Giants haven't exactly closed gap between them and NFC East's elite teams
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA - DECEMBER 25: D'Andre Swift #0 of the Philadelphia Eagles scores a touchdown against Xavier McKinney #29 of the New York Giants during the fourth quarter at Lincoln Financial Field on December 25, 2023 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Adam Hunger/Getty Images) Credit: Getty Images/Adam Hunger
PHILADELPHIA
That the Giants were eliminated from postseason contention on Monday was simply a peripheral pain for them, a matter of course. Their chances of advancing to the postseason for a second straight season already had been shredded to the thinnest of percentages by their loss last week in New Orleans. This just mathed it shut.
That this appeared to be the inevitable culmination of The Tommy DeVito Story, with the undrafted rookie quarterback benched at halftime of his sixth career start to cap a fun and charming but destined to be short-lived narrative that carried us through December, was another ancillary result of this Christmas Day game.
The real takeaway from the 33-25 loss was that it ended, ultimately, eventually, predictably, just like every other trip the Giants have made to Lincoln Financial Field for the past decade. Not even a reeling Eagles team that looked like a shell of its Super Bowl self of a year ago — while drawing more boos than holiday cheer from the fans and making sloppy plays that kept the Giants in the game — could change what has become the most redundant result on the Giants’ schedule.
That gap existing between themselves and the two top teams in the NFC East, the Eagles most significantly among them, that the Giants talked about all offseason?
“We didn’t close it,” Saquon Barkley said. “It clearly shows.”
No one is going to take the Giants seriously until they prove they can compete in their own division. And no one is going to believe the Giants are making any type of growth until they can beat the Eagles in general and in Philadelphia specifically.
Especially not themselves.
“We played the Cowboys twice and got beat, we played a really good game here and got beat,” Barkley said. “I’m not saying anything negative, that’s the truth. If this team and this franchise wants to go where we want to go, we have to start beating these teams. It’s not even the last couple of years. Everyone tries to make it a recent thing. The last decade we haven’t been beating Philly and we struggle with Dallas. That’s just the truth.”
They came closer than they have in a while, thanks mostly to Adoree’ Jackson returning an interception 76 yards for a touchdown that made the score 20-18 very late in the third quarter (Barkley took a direct snap and drove across the goal line for the two-point conversion) and Tyrod Taylor hitting Darius Slayton for a 69-yard TD that made it 30-25 with 5:22 left.
But even the competitiveness of the game felt more like an Eagles regression than any Giants progress.
And when it came down to crunch time, it was running back D’Andre Swift and the Eagles who were able to run out most of those final 5 1⁄2 minutes to kick a field goal with 1:10 left and notch the win. The Giants had a chance to tie it with a touchdown and two-point conversion, but the final play of the game was an interception in the end zone as time expired.
While many Giants have been worn down by this routine — Barkley has sat in this visiting locker room more often than any other in the NFL and never has done so with the postgame smile that a single victory can deliver — others got their first taste of this situation.
“It was a close game at points throughout the game,” said Bobby Okereke, who had 10 tackles. “I think we showed great team fight but we didn’t execute well enough.”
“I feel like you can measure the gap in so many different ways,” added Darren Waller (two catches, 32 yards, all on the final drive). “You line up and play football. It was a game that was down to the wire. You can look at a lot of different things and compare talent, but today is the only day we had and we were right there. I’ll let the personnel people talk about what the gap is.”
Forget about actually beating the Eagles for a moment. The last time the Giants managed to avoid being eliminated by them, Pat Shurmur was the head coach and Eli Manning was in uniform.
This was the fourth straight year the meaningful portion of the Giants’ season ended at the hands of the Eagles, and in this very building. There was last season’s lopsided playoff loss here, of course, and in 2021 it was a Week 16 decision in the unfriendly confines that did them in. Then there was the 2020 campaign that ended with the six-win Giants watching the regular-season finale in agony as the Eagles — who could have gotten the Giants into the playoffs by beating Washington at Lincoln Financial Field — pulled Jalen Hurts and turned to third-string quarterback Nate Sudfeld in the fourth quarter of a close game.
Even when the Eagles lose, they manage to torture the Giants.
Usually, though, it’s just the Eagles winning that does that.
Since the arrival of Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll, the Giants have beaten neither the Cowboys nor the Eagles in eight combined contests against those two division “rivals.”
They have been outscored 281-123 in those games. In the three meetings this season, the tally is 122-42.
Daboll, clearly steamed by the result, offered very little about this loss in how it stacks up with the others.
“You don’t like to lose,” he grumbled.
Doing so to these guys, though, stings even more . . . for those new and old to the tradition.
“They always come out and find a way,” Barkley said. And until the Giants can do the same, nothing will change for them.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
