More stories

  • in

    Giants Bumble Their Way Into a Win to Retain Playoff Hopes

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storygiants 23, cowboys 19Giants Bumble Their Way Into a Win to Retain Playoff HopesThe Giants’ topsy-turvy season had a fittingly odd ending. Now the team awaits the outcome of the Sunday night game between Philadelphia and Washington to learn its playoff fate.Giants running back Wayne Gallman’s late fumble against the Cowboys Sunday threw the game into momentary disarray. The officials ultimately ruled that Gallman picked up a key first down that would allow the Giants to run out the remaining clock in the victory.Credit…Robert Deutsch/USA Today Sports, via ReutersJan. 3, 2021Updated 9:30 p.m. ETPerhaps it is no surprise that a Giants regular season that began with five successive defeats, one victory in the first eight games and a startling late-season charge into playoff contention would not conclude with a routine, humdrum game. No, this topsy-turvy Giants season deserved to end with gripping drama, slapstick failure and ultimately gratifying perseverance.Sunday’s game against the Dallas Cowboys, with a potential postseason berth on the line, did not disappoint. In frantic fashion, the Giants spent nearly the entire second half desperately trying to cling to a tenuous 11-point first-half lead they had built.The tension built until the final 58 seconds of regulation, with the reeling Giants still ahead by 4 points, when the game officials huddled, and then turned to a video replay, to decide what had transpired at the bottom of a pileup caused by a shocking, bumbling fumble by running back Wayne Gallman at the Giants’ 39-yard line.Several players from both teams pounced on Gallman as he appeared to awkwardly sit directly on the loose football that had inexplicably slipped from his hands at the end of a crucial run. And when officials combed through the mass of contorted bodies atop him, there was only more confusion about the outcome as two officials initially pointed in separate directions — one awarded possession to Dallas, the other to the Giants. Moments later, the officials conferred and ruled that the Giants not only had retained the football, but that Gallman had picked up a key first down that would allow them to run out the remaining clock.Still, a last, agonizing replay review ensued, after which the call on the field was not reversed. The Giants (6-10) had earned a 23-19 victory that ended the team’s seven-game losing streak to Dallas (6-10) and temporarily kept their playoff hopes alive. If the Philadelphia Eagles defeat the Washington Football Team on Sunday night, the Giants, as champions of the N.F.C. East, would host a wild-card game next weekend against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (11-5).The fumble, and who recovered it, was not the only controversial late-game sequence in Sunday’s game. With about seven minutes left in the fourth quarter, Giants wide receiver Dante Pettis caught a 10-yard pass, which proved pivotal when Giants place-kicker Graham Gano booted a 50-yard field goal on the next play that extended the Giants’ lead to 23-19. But video replays of the Pettis reception appeared to show that the football contacted the turf in a way that would have ruled the pass incomplete. Even though an incompletion would have moved the Giants out of field goal position, Dallas Coach Mike McCarthy did not challenge the play.The Pettis catch, and the Gano field goal it set up, became meaningful on the subsequent possession when Dallas drove inside the Giants’ 10-yard line with less than two minutes remaining. While the Cowboys were pushed back when quarterback Andy Dalton was sacked by Giants lineman Leonard Williams, if not for Gano’s field goal, they could have played conservatively for a field-goal attempt that would have given them the lead. Instead, needing a touchdown, Dalton scrambled on a third-and-17, and again under pressure from Williams, flung a desperate pass into the end zone that was intercepted by the Giants rookie safety Xavier McKinney.McCarthy said he did not challenge the Pettis reception because it was “too close” and a “bang-bang type of situation.” He added: “The three timeouts were obviously of high value there.”Roughly 15 minutes after Sunday’s game, Giants Coach Joe Judge said he would not be idle as he waited for the result of the game between the Eagles and Washington. Judge planned to go to his office and begin preparing for Tampa Bay.His assessment of the Giants’ season considered other factors.“Our season showed we had a lot of growth,” said Judge, the Giants’ rookie head coach. “I found out more about our team when we were 0-5 and 1-7. We showed a lot of character in those moments.”Judge added: “I told the guys how proud I was of them today. We had a good year — we improved every game.”Judge also said he was not surprised by the tense final moments of Sunday’s game.“I knew it would go down to the wire, as all of our division games have,” Judge said.The game did not begin as if it would be hotly contested to the end. Early on, the Giants dominated, defensively and most surprisingly on offense.Despite scoring only 26 points in their previous three games, the Giants scored a touchdown on their opening drive when wide receiver Sterling Shepard dashed 23 yards around the right end on a reverse, although Gano missed the extra point attempt after the score. The Cowboys cut the Giants’ lead in half with a 38-yard Greg Zuerlein field goal, but Shepard was the star of another Giants touchdown drive, catching a 10-yard touchdown pass from Giants quarterback Daniel Jones late in the second quarter.Dallas stayed in the game with two more Zuerlein field goals in the first half, but the Giants continued to attack, building a 20-6 lead on a 33-yard touchdown pass from Jones, who completed 17 of 25 passes for 229 yards, to Pettis.Trailing by 11 points at halftime, the Cowboys climbed back into the game when Giants tight end Evan Engram, who was recently selected for the Pro Bowl, failed to catch an accurate Jones pass over the middle early in the third quarter. Engram’s misplay was more than a drop since he deflected the football backward where it was intercepted by Dallas safety Donovan Wilson. Ten plays after the interception, Dallas running back Ezekiel Elliott bulled into the end zone with a 1-yard touchdown that trimmed the Giants’ lead to 20-16.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

  • in

    Ravens Snatch Back Giants’ Playoff Hopes

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRavens 27, Giants 13Ravens Snatch Back Giants’ Playoff HopesBaltimore made its case for the wild-card spot as the Giants fell back to earth — and toward the bottom of the N.F.C. East — in a rout.Giants receiver Sterling Shepard was tackled by his jersey Sunday as the Ravens frustrated the team’s offense. Credit…Patrick Smith/Getty ImagesDec. 27, 2020Updated 7:43 p.m. ETIn early November, the Giants began a startling run at a playoff berth with four consecutive victories. In that moment, perhaps it seemed as if the long-suffering Giants had been underestimated under Joe Judge, the team’s rookie head coach.At roughly the same time, the Baltimore Ravens, a Super Bowl favorite when last season’s playoffs began, were surprisingly adrift with four losses in five games. Had the Ravens and their sparkling quarterback Lamar Jackson, the N.F.L.’s reigning most valuable player, been overvalued?By the end of the Ravens’ systematic 27-13 thrashing of the Giants on Sunday in Baltimore — a game that was not nearly as close as the score would suggest — it was obvious the Ravens and Jackson had simply been forced to endure a mini-slump inexorably linked to last month’s coronavirus outbreak on the team.As for the Giants, it is now fair to wonder whether the win streak of several weeks ago was true progress for a beleaguered franchise or a hollow mirage that leaves many questions about the roster still unresolved.The fourth successive victory for the Ravens (10-5) greatly enhances their chances at claiming a wild-card playoff spot since they now only need to win their final regular season game against Cincinnati (4-10-1) to qualify for the postseason. The Giants (5-10), losers of three straight games, have one remaining path to the playoffs: They must defeat Dallas at home in their regular season finale next week and the Washington Football Team would have to lose at Philadelphia on the same day.“I’m really proud of our guys for handling the situation we’ve been in for the last several weeks,” Baltimore Coach John Harbaugh said. “They’ve managed to stay focused and that says everything about their character.”Added Ravens tight end Mark Andrews when asked to address the team’s losing stretch and a period when at least one Baltimore player tested positive for the virus for 10 successive days: “It was about staying patient. I knew our time was coming and it is coming.”It is much harder to see improvement for the Giants — in the near term, at least. The team will have at least 10 losses for the fourth season in a row, which is a first for the franchise. The Giants will also have double-digit losses in six of seven years. In their last three games, the Giants have been outscored, 73-26.Judge, however, remained unbowed when assessing the season as a whole.“I feel like we’re on the right track,” he said Sunday, referring to the development of less tangible attributes like the team’s heightened work ethic and sustained resilience.“We’ve got the right start, we just need to do more on the field to get the tangible results,” Judge said.The tone for the game, generally utter dominance by Baltimore, was set early when the Ravens took the opening kickoff and used eight minutes and 12 seconds to meticulously march 82 yards downfield on their way to taking a 7-0 lead. The 13-play drive put on display everything the varied Baltimore offense planned to unleash against a Giants defense that had been much improved in the second half of the season.Jackson, who completed 17 of 26 passes for 183 yards with two touchdown passes, threw for 31 yards on his team’s first possession, including a 6-yard touchdown toss to Marquise Brown. Jackson, who would rush for 80 yards on 13 carries, also repeatedly sliced through the heart and strength of the Giants’ defense, which has been the team’s interior linemen.Running back Gus Edwards led the Ravens Sunday with 85 yards rushing on 15 attempts and had two receptions for 37 yards. Edwards, who has rushed for 277 yards in his last four games after gaining 386 yards in Baltimore’s opening 10 games, was especially effective in third-down situations.“He’s doing it all right now,” Jackson said of Edwards. “He’s running tough and getting yards after the catch. But I see it all the time in practice, that’s Gus just being him.”As Baltimore built a 20-3 halftime lead with a 2-yard touchdown run by J.K. Dobbins and two Justin Tucker field goals, the Giants were nearly setting team records for offensive futility. They had just three offensive plays in the first quarter, which is the fewest for the team in 30 years. They had possession of the football for only seven minutes and 22 seconds of the first half when they gained just 16 yards on the ground — compared to the 155 first-half rushing yards for Baltimore.Giants quarterback Daniel Jones, who missed a game because of a hamstring injury earlier this month and appeared rusty in a lopsided defeat to Arizona last week, seemed to be moving more comfortably Sunda. But the results were no better.Jones, who has 406 yards rushing this season, ran just once Sunday for 3 yards. Most problematic for Jones was the Ravens’ pass rush, which overwhelmed the young, inexperienced Giants offensive line for six sacks, all of them in the second half when the Giants showed some life offensively but never truly challenged Baltimore’s lead.Jones completed 24 of 41 passes for 252 yards. Midway through the fourth quarter, he threw a 3-yard touchdown pass to Sterling Shepard. It was just Jones’s ninth touchdown pass in 13 games this year. The Giants, who came into Sunday’s game with an offense that was ranked second-to-last in the N.F.L., have now scored 26 points in their last three games.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More