4 NY Giants who blew it in disappointing tie vs. the Commanders

Despite having the lead for the majority of Week 13, the NY Giants somehow managed to tie with the Washington Commanders, and now sit at 7-4-1. Quite frankly, this game was an embarrassment – there are absolutely no reasons for this contest to have ended the way it did.

The Giants had countless chances to put this game away, yet consistently played over-conservative offense that cost them the win, but we’ll get into that later. This was a game the Giants needed to come out on top of. While a tie is not the worst thing, there are no excuses for the way this one ended. Entering next week’s matchup against the Eagles, the Giants must be much sharper if they even want to keep things close.

Many Giants players stepped up this week and played very well, however, just as many disappointed and let the team down. These four NY Giants did not deliver what was expected out of them this week.

4. DB Zyon Gilbert

It is hard to hate on Gilbert, a UDFA who made his NFL debut against the Commanders, however, he was flat out terrible and was a big reason why this game went into overtime. Gilbert did rack up seven combined tackles, but it did not help the Giants at all. His complete inability in coverage cost the Giants big time.

With players like Rodarius Williams and Cor’Dale Flott, it really doesn’t make sense as to why Gilbert saw a high number of snaps. Who knows how those two would have performed, but we doubt it would be much worse than what Gilbert gave the Giants.

The Giants secondary has been beat up over the last couple of weeks and it has been hurting the team more than almost anything else. It also didn’t help that Wink Martindale consistently left not only Gilbert, but most of the other corners on the Giants on an island all game with his consistent blitzing. However, that does not entirely excuse the poor play from the secondary.

Hopefully Martindale either adjusts to the Giants weaknesses, or the team regains Adoree’ Jackson very soon because if not, things could get even worse.

3: CB Fabian Moreau

The return of Fabian Moreau did not go exactly as planned. With how poorly the Giants secondary performed against the Cowboys last week, it seemed like the G-Men would be getting a massive boost with the return of Moreau, but this was not the case.

Not only did Moreau display some horrid tackling, but he got absolutely toasted by Terry McLaurin all game, allowing eight receptions for 105 yards and a TD. While Moreau wasn’t on McLaurin every snap, he was on him for the plays that mattered, including McLaurin’s TD catch.

Moreau was eaten alive all game, even serving up some costly penalties for the Giants defense. While he certainly wasn’t done any favors by being lined up on McLaurin all game, he was the Giants best hope to stop him.

All season long, Moreau has been one of the most underrated players on the Giants defense, and has even been directly responsible for one of the Giants victories.

This certainly wasn’t a good game out of Moreau, as we expected a much better performance than what we got. Hopefully he picks it up against the Eagles next week. Considering the fact that he’ll most likely be lined up against A.J Brown, who caught eight passes for 119 yards and two TDs this week, Moreau will need to be at his best if the Giants want a chance to win.

2: The NY Giants offensive line as a whole

Even after signing players in the offseason like Mark Glowinski and Jon Feliciano, in addition to regaining both Nick Gates and Evan Neal in the last couple of weeks, the NY Giants offensive line still couldn’t get it together this week.

Glowinski had himself a very rough game, being responsible for the Giants miserable first drive of the game. While he did make up for it with a key block on Saquon Barkley’s TD run, he just flat-out looked bad on almost every other play.

Gates was very solid for the most part, but even then he had a couple of plays where he was just bullied by Commanders DT Jonathan Allen, which isn’t that surprising. Hopefully Gates can continue his solid level of play as the season goes on, as we all know how key he is to this Giants offense when healthy.

Feliciano wasn’t noticeably bad like he usually is, however, his absolutely unacceptable unsportsmanlike conduct penalty late in the fourth killed what could have been a great NY Giants drive. Feliciano has disappointed all season long and could very likely be benched for Gates whenever Ben Bredeson returns from injury.

As for Neal and Andrew Thomas, they both performed rather well. While it’s not surprising to see Thomas succeed, who had a very good game outside of one play where he was pushed back deep into the pocket by Montez Sweat, it was very nice to see how well Neal played. Hopefully Neal can continue to develop as the season goes on and earn his name as a keystone offensive tackle.

Overall, it was the NY Giants interior offensive line that was the cause for the offense’s downfall at times. This has been easily the worst part of the line all season and must improve in the offseason if the Giants want a chance to establish themselves as a good team down the road.

1: NY Giants offensive coordinator Mike Kafka

This game is on no one else other than Mike Kafka, who called an utterly embarrassing, disgusting game of football. The Giants had every opportunity possibly to win this game by closing things out, however, he decided to play it passive and essentially give the Commanders a chance to win.

Kafka started things out terribly by only allowing Daniel Jones to throw the ball five times in the team’s first three drives. However, after making the genius discovery that Jones can infact throw the football well, Kafka changed the play calling to emphasize Jones’s ability to lead the team with his arm and it went well.

What was arguably the worst part of this game occurred late in the first half with 19 seconds left on the clock.  The Giants had the ball at the Commanders 11 and for some reason, Kafka called a designed run for Daniel Jones which left the Giants with five seconds left on the clock when they kicked the field goal.

If the Giants had actually played for the touchdown, like almost every other team would have, this could have been a totally different outcome. There are no excuses for running the ball in that situations. None.

After the Giants went up 20-13 in the third quarter, however, Kafka seemingly shut the offense down, running almost zero plays to even try and get a first down. The Giants had three drives to attempt to put the game away in the fourth quarter and in those three drives, they ran 14 total plays for zero points.

It gets even better, after the Commanders scored and tied the game back up at 20 a piece, Kafka then decided, with 1:45 left in the game, to finally be aggressive, however, he did it in the worst possible way. On this drive, the Giants ran three deep passes in a row that were all incomplete, while one play was a rough drop by Darius Slayton, this does not excuse the complete lack of a game plan on this potential game-winning drive.

We could keep going on and on about just how awful the play calling was from Kafka, but stating the obvious just gets redundant. Kafka has been pretty bad as a play caller the last couple of weeks, and if things do not improve, the Giants should heavily consider moving on from him in the offseason. His act is getting old.