16. 

Riding off the energy of Jones’s big play, Daboll bypassed the extra point with Jude McAtnamey and went for the two points using his quarterback’s legs. It only backfired as a gang of defenders swarmed Jones and never had a chance to get the ball upfield, leaving the score at an eight-point difference that mirrored last week’s game in Pittsburgh. 

Then, on the following drive, the head coach showed he didn’t learn his lesson the first time by choosing to take the gamble again after a beautiful 35-yard touchdown pass to rookie tight end Theo Johnson. He finally had his moment after dropping four targets earlier in the day and it would still be soiled by another failed two-point conversion attempt, this time on a failed throw by Jones into the paint for the hopeful score to cut it to 27-24. 

The two errors might not have mattered at the end of the contest, with the Commanders winning by five points behind two Austin Seibert field goals. Still, it created another head-scratching display of decision-making for Daboll, a man whose job appears to be safe for 2025 but whose case isn’t improving. The Giants were only successful on 25 percent of their two-point tries in 2023, and that number has yet to reach beyond zero in four attempts this season. 

As much as the Giants can say they’ve grown tired of just settling for three points or less, moments like two missed conversions should make them change their viewpoint next time they are down by multiple scores, with momentum building for the offense.

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Nov 3, 2024; East Rutherford, New Jersey, USA; Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels (5) scrambles during the first half against the New York Giants at MetLife Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images / Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images

For the first time this season, the Giants defense posted another peculiar statistic in a more dominant campaign in the pass-rushing department. They’ve led the NFL in total sacks with 35 accumulated through the first eight weeks, but Shane Bowen’s unit put up their first goose egg of the year in the sacks column as Washington completely shut down their efforts. 

Despite entering the second meeting with New York having 24 sacks, the ninth-highest total in the NFL, the Commanders' offensive line improved greatly. It totally stifled the oncoming pressure from the Giants’ front four and made it irrelevant for their rookie quarterback. 

As a result, Daniels had a fairly clean day darting the football, including an average throw of 9.5 yards that ate up the defense for chunk plays against a befuddled secondary. The average pass marked his second-highest of the 2024 season and tied with his outing against Cleveland in Week 5, when he trounced them for 238 yards in the air. 

The Giants were barely active in the backfield whether the Commanders ran or threw the football, notching just three tackles for loss, two pass deflections, and two quarterback hits. Even on the rare occasions that they got a finger on the opposing gunslinger, he would bounce it outside to either take it upfield for important yardage or wait for his arsenal’s routes to develop downfield. 

Daniel’s legs, which collected 35 yards on eight carries, including a long run of 16 yards, gashed the Giants’ unsuccessful pass rush on a couple of huge late down conversions, but none more notable than the 4th-and-1 at the New York 12-yard line in the second quarter. He evaded the pressure on a desperation stop and scrambled to the right sideline for six yards to pick up the first down that would lead to the Commanders touchdown by Austin Ekeler to go up 14-7. 

The rest of the afternoon saw much of the same result, as the defensive front was left with nothing to hold their heads high on, and the secondary continued to get shredded for big yardage down the stretch of the second half. To make it worse, not one of the interior seven guys ended the game with more than one tackle for loss, which was a real indictment for a team that’s taken pride in putting opposing offenses behind the sticks. 

Regarding the key players, Dexter Lawrence finished his outing with six tackles to finish third on the team leaderboard in production, with most of their work coming in the run game or past the line of scrimmage. He posted what would be his second straight game without notching a sack, for which he leads the league with nine sacks and has helped the Giants force sacks on 13.3 percent of their snaps entering Week 9. 

Brian Burns was even quieter, with only four stops and one pass deflection for his second week of 4 tackles or less in the last three. The Giants' highest-paid edge rusher has gotten going in recent weeks with four consecutive sacks. Still, it doesn’t appear to be nearing the destructive work he had in Carolina when he posted 12.5 sacks just two seasons ago. 

Even Azeez Ojulari, who has five sacks to his name in the same span, was out of the picture with just two tackles on his resume. Ojulari is potentially a name for trade suitors ahead of Tuesday’s trade deadline, and it will be interesting to see if that stat line was his last as a member of the Giants.

The last time the two teams faced off, the Giants sacked Daniels five times for a combined loss of 16 yards, but what a difference that healthy starting offensive protection makes when the opposing front ranks at the top of the league in pass-blocking metrics.

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