NY Giants: The good, bad, and ugly vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers

The NY Giants kicked off the 2020 campaign with a 26-16 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Monday night. Let’s take a look at some of the positive and negative takeaways from the season opener.

The Joe Judge era officially began last night for the NY Giants. After one of the strangest off-seasons in NFL history, the young, rebuilding G-Men were thrown into the fire as they opened the season with one of the most experienced teams in the NFL.

Not many were counting on the Giants to actually win this game, although miracles do happen from time-to-time. Winning is hard enough in the NFL, but when you add an entirely new coaching staff, new offensive and defensive schemes, one of the youngest rosters in the league, and go through an almost entirely virtual off-season the up-hill battle only gets steeper.

But enough with the excuses – if Joe Judge was reading this he’d make me take a lap. Last night’s performance served as a benchmark for where this team is both physically and mentally.

Over the last few years, we’ve watched the NY Giants check-out of games, stop competing, make entirely too many costly mental mistakes, and get physically out-matched.

These are all areas that Joe Judge vowed to change.

Last night we got to see the first product of this culture shift and it was surprisingly encouraging. And while I understand moral victories aren’t going to win you a Super Bowl, the whole point of this season was to see a move in the right direction – through one game signs that this ship is being steered in the right direction were apparent.

Of course, it wasn’t all good and positive. Big Blue is still a year or two from being competitive and that was very evident last night.

With all that said, let’s dive into the good, bad, and ugly from last night from the NY Giants’ Week One opener.