Chicago 17 – Giants 13: Instant Reaction

The Giants drop to 0-2 for the fourth year in a row.

There wasn’t a whole lot of good news to offset a lot of bad news, but the New York Giants, in their 17-13 loss to the Chicago Bears, did show some resiliency in the face of some significant adversity.

After spotting the Bears a 17-0 halftime lead, the Giants defense finally woke up, realized they had a job to do, and got it done. They blanked the Bears in the scoring column while allowing for the Giants offense to attempt a 13-point comeback that just fell short of topping the Bears’ point total on an incomplete pass to receiver Golden Tate for which Tate was also called for offensive pass interference.

The resiliency shown by the Giants on both sides of the ball was a much-needed sight after the team suffered two very significant injuries on offense in the first half. 

The first and most serious of the two was suffered by running back Saquon Barkley, who, per multiple reports and per a source, is believed to have suffered a torn ACL that will almost certainly end his season.

The other injury was a toe issue suffered by receiver Sterling Shepard, who tried to gut it out at the start of the third quarter but could not run and cut and eventually came out of the game.

To give an idea of how the Giants defense improved as the game went on, the Bears put a 12-play, 82-yard scoring drive together on their first series of the game. 

Quarterback Mitchell Trubisky was barely harassed in the pocket and somehow managed to find the zone coverages' soft spots while converting four out of four third-down attempts.

But after what head coach Joe Judge hinted was an animated halftime speech, the Giants defense was much better, taking away the underneath stuff from Trubisky and the Bears.

They did have one close shave, though in the fourth quarter when the Bears threatened to add to their 17-13 lead on the game's final drive. However, kicker Cairo Santos missed a 50-yard field goal attempt wide left, which left it up to Daniel Jones and the Giants offense, who unfortunately fell 10 yards short of payday.

Some other takeaways from the game…

Jones added two more turnovers, an interception, and fumble, to his career totals. 

That’s four turnovers for Jones in six quarters of play this season, not a very good start for the quarterback, who now has 14 interceptions and 11 lost fumbles after posting a pedestrian 25 of 40 pass completions for 241 yards, and the interception. 

Jones was also sacked four times, bringing his 2020 season total to seven sacks.

Tight end Evan Engram came to play this week, catching six out of eight pass targets for 65 yards to lead the team in both receptions and receiving yards.

Blake Martinez once again finished as the team leader in tackles with eight (six solo). Martinez also recorded one of the Giants four sacks and had a tackle for a loss among his production.

An odd moment when on the first defensive series, safety Nate Ebner was on the field for defense. 

Over the last three seasons with the Patriots, Ebner has primarily been a special teams player who has barely played a snap or two on defense. 

Yet there he was, part of the Giants big nickel package that they ran almost exclusively on the Bears opening drive.