There's plenty of room, and time, for this Giants season to get worse
Giants rookie receiver Malik Nabers prior to the game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at MetLife Stadium on November 24, 2024. Credit: Getty Images/Dustin Satloff
The impulse to declare Sunday’s 30-7 loss to the Bucs a new low point for the Giants this season – and perhaps in this era – was strong.
It came at the end of an embarrassing week in which the Giants first benched and then released the quarterback who just 20 months earlier they had signed to a four-year, $160 million contract. It was followed by some of the most raw, nasty and harsh criticisms of the team that we’ve heard in some time . . . and those were what the players said about themselves. In between, of course, was an unwatchable brand of football that could barely function on offense or defense and cleared out the stands at MetLife Stadium more efficiently than any fire drill ever could.
But let’s not fool ourselves. Believing that game was some kind of rock bottom to the misery this franchise has been reduced to while celebrating its 100th season is about the most wildly optimistic thing that can be said about them.
Oh yes. Things can most definitely get a whole lot worse. In fact, we haven’t even begun to plunge the depths of just how rotten, dysfunctional, cringy and destructive this season can become before it mercifully ends in six weeks.
“We don't go out there thinking we're going to perform that way,” rookie receiver Malik Nabers said on Tuesday. “Nobody wants to go out there and get booed and play like they're not supposed to be playing. We're not trying to go out there and just play pathetic. It's not like we just go out there like that.”
And yet it very well could happen.
There is still Thursday’s game in Dallas, when the 2-9 Giants have an opportunity to bring their special brand of this sport into the living rooms of America while the nation celebrates Thanksgiving. Bombing out on that stage, which under normal circumstances would figure to draw one of the largest television viewing audiences of the regular season (as it did two years ago) and still might given the lack of options otherwise, would be yet another embarrassment for the organization. If they get blown out in the kind of performance that couldn’t even be stomached by John Madden, the patron saint of Thanksgiving football, it would be yet another black eye for Big Blue.
Then, sadly, there are five games after that. The Giants host the Saints next weekend in a game that may be less attended than any in recent memory. After that come the Ravens. If the Giants couldn’t tackle Baker Mayfield and Bucky Irving last week, good luck bringing down Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry. It's on to Atlanta after that, and then back to MetLife Stadium in Week 17 when the Colts come to town for something of a homage to the 1958 NFL Championship decided in overtime at Yankee Stadium, although this one may go down as The Worst Game Ever Played. And then there is the schedule-capper in Philadelphia.
“At that point, I think it's more just understanding your, ‘Why,’” Dexter Lawrence said on Tuesday. “Why you play this game? It's a pride thing. Understanding who you do it for and why you do it. I think that's the most important thing. You can easily, at this point in the season, give up, per se. But I think it's goals that you have in life that you’ve got to obtain and think about.”
Meanwhile the Giants’ reputation as a smart, well-run, forward-thinking organization takes a hit with each yard Saquon Barkley gains for the Eagles, with each interception Xavier McKinney makes for the Packers, with each quarterback pressure Leonard Williams applies in Seattle. It’s to the point that John Mara was catching stray disses from Troy Aikman on the “Monday Night Football” broadcast this week during a Ravens-Chargers game that had absolutely nothing to do with the Giants or any of their former players now thriving elsewhere.
We haven’t even gotten to the really juicy, spicy stuff, the kinds of events that transcend the games and live forever in lore. We haven’t gotten to running quarterback sneaks from deep in their own territory or fumbling handoffs late in games that are being iced as victories. There haven’t been planes flying above MetLife Stadium with banners decrying the stench of this stretch of seasons, sing-songy farewells to the coaches, or tickets being burned in the parking lot, all of which served as the dirges of previous freefalls decades ago.
Beyond that there is the in-house drama. Who knows the levels of anger and frustration to which a few more lopsided losses will push Nabers, Lawrence and Brian Burns? Nabers certainly doesn’t seem willing to stand by and allow the rest of this season to disintegrate around him without providing his roiling (but often accurate and perhaps necessary) commentary. As he said this week, he was brought here to be different and make the Giants different too.
“I got added to this team to be a resource, to be somebody that can change the game,” he said. “I'm not going to just sit back just because I'm a younger guy and not speak on how I feel. They want me to speak up. They feel like my energy helps the offense, in a way, to be explosive. So, of course, I'm going to speak up if something doesn't go my way. That's just how I am. I'm not going to just sit back and just let it go down just because I'm a young player. Clout don't mean nothing… Whoever is saying I don't have the authority to be speaking up, that's on them. I don't care.”
So no, don’t expect these Giants to go quietly into the offseason. One way or another, either resuscitated by a few wins or aflame from continued losing, they’ll make a show of these next few weeks.
Given how things have gone so far this season, the trend seems to be leaning toward the latter. In other words, worse and worse.
Yes, worse even than this past Sunday was.
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.