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